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An Excerpt

...In the Italian and Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park, I frequently heard the accordion played as a folk instrument at concerts. I fell in love with the instrument and began to play the Jewish music my grandparents loved. Later, as a teenager, I attended a concert by Carmen Carrozza, one of the greatest classical accordion players of the time, and was smitten again.1 I had always admired the accordion's flexibility, but the world of classical accordion—new to me then and probably unfamiliar to many readers—exploded any remaining myths about the instrument's limitations. I studied with Mr. Carrozza for the next five years, eventually performing as a soloist and in chamber groups. I entered classical accordion competitions and won the New York State Accordion Championship. My musical education continued at Hunter College in New York City, where I earned a bachelor's degree in music. In this rigorous music program, modeled on the curriculum of the American Conservatory at Fontainbleau, France, I studied with composer Louise Talma, a protégée of Nadia Boulanger.

After college, I took graduate courses in psychology at Yeshiva University and taught in Public School 42, located at Hester and Orchard streets on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a neighborhood populated mostly by immigrants from China, Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. This community held a special appeal for me: My parents had grown up there as the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, and my family traveled there regularly by subway to visit the Jewish shops. Stories I heard at home about the neighborhood left a lasting impression on me. I knew about the Williamsburg Settlement House and the cultural activities that had sustained many poor Jewish children; my father, Solomon Brooks, z"l (whose own father's name was changed from Brushansky on Ellis Island), spoke of the shame he had felt in kindergarten because he knew no English. Here, now, was an opportunity to work with a group of immigrants for whom English was a second language, as it was for my parents. I wanted to create a bridge from school life to the richness of the children's native cultures and languages. What better way to do this, I thought—and teach English, too—than through music?

1 Although in the United States the accordion is mainly considered a folk instrument, the concert accordion (also called the classical or free bass accordion) is an equal partner in the circle of established chamber instruments at music schools and conservatories. Many American and European classical composers (including Lukas Foss, Charles Ives, and Virgil Thomson, among others) have written original music for this instrument. In contrast to the standard accordion, which has fixed chords on the left-hand keyboard, the concert accordion's left-hand keyboard consists of single notes arranged chromatically in three rows, with a range of approximately five octaves.