The Music in Me
The Music House teaches children to love music by listening to the beat of their own drummer.

By Nicholas Luckenbaugh

A few steps inside Meryl Danziger’s Upper East Side apartment, a child-size piano and a mounted keyboard guard the doorway to a royal court of music. After gaining admission to the court, an autoharp offers a welcoming greeting as a ukulele and a banjolele lay in waiting on a nearby sofa. The xylophone and glockenspiel lord over the rabble of percussion instruments from the far table, entertained by the troubadour guitar by the window. Dangling from the archway of a tiny kitchenette, a collection of pots eagerly prepare to double as drums.

Within this magical realm, Danziger is the queen supreme—or perhaps the fairy godmother—as the founder and director of Music House, an innovative children’s program that uncovers a child’s musicality through self-discovery and imaginative exploration.

As a child wanders from instrument to instrument, he is free to explore and use his imagination. Throughout the lesson, Danziger operates less like a teacher and more as a guide. “I feel a little like a genie,” said Danziger. “If you want me, I’m here. If you don’t want me, I’ll go away.”

For instance, a child may wander to the piano. From here, he may begin to make up a song or ask to learn a tune by ear. If he sits and waits, Danziger will suggest an idea to guide the lesson. Yet she never forces a child to stay with one instrument. “If a child all of a sudden gets up and goes to the autoharp, I think, ‘Let’s see where he’s going with this,’” said Danziger. In this way, it is the child who is in charge of the lesson.

Danziger has particular dissatisfaction with the typical music lesson, and believes that signing a child up for a particular music lesson at an early age promotes making an arbitrary choice. “It’s a little bit like taking a Martian who’s never tasted food and giving him olives and saying, ‘This is food.’” In this way, a child has no ownership of his musical ability, only practicing a skill rather than experiencing a full immersion into the joys of music. “Lessons work more as a filter than as an enrichment,” said Danziger.

Danziger’s personal music history consists of her “first career” as a professional violinist with chamber groups and orchestras in Israel and the United States (mostly the Haifa Symphony and the New Haven Symphony). She moved full-time to New York City in 1999 and taught at The Little Red School House until 2005. She now divides her time between Music House and teaching at P.S. 77 (also known as Lower Lab), where she works part-time.

As a piano teacher in 2000, Danziger observed the inadequacy of practice-based lessons. “You could graph the story,” said Danziger. Children would begin music lessons with enthusiasm, but soon practicing became a chore. In the end, parents would force their children to continue or quit.

That year, a father turned his son, Charlie, a piano lesson dropout, over to Danziger. With Charlie, Danziger twisted the typical music lesson, providing him with a variety of music experiences from which he could choose. From this, Danziger created Music House. Unlike his previous piano lessons, there was no homework or assignments. But through his musical experiences with Danziger, Charlie began to embrace music, talking about it daily. Within a year, his parents informed Danziger that Music House had become the high point of his life.

With each of her students, Danziger tries to recreate the musical environment that she experienced as a child. “For some reason, my parents let me do whatever I wanted,” said Danziger. “I used to sit at the piano and stare at the keys for hours.” But through this free experience of music, Danziger learned to play by ear, ultimately leading her to piano and violin and, more recently, guitar through her own informed choices. “You have such ownership of music that you can’t quit,” said Danziger.

Each child who comes to Music House has gained from the musical experiences that Danziger offers. Some students use the exposure to various instruments to make an informed choice about what instrument to study in a more formal setting. But Danziger never feels that she has to justify her program with the number of students that move on to individual study. “It’s what’s happening right now that’s the meaning,” said Danziger. Some students come to her while studying other instruments, using Music House as the “mortar between the bricks” that ties their learning together. Still others, while they may not move on to study a specific instrument, benefit by gaining an experience that greatly expands their musicality and appreciation for various aspects of music.

Danziger’s greatest goal through Music House is to begin to foster a musical society, where people are not labeled as musicians and nonmusicians. “Music isn’t something you can quit,” said Danziger. “Everyone’s musical.”

For more information on Music House or Meryl Danziger, please go to nycmusichouse.org or email Danziger at MusicHouse@NYCMusicHouse.org.

[ Return to article listing ]