Crownpoint program gets COVID relief grant
In 2016, while she was still an undergrad at Julliard, Ariel Horowitz got a strange phone call from her mother, a curriculum consultant for Navajo Technical University.
Courtesy photo | Ariel Horowitz
Amaya Anderson receives feedback on her oboe technique during the 2019 Heartbeat Music Project summer camp. The camp was canceled this year due to COVID-19.
It was less a request than an order. “She said, ‘You’re going to go to a place called Crownpoint, New Mexico, and you’re going to play music with some kids,’” Horowitz recalled. Amy Horowitz not being a person to be trifled with, her daughter dutifully packed her bags.
NTU, it turned out, was concerned about the dearth of arts education opportunities for youth in the area, so Amy Horowitz had volunteered her violinist daughter to experiment with a summer music camp for kids.
“I brought a buddy of mine,” Ariel recalled. “We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We worked for five days with seven kids. We sat in a hogan and played a lot of games and made music together. It was a humble, lovely exchange between us and the students.”
Ariel went back to her studies thinking she had had a fun cross-cultural adventure, perhaps had made a contribution, and that was the end of it. Then toward the end of the school year, NTU called. “They said, ‘You’re coming out again this summer, right?’” Ariel recalled. She hadn’t planned on it, but … “Yeah, sure,” she said.
That was the start of the Heartbeat Music Project, which through summer camps, winter workshops and funding private lessons in between, has taught dozens of Diné youth to play an instrument — but more importantly, “to thrive and gain confidence in themselves, their abilities, and their local and global potential”.