Junior Julia Bell sat with the children at the New Hope Family Shelter as the cello quartet played and told them to draw pictures of what they thought the music was about. She said she thinks they were mostly happy and sad faces, maybe some dancing stick figures and animals reflecting the tone of the classical piece being played.
She was the MC of the performance that day, and so when the strings stopped she taught the kids about rhythm by making maracas and tambourines out of paper plates and cups.
She was outside of the recital hall and away from professors and juries, engaging with a different audience in a different way. It wasn’t what she was used to, but she was comfortable.
“I liked it immediately,” Bell said. “There’s a little less pressure but you feel inclined to do well because your audience is so receptive.”
Classical Connections is a university organization that pairs student musicians with homeless shelters, retirement homes, hospitals and other areas in the Bloomington community. The group was founded in January 2015 by pianist Brynn Elcock and has since grown to 107 members that regularly perform concerts at four different locations.
“It’s always been a big passion of mine to share whatever I have,” Elcock said. “In this case, I have music, and there are so many students who are so talented and have been studying this beautiful art. I see no reason not to share that with the rest of the community.”
Tracy Keith is the senior life enrichment director at Hearthstone Health Campus — a venue that CC performs at once a month during IU’s fall and spring semesters. She said she originally contacted CC because Hearthstone residents wanted to hear the students play.
“They enjoy the variety of instruments,” Keith said. “Classical Connections doesn’t just come and play the piano. (Residents) said it’s nice to have young musicians that come to them and socialize with them at the end.”
CC’s Vice President Emma Stewart said activities like the one Bell led don’t work everywhere, so when the group performs for adults, the educational interactions are usually more conceptual and discussion-based.
Trombonist Connor Thummel, for example, said he likes he can facilitate conversations with audiences about the compositional style of the pieces he played. He said he likes to explore how a narrative or story could reflect a specific style of music.
“We definitely like to go beyond just the music,” Stewart said. “I think that venues and professional organizations now are working more to have that engagement piece with their audience because people are looking to engage and understand music on a deeper level, which I think is great.”
Alain Barker is the group’s faculty adviser and Director of Music Entrepreneurship and Career Development at the Jacobs School of Music.
He said jazz musicians have been doing this kind of community work forever, but classical musicians have tended to stay in the concert hall.
“I think it’s really important to do both,” Barker said. “I think the concert hall is a spectacular place for incredible music and I think that they will always be there. It’s becoming just as important for any artist—somebody doing it as an amateur or somebody doing it as a high-end professional—to really think through what it is to be connecting to people, society, and community.”
Stewart said she noticed throughout time the performances were helping CC members just as much as they were helping the underserved locations the group visited.
“Jacobs is a very high stress environment where it can be easy to get lost in perfecting the details of our craft,” Stewart said. “I think when I started doing these concerts it reminded me of why I was working so hard to become a musician. It reminded me of how music can change you as a person and change the people you’re working with.”
But both Elcock and Stewart graduated earlier this month, and while Stewart admits it will be hard to pass off the baby, she said she is confident in the new leadership team.
Though Bell prepares to become the vice president of CC in Bloomington, Elcock and Stewart has filed for articles of incorporation, the first step in making CC a nonprofit organization that could inhabit and do similar work at music schools throughout the country.
“We’d love to go to areas that don’t have programs like this already and set it up so it’s really getting into the framework of a conservatory,” Elcock said. “I really think that should include community engagement."
A previous version of this story referred to the New Hope Family Shelter as the New Hope Family Center and misidentified Brynn Elcock as a flutist.
