Music Messenger

Jennifer Koh’s outreach project, Music Messenger, takes her into schools to give concert-demonstrations and interact with middle- and high-school kids in America, Japan, and Germany, especially in schools without much classroom music time. According to the program’s manifesto, “Music Messenger was created in the belief that music is a universal language that has the ability to transcend the boundaries of culture, language, age, race, and socio-economic background. Music Messenger also holds the conviction that music has the ability to embrace these human differences as well as express the humanity that connects all of us. Music Messenger offers its programs as a means of using music as a language through which to speak and express one’s self.”

“With these kids, I dissect the music,” Koh explains. “In a fugato from Bach, I separate one line from the others. I get them to listen to the colorations that are possible with the violin, pizzicato versus a bowed stroke, double stops versus a single note, and how different dynamics change the meaning of a phrase. We start to uncover these different layers of meaning in music.

“I’ve always believed that music is multilayered. The first time you listen to a piece, you absorb only one level of it. It’s like seeing a photograph in black and white. Perhaps the second time you listen to it you start to see color, and the third or fourth time you begin to see dimensions, and finally it becomes a three-dimensional, colorful sculpture.

“With Music Messenger, I can show the kids how many layers there are, and then maybe on their own they can start seeing those beautiful sculptures in music.”

Learn more about Music Messenger at www.jenniferkoh.com.