‘Lots of heart’

Miracles aren’t ‘small’ when youngsters learn to make music for themselves.

By: Pat Summers
   "Music teacher" only begins to describe Robert Murray Diefendorf, Westminster Conservatory music instructor. "Advocate" and "missionary" also come to mind. And there’s "idealist," too.
   This combination of skills and values has built the Small Miracles Foundation, which in the last decade has brought music instruction — with the attendant music appreciation and personal pride — into the lives of Mercer County kids who otherwise might have missed all that.
   With volunteer high schoolers teaching elementary school students who have a passion for music but not the money for private lessons, SMF operates on a "violin string" budget and lots of heart. One-on-one instruction in piano, violin, flute and drums usually takes place at Westminster Conservatory of Music or the Lawrenceville School, where some students teach in the program.
   Newly official as a nonprofit organization and boasting its first board of directors, SMF will celebrate nine years of "lighting the flames inside young musicians" on Saturday, May 14. A benefit concert and international banquet at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton will feature performances by teachers and their students, with food prepared by SMF families.
   Although "Mr. D," as some SMF kids call him, has studied piano pedagogy and long taught that instrument, he is a teaching generalist. Around the time he began at the Westminster Conservatory in 1995, he gave music lessons at the Arts Council of Princeton, teaching piano on old instruments with missing keys. With community help, new practice pianos were soon acquired.
   And, beyond piano, "I taught whatever they needed to know," Mr. D says. For those who came by the arts council building (often, neighborhood residents facing language barriers), this included ESL, or English as a Second Language, and how to find a job. One woman is still employed in the position he helped her to locate.
   An 11-year-old Chinese girl who wanted to take lessons turned out to be a catalyst in SMF’s development. Despite her repeated requests, it looked as if she wasn’t eligible for lessons. Her parents were both doctors, she had reported, a fact that excluded her from the necessary "eligible for the federal lunch program" status.
   Then the girl’s mother visited and updated the story: Both immigrants, the parents barely spoke English and so had to work at restaurant jobs. The girl got her lessons — and Mr. Diefendorf moved ahead with a heightened sense of the program’s value.
   About five years ago, another girl who had been his student said she wanted to teach with him. With no students he could share with her, he started contacting schools in the area, finding eager elementary schoolers who were eligible for music lessons. He also identified additional musical teens to teach them.
   These days, SMF’s active teen teachers are drawn from Hopewell Valley Central High School, Princeton High School and West Windsor-Plainsboro South High School, as well as The Lawrenceville School. They are Manisha Bhattacharya, Nicholas Bodnar, Elena Bridgers, Eunjeong Chi, Mary S. Fan, Marina Irgon, Smitha Krishnan, Esther Lee, Nan Ni, Akshay Rathod, Tyrone Rhabb, Tori Rich, Celine Satija, Everett Schlawin, Colin Sullivan, Elaine Yeung, Jessica Yuan and Keren Zhou.
   Although Mr. D helps to set up teacher-student sessions, observes some lessons and may suggest techniques, quality assurance really starts with his selection of a volunteer teacher, he says. The two most important things he looks for are reliability and readiness to give their pupils all the love they can.
   "Musically, you don’t have to be an advanced student," he tells his teachers, "but if a young kid watches you play your instrument, and imitates you … " Which explains why to him, the three most important things for a beginner to master are "hand position, hand position, hand position."
   In a practice room with two pianos and a wall of tall windows overlooking a sweeping green athletic field, Lawrenceville School senior Elaine Yeung held her own flute while working with Jaquay Coates, 8, of Lawrenceville. "How do you do an E? … There you go!" she exclaimed as Jaquay produced the tone on his flute.
   Before long, Jaquay moved, deliberately, through "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." Ms.Yeung, from Hong Kong, demonstrated on her own instrument and later invited Jaquay to choose some Pokemon stickers. (On later inspection, his sheet music was sprinkled with these. Ms. Yeung said her flute teacher had loved stickers, so she uses them, too.)
   As a bonus, musical Jaquay got five minutes to play a piano after his lesson. Waiting for him downstairs, his mother described how he recently sat down at a piano and just started to play. His knowing how had surprised everyone.
   Without tongue in cheek, Mr. D describes Small Miracles Foundation as "a radical political group." He explains that "even though it’s warm and fuzzy, and everyone says how nice it is, (music education) can change the fabric of how we live."
   SMF gives each young music student "weekly contact with music, with another musical kid, in a wonderful building like this one" (the Clark Music Center of the Lawrenceville School), he says. It’s a first-hand interaction with a different world, with other ways of looking at life and numerous options.
   Values today are easily skewed, Mr. D observes. It may be pop culture or no culture, with the emphasis on money and sports. "Academics and cultural activities can be seen as uncool. This program helps them see that culture is cool," he says. "They see instructors play their instruments beautifully. This pursuit of beauty is a real, daily thing, like putting on shoes — not just something you read about."
   Mr. Diefendorf, born in Chicago in 1963, graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and earned his bachelor of music degree from Boston University School of Music. His graduate-level study includes course work at Westminster Choir College. Before moving to the Princeton area, he held similar positions in New York City, with piano teaching a constant.
   The total of 40 to 50 students over nine years reflects both SMF’s small start and its many repeaters. Some kids come back year after year for lessons — they can return for as long as there are teachers for them. Students average some 30 lessons a year, each around 45 minutes, and summer sessions are sometimes possible, too.
   As for practice, "We have three or four pianos that can circulate, and we try to get a piano into (a student’s) house," Mr. D. says. Thanks to donated pianos, a student’s family pays only for a mover and tuner; if they get their own piano later, the SMF piano moves on. Other instruments are rented, sometimes with the help of the schools involved with the program.
   Keeping all this running smoothly takes time and paperwork on top of the basic commitment. A paid SMF director is one goal of the fundraising that starts with next week’s benefit concert.
   To the earlier descriptors of Robert Diefendorf, add "motivational author." His "Release the Butterfly," a book about music and pedagogy, helps readers "peel away the layers that get in the way" and aims to keep them from giving up on themselves.
   Sounds like more miracles in the making.
Small Miracles Foundation’s benefit concert and international banquet will take place Saturday, May 14, 6 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, located at 50 Cherry Hill Road. The suggested donation is $15. Door prizes include free dinner for two at Triumph Brewery and at Macaroni Grill, and free coupons to ShopRite Superstores. For more information, call (609) 439-1915.