Muhammad School of Music marks 10 years training young minorities in classical music
One man’s passion helps orchestrate BPO concert
Like many urban youth, Riba Muhammad stays abreast of the latest in R&B and hip-hop. Her iPod often thumps hot jams by Keyshia Cole and Lil Wayne.
But the East Side teenager’s all-time favorite song is Vivaldi, Concerto in A Minor, third movement.
Huh?
“I like the rhythm of it,” she explained. “It’s an up-tempo classical piece.”
Riba fell in love with classical music when she began violin lessons at the Muhammad School of Music. The 16-year-old is one of the dozens of young musicians produced over the past decade at the Buffalo school that trains African-American and Latino youngsters in an art form with very few minorities.
“The violin is a very diverse instrument,” she said. “I like the different styles of music, the composers and history behind them.”
Riba is part of the school’s ensemble, which will perform Friday in Kleinhans Music Hall in a groundbreaking concert featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
“It’s going to be really historic,” she said. “It’ll be something different, because you don’t usually see children our age playing with the BPO.”
The story of the Muhammad School of Music is one of a determined young African-American man on a mission to share his rare passion for classical music with a population largely unexposed to the genre.
“Introducing classical music to a community not familiar with it is my challenge, and it can be formidable,” said Henri L. Muhammad (no relation to Riba), the founder and executive director of the school. “But people do gravitate to the presentation of the music.”
It’s also a success story of inner-city kids embracing the music and gaining self-discipline that overflows into their studies in school.
“I’m a lot more focused in school,” said Riba, a junior at Hutchinson Central-Technical High School and one of the music school’s first students. “I have to be disciplined to be able to play the violin, and I’m able to apply it to school and other areas.”
Henri Muhammad began classes in Muhammad Mosque 23 with 10 students. Today he trains about 100 students through the school. And as a music teacher with the Buffalo Public Schools, he teaches an additional 75 students in two schools. Over the past 10 years, the ensemble, made up of musicians ages 4 to 21, has taken classical music to new places.
“Our concert hall has been the church, schools, community centers, correctional facilities and gospel concerts,” Muhammad said. “To make the music more accessible, we’ve taken classical music to the community, and that’s where we’ve made our concert hall.”
The ensemble’s biggest audience to date was the Million More March in Washington, D. C., where members shared a stage with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and singer Erykah Badu.
Reunited with violin
Muhammad, a 32-year-old Buffalo native, has been playing the violin for 25 years. He hails from a musical family. In fact, he, along with his father, brother and sister, was part of a fairly local popular band that was active in the ’80s and ’90s, performing at weddings, birthday parties and other events.
But by the time Muhammad was 16, distance grew between him and his violin. He had become distracted by girls and overall teenage living. The inspiration he needed to reunite with his violin came one night when he was flipping through channels.
“I saw another black man playing the violin, and it blew me away,” he recalled. “I didn’t know who he was, but I had to find out.”
That black man was the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan, who is an accomplished violinist. Muhammad wrote a letter to Farrakhan, establishing a close relationship that continues today. In fact, Farrakhan came into town for the school’s fifth anniversary concert.
Muhammad, who is a member of the Nation of Islam, finds the media descriptions of his musical mentor to be disturbing, he said.
“It saddens me that he’s painted in such a horrible way in the media,” Muhammad said. “I think his music reveals what’s really in his heart. He’s a beautiful man. If it were not for him, I don’t know what I would be doing today. Seeing him and meeting him inspired me to continue.”
Muhammad, a graduate of the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, continued at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where he earned a bachelor of arts in music. He later received his master’s from Medaille College.
Muhammad had entertained dreams of opening his own music studio, and he did so a week after he was married. He was just 22.
“It was my wife Isabel’s doing,” he said. “She has a business background.”
The young couple began holding classes at the mosque on Genesee Street. The lessons later moved to their house.
“But my wife got frustrated with 40 people coming to the house every Saturday,” he said. “It just became too much.”
The school was then moved to the Langston Hughes Institute before relocating to its current site in the Market Arcade on Washington Street.
“The 10 years have a been a lot of learning and growing,” Muhammad said. “We’ve had some fantastic experiences.”
Muhammad School of Music
Growing group
As the school grew, so did the size of the ensemble, since students automatically become members of the group. And performances throughout the year also got bigger.
Seven-year-old Johnny Linton had caught one of those performances at the Buffalo Museum of Science, and he was enthralled.
“I had never seen kids that young, yet alone African-American, playing the violin,” he said. “I really liked what I saw, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
Johnny, now 14 and a freshman at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, has grown as a musician to become of the ensemble’s best violinists. He’ll be featured in a duet during Friday’s concert. At one point, Johnny kept his love for classical music a secret from his hip-hop-loving friends.
“I thought they would prejudge me and treat me differently,” he said. “But they actually encouraged me, because it’s something different.”
Parents such as Tracy Thornton have enrolled their children in the school to give them an alternative.
“I wanted my daughter to be introduced to something else other than popular music,” said Thornton, a fan of classical music since her college days. “Playing the violin lets the kids know they can do other things besides rapping or putting a ball through the hoop.”
Thornton’s daughter, 8-year-old Mary Tess Wright, will be on the stage with the BPO. In the past, the ensemble has played before a BPO performance, most recently in March, but never with the orchestra.
“Our youngsters will have the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to play with this Grammy Award-winning orchestra,” Muhammad said.
Muhammad himself will conduct the orchestra.
“That’s major,” he said. “Just like you don’t see a lot of black people in classical music, you rarely see black conductors. It’s not that we are not out there, it’s just having that access to that opportunity. For me to do it that night, I think will make a profound statement.”
The concert will also feature performances in other art forms where minorities tend to be underrepresented. The Buffalo City Ballet Company will do an original choreographed piece, and Michael Toby, an operatic tenor soloist, will sing. Actress Beverley Todd will be the host of the event, which will include the music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and William Grant Still’s “The Afro-American Symphony,” which was the first symphony written by an African-American to be performed by a major orchestra.
The ensemble of 40 has been practicing multiple times a week since September. The members rehearse on their own every day for at least an hour. The young musicians are filled with excitement and some nervous energy about the concert and being on the same stage with the BPO.
“It’s our concert, and we are hosting the BPO, and not the other way around,” Johnny said. “At the high caliber the BPO plays, it’s just amazing at our age to have the chance to be up there with them.”
Concert Information
The Muhammad School of Music’s 10th anniversary concert, featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, will be at 8 p.m. Friday in Kleinhans Music Hall. Tickets are $35, $50 and $150. Group rates are also available. Tickets can be purchased at Kleinhans box office, online at www.muhammadschoolofmusic.net or at the music studio, Market Arcade Building (617 Washington St.).
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