Eddy Kwon, director of Price Hill’s MYCincinnati youth orchestra, doesn’t like music festivals, so he decided to start his own and do it right.
The inaugural Price Hill Creative Community Festival takes place Friday and Saturday evenings, featuring his youth orchestra, five MYCincinnati artists-in-residence, local musicians, community storytelling, food and more. Kwon sees this as the beginning of an answer for large and complex social questions that he keeps encountering.
“There’s a huge lack of diversity in the kinds of performers that most festivals book, and because of that there’s a big lack of diversity in the audience that goes to see those performers,” Kwon says. “At best, (I) feel a little uncomfortable, and at worst, really hate being there. I think it’s a similar experience with a lot of folks of color or other marginalized identities.”
The Price Hill Creative Community Festival aims to change that. Kwon hopes this endeavor will be a viable model for how to truly build a diverse and inclusive community through the arts.
“One way of doing that is to create cultural spaces where values of inclusion, diversity, experimentation and creativity are at the forefront,” he says. “Our festival is youth-centric because it values the perspectives, talents and brilliance of young people.”
The festival is free of charge and starts at 5 p.m. both evenings, lasting until around 11 p.m. Performances will take place at four East Price Hill sites: MYCincinnati’s Warsaw Avenue Firehouse, LISH gallery, Price Hill Recreation Center and the Warsaw Room.
Kwon, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, has been director of MYCincinnati’s orchestra since its inception in 2011, when it was founded by Laura Jekel. The orchestral program is based on the Venezuelan El Sistema model, centering on the belief that personal transformation of young people can be achieved by striving toward musical excellence.
MYCincinnati is also home to the Ambassador Ensemble, a “radical” youth string sextet, says Kwon, committed to social justice, collective action through avant-garde performance and experimental collaborations.
Family is an integral part of the MYCincinnati community. One sterling example is the Gonzalez family. Margarita, the matriarch, is a recent immigrant from Mexico and joined the orchestra this year, where she attends rehearsal alongside her children. She often works third shift, rehearsing on just a few hours of sleep. She will be performing with a group of MYCincinnati moms who perform as the “Momsemble,” Kwon says.
Margarita’s daughter Danna was one of the original 11 students at MYCincinnati and is now an accomplished violist. She performs in the organization’s top orchestra and teaches other students. Younger sister Aylin is a MYCincinnati member, too, and youngest sister Kimberly is the “fairy sprite of MYCincinnati, peeking into rehearsal rooms to blow a kiss or flash a smile,” Kwon says. “She is the little sister of nearly everyone in the program.”
The festival’s main showcase will be a series of collaborative performances featuring MYCincinnati students with the organization’s five artists-in-residence: performer and writer Napoleon Maddox, Desirae Hosley (“The Silent Poet”), Israeli composer Ofir Klemperer, musician and artist Isaac Karns and the band Lazy Heart.
Being an artist-in-residence at MYCincinnati has been important to Hosley, who is also an artist-in-residence at WordPlay Cincy and the workshop leader of WordPlay’s Cincy Scribes youth writing group. “I believe we pay attention when (young people) showcase their talents through art,” she says.
Groups of MYCincinnati students have been in rehearsal with each artist for the separate projects, which will be performed at the festival. Maddox created a series of songs based on the story of his relatives, conjoined twins Millie-Christine (also the subject of his upcoming 2017 Contemporary Arts Center project), and had students respond with creative-writing projects culminating in a live performance featuring string arrangements from Kwon.
Students will also perform with Lazy Heart, exposing many of them to playing amplified and electrified instruments for the first time. Klemperer’s project interweaves student-musician groupings through a series of three songs. Karns and his wife, Emily, created a 20-minute stop-animation movie, featuring a soundtrack composed by Kwon that will be played live by MYCincinnati musicians during a screening.
Hosley will lead Cincy Scribes youth writing group in a response project to the Academy Award-winning song “Glory” by Common and John Legend (from the movie Selma). MYCincinnati students will perform an original piece also composed in response to the song by teacher Josh Fink.
“I wanted a song that could replicate our social views,” Hosley says. “ ‘Glory’ kind of fit with this idea. Especially with all the fcurrent events that have happened, it was awesome to see the response. We are in the evolution (exemplified by) ‘Glory,’ still grasping this idea of us all becoming one.”
She says the poem her students created in response is profound and emphasizes her pride in them for speaking their truth.
Providing the space for students and the larger community as a whole to explore their own truths and creativity is central to MYCincinnati’s mission and that of the Price Hill Creative Community Festival overall.
A storytelling segment at the festival will feature local residents, and many other Cincinnati musicians and creatives will take part.
Organizers hope the festival will encourage more people to learn about MYCincinnati. Operating as a program of Price Hill Will, a nonprofit community development and revitalization organization, it currently serves more than 90 students in Price Hill with free intensive music education, lessons, tutoring and performance opportunities.
“If we value the arts as a tool for community building and especially as a tool for inclusive community building, collaboration is the key,” Kwon says. “This festival is an attempt to do that.”
PRICE HILL CREATIVE COMMUNITY FESTIVAL takes place Friday and Saturday. More info: creativecommunityfestival.org.
This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 3, 2016.
