Christy Zarlengo
Christy Zarlengo and I are family. In our twenties, we both lived in Los Angeles and tried to earn a living in the entertainment business. Eventually, I moved to Portland and Christy moved to Boston to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Now, Christy owns and directs the Children’s Music Center of Jamaica Plain. When I decided to highlight the start of the school year with features that celebrate the benefits of arts education, Christy’s name was at the top of my interview list.
Christy has been a musician her entire life, writing music, singing and playing both piano and keyboards. After finishing Berklee, she continued to write songs, sing and play piano. Christy was on her way to becoming the next Shawn Colvin. She sang and played piano on a cruise ship in the Boston Harbor.
It’s expensive to live in Boston. So, Christy started teaching piano too. “It felt like a job. It didn’t feel like the right match for me.” When she was working at a music school in Cambridge, they asked her to help out with their early childhood program. When Christy first taught early childhood groups with parents and kids, she remembers thinking, “Wow! This doesn’t feel like work to me.”
Her classes are a wonderful way to spend time with young children and their parents and show them the joys of music. Slowly but surely, teaching childhood music became a bigger and bigger part of Christy’s life. This turned out to be her calling.
The benefits of music education in children between birth and five years are many. Early childhood music education helps with social, cognitive, motor and speech development like nothing else. Most focus on the cognitive improvements, especially in math, but Christy thinks the most overlooked benefit is that “music makes us more human. Having a life where you love music, whether you become a music performer or writer or not, it makes life so much richer. I sense that parents who bring their kids to the Center want that for them more than anything.”
To Christy, music is about community. She sees that in worship settings. Music brings people together in a beautiful way.
The Children’s Music Center offers group lessons for varied instruments and musical theater. Christy believes a lot of children learn better in groups. Children go to regular school in groups. When children are 6 and under, ”they are in the process of developing socially, they’re developing personalities and sense of self in the context of a group. They want to assert their personalities in the class. It makes them want to be creative. In a way, we kind of sneak the music into that.”
However, as children get older and play an instrument, then it is important to begin individual studies that match the speed of their progress. With piano, girls are ready for private lessons at about 6 years, most boys around 7, because girls and boys have different learning styles. Guitar is later for all children, around 10 or 11, because guitar takes finger dexterity that younger children don’t have. With the Suzuki Method, children can start to play violin as young as 3.
When I asked Christy about where she felt music education made the most difference in children’s lives, she told me about Zumix in east Boston. The school’s mission is to “empower youth to use music to make strong, positive change in their lives, their communities and the world.” They work with teenage children, offering low cost lessons, songwriting programs and other music instruction. Christy has seen that a lot of those children go to college, but the most important thing is that they “become wonderful, well-rounded members of their communities.
Christy’s marketing is almost completely word-of-mouth. She started her business because she loved it and “people in the neighborhood started coming.” She expanded beyond early her childhood program as her students grew older, because she wanted to “shepherd them from their first musical discoveries to studying an instrument through high school into adulthood.” Over 12-13 years, she established a foothold in the community. She does use social media, mainly Facebook.
Her advice to other musicians who want to try teaching is to check out local music schools in your city. You can independently offer private lessons. You don’t have to teach full time. Teaching is a great way to supplement your income.
“If you really love it, there’s no limit to how far you can take it. There’s certainly a need for teachers who love what they do. If you love what you do, you can make a major difference.”
I agree.
Watch the complete interview on the Amused Now YouTube Channel: http://youtu.be/7T-qhTDEGVk
Amused Now Featured Artist Series
Christy Zarlengo
http://jamaicaplainmusic.com/
Cynthia Kahn, Founder of Amused Now
@Amused_Now
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