Kids Help Kids Through Public Concert Tuesday at Holy Innocents'

Youngsters learning to play together in an orchestra will perform Tuesday for underprivileged children eager for enrichment.

A children’s quintet from the Franklin Pond Chamber Music group will perform a free concert at 1:30 p.m. for students in Horizons Atlanta, in the Fine Arts building at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School. The concert is also open to the public.

The Franklin Pond program was the idea of The Sandy Springs Society, a women’s philanthropic organization that has donated more than $2.5-million to the Sandy Springs community since its inception in 1988—through grants to organizations targeting the arts, social services, education, historic preservation and conservation. 

“Both Franklin Pond and Horizons have long been grant recipients of the organization, so it seemed natural to see them working together to further some of the Society’s goals of enriching the lives of children at academic risk through the arts,” said Society spokesperson Julie Johnson.

This idea struck a chord with Kay Watson, director of Atlanta’s Horizons Student Enrichment Program, housed at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School. Watson believes the concert will offer “additional opportunities” to her low-income students who have spent the summer working hard on reading fluency, comprehension and spelling, as well as taking part in enrichment and community service activities. In fact the Franklin Pond performance should be particularly inspiring for these Horizons students, Watson said, since “it will allow them to see similarly aged children, achieving, presenting and being successful while exposing them to something cultural and artistic.”

And Ronda Restess, founder of the Franklin Pond Chamber Music group, agreed. Hard work and enjoying music are constants during the summer program at Franklin Pond, which works with gifted musicians ranging in age from 11–19. Children attend weekly instructional practice sessions for five weeks, and then hold community outreach performances during the sixth. Children receive formal musical instruction but are responsible for determining the details of their performances, including selecting performance pieces, providing commentary during performances, and answering audience questions afterward. Restess also noted that the community outreach concerts benefit her students as much as the audiences since participants learn a sense of community service and hone important skills such as discipline, public speaking and the ability to convey a passion for music through performance.   

Tuesday’s free, public performance features:  Vivian Cheng, violin; Steven Chiou and MK Guthrie, violin/viola; Ariana Mao, viola; and Harrison Stenson and Clarisa Colton, cello.  One of the cellists, Clarisa Colton, is a rising ninth-grader at Holy Innocents’, though Franklin Pond participants hail from all over Metro Atlanta.

For more about Horizons Atlanta, visit: http://www.horizonskidsatlanta.org

More about Franklin Pond Chamber Music can be found at: http://franklinpond.org/

Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School is located at: 805 Mt. Vernon Hwy. N.W., Atlanta, Ga., 30027. Learn more about the school at: www.hies.org