Our Practice for Fundraising Projects has raised over $20,000 to date!

Penny Lazarus Piano Studio is widely recognized as a unique, community project-based studio that uses music to forge a more inclusive and equitable world.  Each year an aspect of community in music is researched, new music for school aged students is procured, arranged and presented to students and parents in the studio, to be learned for an annual June showcase recital of thematic material that directly connects students with relevant concerns outside the studio.   Along with the study of new music or music connected to a programmatic theme, my students participate in an annual fundraising sponsored practicing activity that raises donations for our community partner.  We have worked globally with the Rapa Nui School of Music on Easter Island while studying music about the ocean and trash.  While working with the Lincoln Center of the Arts in Tirana, Albania, my students studyied Eastern European music and commissioned Albanian composer Alban Dhamo to compose an Album for the Young with Albanian folk songs, similar to Bartok’s Music for Children. We collected contemporary American Indigenous music directly from the composers, while raising money for the First Americans Museum’s young composer’s camp in Oklahoma City.  We incorporated music by composers of color while working with Boston’s Hamilton-Garrett Center for the celebration of Black Music.  Last year my students collected music about rivers while raising money for the preservation of local waterways with the Hispanic advocacy group Groundwork Lawrence.  Aligning my studio’s music study every year with a new humanitarian initiative, gives my student’s agency; an extraordinary feeling that by practicing the piano they too can help make a difference in the world around them. Studies have shown that our current Gen-Z and Covid-Alpha generation students are not only digital natives and technologically savvy, but they are also increasingly concerned about the world around them, a world made smaller by the ease and far-reaching capability of internet communications.  For proof of impact, my studio has raised over $20,000 during a 12-year period with a 90% studio retention rate.