When young students arrive for their music class at the Mindful Music Academy in Los Angeles, they begin with a breathing exercise that encourages them to be aware of their breath going in and out. Then there might be an improvisation exercise, where one student plays a drone, repeating the same note or chord, while another listens and then adds a melody to accompany it. Teenage students might be guided through a visualization, where they focus on creating sounds in their minds instead of playing the notes on a page. Each of these mindfulness practices has a purpose: to help young musicians get into “the zone,” a place where playing music becomes easier, says trumpeter Jim Sherry (DMA ‘02, Trumpet), the academy’s co-founder.
“The goal is to find that flow where music comes naturally and you’re not working too hard to make something happen,” adds Sherry, who mainly teaches wind instruments to his students. “As a musician, you’ve got to be really focused and centered for peak performance and peak practicing. Getting into ‘the zone’ is essential. If you’re not there, you’re wasting your time.”
Sherry realized the connection between music and mindfulness — defined as the quality or state of being conscious or aware and focusing one’s awareness on the present moment — after meeting Buddhist practitioner and writer Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat in Vermont. After presenting about this connection at places like the College Music Society and Music Educators Association conferences in Wisconsin and Iowa, Sherry and his wife, pianist Bang Lang Do — who has taught at Peabody Preparatory and whose family is close friends with Thich Nhat Hanh — founded the Mindful Music Academy in 2015. Through the academy’s classes, Sherry teaches students at the Young Musicians Foundation, the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, and public and Montessori schools around Los Angeles.
Sherry is also one of three fellows who are part of Young Musicians Foundation’s inaugural fellowship program, which aims to develop musicians as leaders in community engagement and civic artistry. Working at a handful of YMF’s 30 sites, Sherry — who credits Peabody with giving him some of his first experiences working with kids in the community at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore School for the Arts, and the Baltimore City Public Schools — will help students put together community-based, culturally responsive projects that focus on music and mindfulness. These projects will be presented at a three-day festival in East Los Angeles and Compton, California, in May.
As of December, Sherry, who has also taught music at the Chicago public schools and at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, is working with 9- and 10-year-old students, encouraging them to make their own music using wind and string instruments, percussion, voice, and computer-generated sound.
“For so many years, I ordered the music from the store and put it on stands, and we played it, and that’s really cool because music is exquisite,” says Sherry, who is close to finishing a PhD program in music education at the University of Iowa. “But creating a piece of music that you made up over several weeks of work- ing together is important for every- one to feel that ownership and pride. I want them to feel like, ‘This is ours and we created something unique.’”
Although Sherry performs professionally, playing in orchestras and small bands in Los Angeles and traveling around the country with his wife to perform together at various venues, his goal isn’t to help his students become professional musicians. Instead, he says, “I really like teaching younger kids to find their joy in music.”