{"id":15051,"date":"2015-06-18T11:39:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T16:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=15051"},"modified":"2015-06-18T11:39:04","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T16:39:04","slug":"video-music-school-in-woodlawn-provides-positive-activities-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/video-music-school-in-woodlawn-provides-positive-activities-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: Music School in Woodlawn provides positive activities for kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Brown<\/p>\n

From the ground floor you walk up an open-aired, red-carpeted staircase situated between ornately trimmed walls. At the top you enter a ballroom, with a red and white band shell stage with Greek columns, a wooden dance floor, and a sixty-foot long, wooden bar with matching windows looking onto the street.<\/p>\n

It is here, in The Grand Ball Room on 6351 S. Cottage Grove Rd., where great musicians \u2013 such as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Earl Hines \u2013 used to perform. Directly below it, in the building formerly known as the Loeffler building, is a small studio that for almost two years has operated as the Coltrane Conservatory, a nonprofit music school.<\/p>\n

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Coltrane Conservatory offers all kinds of one-on-one music lessons for pretty much all instruments, except violin, said Executive Director Joe Pace III. He teaches piano, drums and brass instruments, and other volunteers teach the rest of the instruments.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/a>
Joe Pace III gives his student a piano lesson. (Daniel Brown\/Medill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The school also offers private tutoring and a free drumming program. Although the private music and tutoring sessions are not free, they do cost substantially less than most other schools and tutoring programs.<\/p>\n

One of the goals of Coltrane Conservatory is to \u201cgive young black kids an opportunity to have a\u2026musical outlet and to get them out of the dangers of the street by putting them into positive activity,\u201d said Pace III. He does have students from middle class families, but are many whom come from impoverished homes. These latter students are the most difficult to keep coming back, he said, because their parents are oftentimes more concerned with providing the bare necessities.<\/p>\n

Another goal of Coltrane Conservatory is to pick up the slack of the Chicago Public Schools. \u201cThe Chicago Public School system has just about taken music out of the system, and closed down so many schools in the South Side of Chicago,\u201d says Pace III.<\/p>\n

As for Pace III\u2019s teaching style, he says, it\u2019s very simple: repetition. \u201cThat\u2019s my philosophy on it. It works every time, especially when I have subjects who are willing to focus and listen,\u201d he said. Before his work began with Coltrane Conservatory, he was a math teacher and social worker.<\/p>\n

Despite their location in such a historically fitting building, Pace III said he hopes to eventually purchase a larger space. The school will celebrate their second anniversary on July 12th of this year.<\/p>\n