The year is 2000, and a study by the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) warns of a shortage of stringed instrument teachers nationwide. In Massachusetts the situation is exacerbated by Proposition 2½, which capped property taxes and decreased school revenues. Many districts in the state reacted by cutting programs in the arts, causing prospective teachers to avoid careers in music education.
Enter University of Massachusetts Lowell music professor Kay George Roberts. As an accomplished violinist as well as the first woman and second African-American to earn a doctorate in orchestral conducting from Yale University, Roberts considered the ASTA study a professional call to arms. The result was her decade-long crusade to bring high-quality, low-cost music education to the children of Lowell, one of the most diverse cities in Massachusetts.
After learning that ASTA was offering grants to create string programs, Roberts jumped into the highly competitive process. “We are the only center in Massachusetts of the National String Project Consortium,” she says. William T. Hogan, then chancellor of UML, immediately matched the grant with $10,000 per year. Funding also has come from the Parker Foundation, ARTWorks for Kids and individuals and businesses in the Lowell community.
“I founded the UML String Project because I experienced first-hand how important early exposure to music is for a child,” Roberts says. “Without it, I would never have pursued a musical career.”
Roberts, who grew up in segregated Nashville, Tenn., vividly remembers how she began her violin studies. As she tells it, her elementary school music teacher, Robert L. Holmes Jr., approached the superintendent with a plan to teach public school students to play stringed instruments but was told that Blacks were incapable of learning such a complicated skill. Unfazed, Holmes defied his boss’s expectations by founding the Cremona Strings, an all-Black classical ensemble in which Roberts participated. It was a formative experience, and years later she set out to re-create it for a new generation of students.
