Sarah Schumann and Roger

What is the sound of two recorders playing? What about three? Now contemplate 2,500. No, this isn’t an obscure Zen koan, lightly nudging you to enlightenment. It’s a riddle mulled over by Sarah Schumann and her home-schooled pupil Roger, aged 10.

Roger is a participant in the LinkUP! program of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. LinkUP! is a comprehensive music curriculum designed for both music teachers and classroom teachers. Now in its 22nd season, the program offers kid-friendly materials and year-end concerts in which thousands of students from the New York City region converge for a festival of singing and recorder playing.

The sheer size of the upcoming concerts, in which all area LinkUP! students are invited to participate May 22–25, fill this duo with at least a little trepidation.

“I’m nervous about the concert—just for my ears,” says Schumann, a former elementary school teacher turned tutor and home-school advocate.

Though LinkUP! was originally conceived as an aid to New York schools whose music programs had suffered from budget cuts, Sarah Schumann and Roger are blazing a new path as independent participants. On a recent day, they came to Carnegie Hall to conduct a lesson. It took place after lunch, and Roger was eager to share his culinary preferences: liverwurst-and-onion (“My absolute favorite sandwich,” he says). Preliminaries over with, Schumann opens the LinkUP! text book and reviews the two sections of a piece they’ve begun studying.

“Now, we need to learn that third section. Think we can do it?” Schumann says.

They start, per the Carnegie Hall–penned book, by clapping the rhythm.

“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four,” Schumann intones.

Suddenly, Roger stumbles on an unexpected variation. “Oh! There was a trick in there,” Schumann says. They laugh and proceed, following the sequential rubric of the curriculum by next singing the notes. Finally they put soprano recorders to their lips and toot through the new section.

“All right. I think it needs practice, but a fantastic start,” Schumann says.

This will be Roger’s second year with Schumann outside the traditional classroom, the equivalent of fourth grade. When asked if he knows what he wants to be when he grows up, Roger replies no, he does not.

“I like to live in the moment,” he says.

Perhaps recorder playing does lead to enlightenment after all.