Providing High Quality & Free Music Education for Children in Flatbush and Kensington
The program is a collaboration between 5pm Porch Concerts, Jazz Passengers Music Projects, the Flatbush Development Corporation, and Arts and Democracy.
The Porch Music School seeks to provide a high quality, free music education to middle school and high school youth from Title I schools in the Flatbush and Kensington neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Through intensive mentorship with local musicians, original composition workshops, large group ensemble rehearsals and performances in interactive multi-generational community concerts, youth participants develop their skills as creative artists and explore the role of music in community building.
Through their participation, youth learn to process challenging life experiences through creative musical expression, build meaningful relationships with mentors and peers, become empowered members of their communities and to graduate high school with confidence, resilience and joy.
The program was founded in late spring of 2020 as a response to the shutdown and isolation of the pandemic and lockdown, evolving naturally from Roy Nathanson’s daily concerts at 5pm.
This program takes place at several locations in the Kensington and Flatbush neighborhoods. The weekly lessons and writing sessions will continue to take place on the porches of neighbors on the blocks surrounding the Newkirk Plaza train station.
Our weekly rehearsals will continue to take place in the backyard of Jalsa Grill & Gravy, an Indian restaurant located on the border of Flatbush and Kensington. Our end of the year concerts will take place in public outdoor spaces in the neighborhood. In the past we have held concerts on Newkirk Plaza, Avenue C Plaza, Newkirk Avenue Open Streets, Cortelyou Road Open Streets and on neighborhood porches. We have received permission to use these outdoor spaces through our collaborations with the Flatbush Development Corporation and Arts & Democracy. All our venues are on public streets, so they are entirely accessible to persons with disabilities.
This project is completely free to all participants, to prevent any issues of accessibility. However, we do encourage parent involvement in order to ensure the program runs smoothly. Like the mutual aid society model, all are expected to contribute based on their capacity. Over time, we have formed strong partnerships with community organizations active in social justice and youth development. We have worked with the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC) to recruit students and co-produce several concerts. Our partnership with Arts & Democracy has deepened our roots in the Kensington community, and over the last few years we have collaborated on several concerts, which were celebrations of immigrant culture and public art.
The team of mentors is made up of a diverse young group of performing artists: Keyanna Hutchinson, a Jamaican-American musician, composer, and producer from Brooklyn, NY and recent winner of the Next Jazz Legacy Award; Cleo Reed, an award-winning singer-songwriter, producer and creative, whose sound design work was recently featured in Jon Batiste’s “American Symphony” at Carnegie Hall; Alber Baseel, an in-demand Palestinian percussionist who has toured extensively with folk artists in the Middle-Eastern and Balkan traditions, and many other talented Brooklyn-based artists and educators.
Thank you to the generous contributions of all our donors that make this program possible.
