hello everyone welcome to community conversations i'm your host roger colton last year we began a special series of community conversations our focus on student leaders series we brought in leaders from athletics from academics from community service and tonight we've got three special students from belmont high school who are leaders in music here in melb in belmont we're actually kind of proud of our our music program in these three students tonight are one of the reasons for it these music students however not only excel in their music but they excel in how they've taken their music outside of the classroom and outside of the high school we have with us tonight max serrano route we have james kitsch and we have jessica chen and these students are active in an organization called music for food so thank you guys for for coming over tonight thanks for having me but i'd like you to do is and we haven't talked about who's going to say what first but can somebody introduce us to the music for food organization yeah so i think music for food was an organization that we got connected through through our organization from the top that we also work with and we reached out to our director name is shame afros at the beginning of our senior year because we want to do something kind of memorable and a bigger project we want to take first year year and so she thought music or food concert would be a great way to kind of wrap up our forty eight for three years that we've done with this organization and so right it was actually started by a very famous you'll this name came cash cash in the war grant grammy award winning violist who really wanted to do the same thing we did which is take our music and kind of use it to better the community and fight for a cause and her cause was hunger and so music for food which  y which was originated in belmont and boston but is actually now branched out to other places across the current country has really expanded to more than just concerts and they do a lot of community outreach through bringing fellows in from local conservatories to talking to kids in other high schools to educate them about hunger in their towns and how you use music as a way to  fight hunger so one thing that i think it's important to talk about is all three of you are musicians first you play the violette you're not the violin those activities to belmont high yeah so essentially we kind of saw what the music for food was doing in like this wider scope and we kind of wanted to bring that to the much higher because we thought that oftentimes with music especially and in such a competitive environment like the one high it's so easy to get bogged down by just trying to be better and being a better player which is obviously something good but we also want to bring the other perspective that we don't usually get to see with music which is the outreach and bettering the community and i think essentially like we all kind of started music with that in mind music is something that makes everybody happier and we want to remind everybody of that and we wanted to show the power that music has organization like max said that kind of introduced us to this has this motto that music is powerful stuff and we kind of wanted to bring back that message yes does the large organization provide assistance to you or guidance  r do you does the belmont high group pretty much do what it wants to do and so yeah i think generally the structure of music for food is that they provide some support for people to help organize a concert but ultimately it's up to the people in the concert who organize the concert like jess max and i to make decisions about ok what kind of stuff we want to have as decorations for the concert what kind of things we want to say how do we want things to go what we want our overarching message to be and music for food is this organization that helps make all of these events happen and it's it's pretty amazing what they've been able to do in the greater boston area the music for food activities here and velma go to support local and there is a question mark at the end of this sentence go to support local hunger activities yeah so it goes to support the food pantry yes we have shows we chose all the proceeds from this concert to go to support beaumont food pantry that's another part of the decisions that people make when they're organizing a music food concert they get to decide ok what organization we want this to benefit so i think  when some of the events are held in boston they help the woman's lunch place but we decided we really wanted to impact on a special way so we chose the bone food pantry in can somebody explain to me how you work with the food pantry yes so one thing that we've been doing we did throughout last year and a little bit this year was going to the food pantry actually giving out food portions and servings to the people coming in and for that for that moment for me was really what struck me about this concert is when all the people coming in to the van from petra really shocked me because growing up in belmont where you're not exposed to i guess the less affluent side is that kind of coexist and mellow with the upper class i think that hunger is something that's to me now watching all these people coming through the food pantry something that's really prevalent and that really needs to be i think we address it with our concert and kind of got the message out there but i think that needs to maybe have more more notice in the community especially with the fact that the bell in three major you has been relocated i think about two or three times in the past few years they were previously behind the bell my high school but then  educate belmont in general that while we are in a relatively upper class society there are there is a big hunger problem that is not known to everyone hunger problem here in bella yes i think it was really special how when we started announcing that we were going to be doing this concert and that we wanted people to help out with the organizing and volunteer at the food pantry there were a couple people who talk to us or message to us saying i am so glad you're doing this my family has experienced hunger in the past and i want to let you know that it really means a lot to me and that was something that was really special because we didn't realize that we were affecting people that we knew and in such a close way and such a meaningful way and so that was that was not only people but real people that were tied into your life yeah people that you sorry say that again to for the development of rights leaders and what is what is there so essentially it's kind of this organization or run by from the top which is an n p r radio show it's like outreach branch and they connect students just like i said high school and college to the greater boston community for outreach so like me and james have gone to schools before with this organization and like to bring music with them and we've gone  like homeless shelters or elderly homes and played music for them as well so they've they kind of gear the musicians that are our age towards that reach perceive which is not really an opportunity that you get a lot so it was pretty cool hi how much of what you do is on your own or in how much do you get direction from folks like this drastic dorie or  well i guess as reflection would be involved with this from sean flanders with the with the vocal side of music we kind of are mostly organize this concert on our own and then when we this out of their hands because we know they already had a lot of stuff going on and so they helped us with a lot of publicizing we're talking to other orchestra talking to families and stuff like that but mostly it was student wrong which is really cool and is there an educational component to this so there was the the orchestra the the masquerade concert which we're going to talk about in a little bit but do you make presentations to folks do you do community outreach or is your outreach simply in the high school i guess in like the broader perspective of like outside of the high school we didn't really do much besides  just at the concert which we did publicize and we did you know kind of basic facts about hunger and made sure that people knew that hunger was a prevalent issue in belmont still but among the school music for food actually provided fellows who came in and gave a presentation to both the chamber orchestra and the concert and also the symphonic band as well and they kind of spoke more on there and about their experience with hunger and dealing with it through music and that was really to see as well because i know personally i've never kind of seen that type of system of those type of facts that we don't really get to see often as musicians i don't even know if this is an answerable question but  kind of gives us a little it adds as more stuff to our pallid that we can use that to attacking things like hunger and other types of issues i think being musicians gives us that view called the kind of go and take action is just a it's a way that we can use to say reach out to others and kind of it's like a form of communication that is really anyone can understand i guess see music as that interesting the once people become exposed to the three of you into the music for food program generally i there are things that you're hoping other then to open up their pocketbooks and help which i money is not insignificant right right if you want people to financially support the food pantry but are there other things that you would  here and i think most of it is just helping them see how hunger is not just an issue that affects distant people but it is an issue that affects that affects our community and affects the people around us and that it's something that that we can do something about and and so we really wanted to show that to our classmates and to our community members and i think that's one of the reasons why i thought the con such was such a big success because we got so many people there and we got so much positive feedback about wow this is such an amazing thing i'm so glad you did this it was it was really amazing to see that and i think we made a really big impact and i do want to get your answer there but i want to tell you that i don't want you guys to get big heads people are still talking about that kind of serious so when you say that you think you made an impact here we are also the right kind of like indirectly we also wanted to show to the high schoolers that it's like possible to take this initiative and like i think oftentimes it just seems so intimidating especially as i scored especially as young people it doesn't seem like something like this like oh like i really want to help out with the community but like i don't know how i think we kind of wanted to show like there is a way you can doing there's a way you can get involved and i think we wanted to show opened the eyes of our classmates as well well let's dig into that for a minute how do you do it i mean going to belmont high school is not an easy thing to do being about high school student particularly people with extra peculiar activities like music is not easy how do you layer on one more thing i think one thing that was really helpful was the student how the students led the initiative to kind of incorporate all of the other students and all the ensembles because with we made google pulls to kind of get all the kids says sign up for the dates to go help with the pantry we actually brought a fairly large group  through on belmont service day and so i think the if the fact that it was mainly student led was it made a lot easier to actually communicate with all the kids in the ensembles and really get it also get them excited because i think kids in general more excited when friends and i think peers are doing something rather than kind of just being tossed by say a conductor or mr acid or you misread and we've been talking about the mass great concert well let's talk about it for a little bit does somebody want to tear it up what was the mascot in the years past  all the little kids about want to come because they get to wear their costumes and watch kids watch us play spooky music that they can really enjoy so that's really how we saw it as was something amazing that exceeded my expectations for this concert i think another important part of the masquerade concert that max kind of alluded to is that it's a fun concert that already it's not tied down to just classical repertoire and it's already a concert where people think of their music as something besides just showing how good they are playing their child or a violin or below or saxophone it's  instruments that they can use to you know make little toddlers jump up and down or scared or whatever and it really attracts a diverse audience that and it has a really different atmosphere to it you know the students they don't the thing is that that as with any music a high school that's not only a in a vent that does good for the food pan but it's good music right you guys take pride i hope yeah so tell me how that came about who did you have to mavericks with the from the top organization to talk about the logistics of music for food and then i guess especially bringing it to the high school we first reached out to our orchestra director mrs revie and then also day to kind of talk more about the logistics behind it and bring it as like a feasible concert to the high school and they were very helpful with being about the logistics and i go the booking in which concert seemed the most feasible for  such an event and that's how we came to the masquerade concert and bringing that to life indeed you have a role and in being able to choose the music or was that  where was it just another night or was it a big you know it was definitely a different feeling a big deal when i got there you know in the week leading up to it i wasn't really sure how things were going to go down we're only going to have five people what where we get other we want to show up and would they be willing to donate money or food we had no you know how that was going to turn out and we were just hoping that our message was going to be powerful enough to people but they work as a teacher's assistant at that when child care so i had just bought the posters with me one day just hung them up and i think max and james went to their respective elementary school just well and hung them up so yeah we tried to get all audiences and actually misrea review made with the poster that we designed on it and then on the backs of them we wrote notes to our teachers and she did this for the orchestra and i believe the band got them as well and it was just like a personal way to reach out tara teachers and be like hey like it would mean a lot if you could come and support our concert it's going for a good cause as well like we would really mean if you could come and it was actually effective because you know i know a couple of my teachers showed up it was it was actually really cool to see them and they were they brought their kids they were super excited you know my econ teacher brought big bag of food a big it was it was a really cool scene in which of you or did all of you go to the food pantry i assume  scope they were really excited about it and the kids at our school also got really excited about it we made like facebook events to kind of encourage people to come as well advertise those as well and yes they like a lot of kids actually i was personally surprised i didn't expect day that's what it was so i have a serious and perhaps somewhat depressing question to ask you in the audience you're all three of you are seniors right what happens next year  you are you working to make sure that there is the next generation to continue the work that you've started yeah so while our program center band who can get involved with not only music food but the community outreach program we do as well but if not we definitely have we've talked to some kids i know jessica sachs as i can the orchestra who is really excited about the potential of really contender this is really making this something that it's known now known as the masquerade benefit concert because you can always raise my and food for the food pantry well in part of leadership is making to strive to continue it even when you three are off yet so we actually talked to the music for food creator can catch passion about this as well and essentially i think it's nice that we know that we have this foundation for and it like a template i guess for for the following years that we know that it was successful in our year and that we could keep it going and she is totally excited for the next future generation to kind of take our roles as well  and i think also with i guess in respect of us being able to show the high schoolers that we were able to do this they can also take that inspiration to to keep it going as well and they were really excited as well i know a couple of kids actually tried to plan like one of those like coffee houses to kind of do the same effect as well so i think the kids are really excited about it you know folks we're out of time it's been great