Arts

 

Carla Caceres will have the filet mignon. It’s just past 8 o’clock in the evening, and the waiters at this charity fundraiser in a sprawling loft in downtown Manhattan are taking orders for dinner. But Carla, a bubbly, confident 10-year-old from the South Bronx, isn’t here to spend $500 on a plate or get her picture in this week’s society section of the newspaper. She’s here to perform, the star student in a program run by Change For Kids, a non-profit that funds violin classes at Carla’s elementary school. 

 

Having laboriously made her way through most of the oversized piece of beef, she turned to Majid Khaliq, the Julliard-trained violin instructor who has taught the instrument for nearly seven years at P.S. 73, Carla’s school in the Bronx.

 

“What time is it?” Carla asked, her feet stuffed under her legs, clearly itching for the chance to perform.

 

“It’s time to play!” Khaliq responded, leading Carla past the clusters of elegant tables filled with corporate donors and young socialites.

 

In a makeshift rehearsal space behind the stage, student and teacher took out their violins and did a practice run-through of the song Carla had chosen for the evening, “Gavotte,” by the Belgian composer François Joseph Gossec. 

 

The duo approached the stage, the 29-year-old Khaliq in a bright blue tie and flowing dark suit, and Carla in a pink skirt and sparkly black shirt trimmed with fake fur. The room quieted. Khaliq nodded, brought his bow above his shoulder, and the two began to play.

 

Her parents, Carlos and Wendy Caceres, were transfixed. “She’s looking good,” Carlos Caceres said, unable to take his eyes away from the stage. He spoke in excited bursts of Spanish with his wife, Wendy. “She is better performing in front of a lot of people than with us,” he said, unable to hide his widening smile.

 

The fluid, willowy notes of Carla’s violin floated merrily through the room. It is a scene that neither Carla nor her parents could have imagined five years ago. “The violin is something for rich people, it’s not for this family,” Caceres said, explaining he knew little of the instrument before his daughter picked it up in first grade.

 

But the violin has actually played an increasingly large part in the lives of the Caceres family. Carla’s 6-year-old sister, Wandys, has recently begun taking lessons at school with Khaliq, and now has a violin of her own.

 

“I want to play like her,” Wandys said, tugging at her sister’s ruffled skirt after her performance at the Change For Kids fundraising gala.

 

What happens next year, however, when Carla finishes at P.S. 73 and starts at a middle school without a violin program, remains uncertain.

 

“We would love it if Carla has the opportunity to keep playing, but we are a poor family,” said her father, who first arrived in the U.S. from Honduras 20 years ago, and now works in a industrial printshop in New Jersey.

 

Khaliq plans to help Carla prepare for auditions in the spring that would place her in an after-school and weekends program at a musical academy like Julliard. “She can take it wherever she likes,” he said of her future as a student of the instrument.

 

Back at P.S. 73, the violin has become cool.

 

“There goes the superstar,” Carla said other children call out in the hallway when she walks past, violin case in hand. The program has far more applicants than it can handle for 20 slots each year.

 

Kathleen Christie, program director at Change for Kids said, “The idea is to expose kids to something they wouldn’t ordinarily have put in front of them.” The organization was created in 1996 to provide inner-city schools with the basic school supplies they lacked. It soon branched out, beginning to beginning to provide equipment to local filmmakers, who donated their time to make documentaries on the lives of public-school children in New York City.

 

One such film focused on Public School 73, “heavily Hispanic, the epitome of the South Bronx,” Christie noted. On camera, the filmmakers made a curious discovery.

 

“The closet door swung open, and behind the cobwebs were 25 unused violins,” she said, describing the relics from a long-forgotten music program at the school.

 

Change for Kids then approached Julliard and soon found Khaliq, who at the time was still a student himself but eager for an inspiring teaching challenge. “When you have very little, when an opportunity presents itself, it’s golden,” he said.

 

Seven years later, more than 20 kids at P.S. 73 receive violin instruction from Khaliq at least once a week. The program runs on $45,000 a year, a relative bargain by New York standards for supplementary education in at-risk schools. 

 

Back at the fundraiser, it was getting close to 10 p.m. – “way past my bedtime,” Carla said with a yawn. A car was waiting downstairs to take the Caceres family from Tribeca back to the South Bronx.

 

But not before some final business was handled. Someone wanted Carla to sign the program for the evening. “So soon for autographs!” Carla squeaked. She grabbed a green marker laying on the table, making broad, deliberate strokes on the page.

 

“Carla Caceres: I hope you see me again!”

Joshua Yaffa can be contacted at jmy2110@columbia.edu