“It was truly fulfilling for me to see her really excited about finally achieving her goal after she had worked so hard,” senior Emma Levinbook, founder of the Kingswood Oxford Music Outreach Program (KOMO), said when asked about her experience teaching a young girl how to play the violin over Zoom.
KOMO was founded in 2019 during Emma’s sophomore year. “[KOMO] is essentially a program that provides instrumental mentorship to elementary school students from a local elementary school,” Emma explained.
When she started the club, Emma explained that KOMO primarily worked with students from Charter Oak, a public elementary school in West Hartford. However, because of COVID-19 restrictions differing from school to school, KOMO has mostly reached out to students from Smith Elementary school for the past two years. Smith is another public elementary school in West Hartford.
“These children don’t really have the wherewithal or the opportunity to get private music lessons like I have,” Emma said. “I just wanted to provide them with an opportunity to get that same outside-of-school mentorship, musical training, and instrumental experience that they wouldn’t otherwise get to have in school.”
Emma is a very experienced violinist. She started taking lessons at the age of four, and since then she has been a part of multiple orchestras at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, is a member of the West Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and earned a spot in the first violin section in the KO orchestra.
“Sometimes I do take the amazing musical opportunities I have been given throughout my violin career, such as being involved in private lessons and in a variety of orchestras, for granted,” Emma said. “Through KOMO, though, I have really started to realize how lucky I am to be able to have these great opportunities.”
In addition to Emma, other students that are part of KOMO include senior violinist Samhita Kashyap, junior cellist Bella Theodorou, and sophomore violinists Ally La Croix and Pauline Golder. Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, the KO students involved in KOMO continued to mentor elementary school students by doing so over Zoom.
When recalling her experience teaching a young girl how to play the violin over the summer, Emma explained the challenges of teaching over Zoom. “She was having a lot of trouble with one of her pieces,” Emma said, “and I honestly felt really bad because there was only so much I could do over Zoom to try to help her.” Having started the violin at a young age, Emma could empathize with the girl’s frustrations when she was learning a new piece. However, after working at it for multiple weeks, Emma was finally able to help the girl master the challenging piece.
One of Emma’s goals when founding KOMO was to help pass on her expertise as an experienced violinist to younger kids who may not have the same opportunities she was given growing up. Through her efforts, as well as those of KOMO’s other Upper School mentors, Emma has been able to achieve just that. Hopefully the club will continue after Emma graduates this year and that more kids will be given access to the incredibly talented group of student musicians at KO.
