Pianist and undergraduate student Taylor Wang has been playing music in community spaces since she was a child in Ohio, when her mother, a piano teacher, took her to bookstores, hospitals, and senior centers to perform. Wang enjoyed interacting with the audiences. As she got older, she wanted more of that connection. “Music has been a place of healing for me,” Wang says. “I started thinking about how I could share that healing power and emotional intensity with other people.”
Wang has found opportunities to do just that through the Peabody Institute’s community-focused programs. She spent two years playing weekly concerts in a lobby of the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a member of the Music for a While program, and she is currently a musician-in-residence at Edenwald, a senior living community in Towson, Maryland, where she offers musical programs for the independent and assisted living communities.
Drawing on this experience, Wang also built her own program, Peabody at the Shelter, to offer regular concerts featuring student musicians to the unhoused community at Helping Up Mission, a men’s shelter and recovery center in Baltimore. The program got started with a Launch Grant from Peabody, which Wang applied for after developing the concept as a junior in the Pitching Your Creative Idea course. Wang is using her $5,000 grant to cover stipends and transportation for the program’s musicians for the first year, as well as to support two training sessions that focus on performing in community spaces, particularly for the shelter’s population.
Pianist and undergraduate student Taylor Wang has been playing music in community spaces since she was a child in Ohio, when her mother, a piano teacher, took her to bookstores, hospitals, and senior centers to perform. Wang enjoyed interacting with the audiences. As she got older, she wanted more of that connection. “Music has been a place of healing for me,” Wang says. “I started thinking about how I could share that healing power and emotional intensity with other people.”
Wang has found opportunities to do just that through the Peabody Institute’s community-focused programs. She spent two years playing weekly concerts in a lobby of the Johns Hopkins Hospital as a member of the Music for a While program, and she is currently a musician-in-residence at Edenwald, a senior living community in Towson, Maryland, where she offers musical programs for the independent and assisted living communities.
Drawing on this experience, Wang also built her own program, Peabody at the Shelter, to offer regular concerts featuring student musicians to the unhoused community at Helping Up Mission, a men’s shelter and recovery center in Baltimore. The program got started with a Launch Grant from Peabody, which Wang applied for after developing the concept as a junior in the Pitching Your Creative Idea course. Wang is using her $5,000 grant to cover stipends and transportation for the program’s musicians for the first year, as well as to support two training sessions that focus on performing in community spaces, particularly for the shelter’s population.
“Taylor found all of the community-based learning opportunities available at Peabody, and she activated all of them,” says Khandeya Sheppard, Wang’s mentor and Peabody’s manager of community partnerships. “Her push to do that led her to have a good concept when she was drafting her proposal for Peabody at the Shelter.”
Wang’s program is inspired by Shelter Music Boston, an organization that holds monthly chamber music concerts in shelters and substance misuse recovery centers. Wang learned about SMB when Julie Leven, the program’s founder, came to her high school, Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, Massachusetts. “Julie spoke about how music through her program changed people’s lives and made them hopeful again,” Wang says. “That really drew me in.”
For Peabody at the Shelter, Wang selected 10 student musicians after a competitive application process. They are split into two groups that alternate performances. The first includes a tubist, a classical guitar duo, and a musician who plays the erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument, while the second consists of a clarinetist, a soprano, and a jazz quartet. Training sessions, including one led by Leven, were held last October, and performances began in November. Five concerts covering a variety of musical genres, such as Chinese traditional music, classical music, and funk, are scheduled for 2023–24. About 50 to 80 people have attended each concert.
The program’s musicians keep special considerations in mind when performing in community spaces, which is different than playing in traditional concert venues. They read the body language of their audience and adjust their repertoire in response. They also interact with the audience by asking questions, such as ‘How does the music make you feel?’ After listening to “Gardening,” a piece about the growth of a plant composed by Seo Yoon Soyoona Kim (MM ’20, Composition), an audience member related the music to his recovery journey.
“He said it felt like listening to that piece really connected him to his own growth and progress,” Wang says. “I was so glad that he felt comfortable enough to share that with us.”
To continue Peabody at the Shelter next year, Wang received a $4,000 Baltimore Health Equity Impact Grant from the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute—the first time a philanthropy-supported Launch Grant project went on to earn funding that typically goes to projects by students from the schools of medicine, nursing, and public health. A portion of the grant will be awarded to the Helping Up Mission as the program’s community partner.
Wang has big goals for the program, including increasing the number of performers and concerts, developing deeper engagement with Helping Up Mission’s Choir and Band (a group of 15 vocalists and four instrumentalists who use music in their recovery process), and expanding to Helping Up Mission’s women’s shelter.
“The priority is interacting more with our audience and building community through music,” Wang says. “It’s the medium for our connection.”