LinkUP! students

With talent—and yes, practice—almost anyone can grow up to perform on Carnegie Hall’s stage. Sometimes you don’t even have to grow up. You just have to be one of the lucky 18,000 students participating in LinkUP!, a program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. Now in its 22nd year, LinkUP! teaches basic musical concepts and skills, and fosters musical literacy while introducing students to live classical music performances.

From May 19 to 23, mornings at Carnegie Hall are given over to elementary school students hailing from various parts of the tri-state area—ranging from Staten Island to Albany. The takeover of Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage (which involves the participation of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by Maestro John Morris Russell) is a spectacular end to the students’ efforts in the classroom. For several months, they delved into the finer points of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, guided by their teachers and curriculum books, and worked on the proper fingering of E and F-sharp on the soprano recorder.

“They work all year on the repertoire, and they are very excited when the day of the concert arrives,” says music teacher Kirstin Anderson. “It’s one experience to play a piece with your classmates at school and quite another to play with a professional orchestra in a historical music hall.”

All the students play the recorder or sing from their seats. From this pool, some of the students—who audition for the honor—do the same from behind the orchestra. Then there are the soloists.

Last year one little girl, Toshea, earned the chance to be on stage right beside the conductor. Toshea is now a 13-year-old aspiring actress-pediatrician. Though an old hand at Carnegie Hall—having performed with her peers from St. Aloysius School in Harlem the previous three seasons—those experiences did nothing to prepare her for the first time she walked on stage as a soloist. Though “scared to death,” Toshea says, she rose to the challenge, recorder in hand.

“I was so happy that I got picked to do it because it was one of the biggest experiences of my life,” she says. “I’m so happy to say that I performed at Carnegie Hall.”

Those who saw Toshea onstage won’t be shocked to see her or some other recorder virtuoso once more take the spotlight. But to do that they’ll have to keep practicing, practicing, practicing—after all, LinkUP! is only the beginning.