fulfilling our - Alumni - DePaul University

School OF
MUSIC
Community Music Division helps foster children SOAR
Since 1988, DePaul’s Community Music Division has given
thousands of children and adults of all ages and skill levels —
regardless of financial circumstances — the chance to “make
friends” with music. Housed within the School of Music in
Lincoln Park, this “school within a school” offers private lessons,
small-group instruction and performance opportunities in a
variety of instruments, plus voice. It also hosts a number of
performance ensembles, including the 110-member DePaul
Community Chorus, a New Horizons Band for adults and
a neighborhood division of the Chicago Children’s Choir.
Currently, more than 650 students are receiving top-notch
instruction from a faculty of more than 60 master’s-prepared
musician-educators, many of them graduates of DePaul’s
School of Music themselves.
Among these students are more than 50 foster children who
receive weekly instruction in violin, piano, percussion, flute or
clarinet — completely free — through the school’s participation
in an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
program called Project SOAR (Statewide Opportunities in Arts
and Recreation). DePaul’s Community Music Division supplies
the teachers, curriculum and instruments, which the students
take home for practice.
“These kids are getting wonderful listening opportunities
through school concerts or trips to the symphony, but often
haven’t been given the chance to study an instrument,”
says Community Music Division founder and director
Susanne Baker, D.M. “With weekly instrumental instruction,
the students are involved in the real experience of making
music, including the chance to perform and celebrate
their progress.”
Concerned about the fact that foster children become ineligible
for the SOAR program when they are adopted, Baker started
a program so they can continue their musical instruction after
adoption. The program, DePaul Pathways, was made possible
through a grant from DePaul’s Vincentian Endowment Fund.
Ongoing funding comes from the Community Music Division’s
annual “Performathon” — students collect pledges for each
minute they perform — as well as individual and corporate
sponsors.
Addie Brooks says that without DePaul Pathways, her five
adopted children would not have had the opportunity to
continue the music instruction they began with SOAR. Now
teenagers, Jessica and Taneaka play piano, Alicia and Erica study
violin, and Keenan is learning the cello. “I know that they’ll
continue with music, because the seed was planted when they
were very young,” says Brooks. “They appreciate all kinds of
music, not just [popular] music. Playing an instrument makes
them proud of themselves.”
“Every child has a musical interest and curiosity, but many
never have any exposure to music,” says Hanjin Sa (MUS ’07),
who is an instructor in DePaul’s Community Music Division’s
foster children’s program. “Music is an important friend.”
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