Nina Stern

Nina Stern is passionate about musical education and outreach to the community. She is the Artistic Director of “S’Cool Sounds” – a program founded in New York City in 2001 with the mission of bringing the joy of making music to children who would not otherwise have the opportunity to learn to play an instrument. In extended residencies, teaching artists – using recorders and percussion - help children to develop the hands-on skills of playing, improvising, and reading music. For this work, Nina Stern was awarded an Endicott Fellowship in 2003 and was honored in 2005 with the “Early Music Brings History Alive” Award, bestowed by Early Music America.  Nina has consulted for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute and for Midori and Friends, helping them to develop their recorder curriculum. She is the author of two books “Recorders Without Borders” intended for use in the school classroom and has taught workshops for school children and professional development workshops for classroom and music teachers throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Africa.

S'Cool Sounds

S'Cool Sounds is an innovative, cross-cultural music program which provides students with life long advantages for learning, growing, and living by teaching them to play a musical instrument in an ensemble setting. Under the leadership of Nina Stern, Artistic Director and founder, students in the S'Cool Sounds program learn recorder and percussion from master performer-teachers in the fields of historical and world music.

In S’Cool Sounds classes all students are engaged participants at all times, creating and performing music and building a musical ensemble together. Central to the S'Cool Sounds message is an emphasis on community and global awareness.  Groups learn a variety of music from Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Europe and explore common themes and principles connecting music from widely diverse traditions and time periods.

S'Cool Sounds has established programs in Kenya and Burundi which seek to provide an introduction to Western music traditions and literacy to children and their teachers in some of the poorest communities of East Africa. Children are taught instrumental music playing (based on Nina's “Recorders Without Borders” method) and fundamentals of Western music through the Montessori method. The program provides instruments (recorders and percussion instruments) as well as music books and related supplies. In turn, the young musicians of Burundi and Kenya have shared their own extraordinarily rich musical tradition with U.S. and European partners who seek to make these musical treasures available to school children at home.  For more information about S'Cool Sounds, please visit scoolsounds.org.

Kenya

First established in June of 2011, the S'Cool Sounds project in Kenya establishes music programs in schools in the Kibera slum of Nairobi. The program is currently in residence in three schools in Kibera: FAFU (Facing the Future School), The Shining Hope School, and Slumcare. S'Cool Sounds Artistic Director, Nina Stern travels to Kibera to work with the school children and to train local school staff members to teach music to students within their own school. S'Cool Sounds partners with Cross Cultural Thresholds (Carter Via, Executive Director) and the program is centered at FAFU, under the leadership of its Principal and Founder, Simeon Ajigo.

Burundi

In February of 2013 Nina Stern first traveled - with an international team of musicians and educators, organized by Wendy Steiner - to Kigutu, Burundi. Partnering with an extraordinary organization, Village Health Works (Deogratias Niyizonkiza, Founder and CEO), they established a program in Western music for the community children and their teachers. An exceptional youth program for Burundian traditional music was already thriving at VHW; the new project supplements that program with an introduction to Western music and literacy while lending support to VHW's ambitious musical initiatives.