LI nonprofit hosts Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project in Garden City
Multi-lingual families from across Long Island took part in the first-ever Long Island presentation of Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project hosted by Family & Children’s Association (FCA) and performed at the Long Island Children’s Museum on Friday, Dec 5.
The live music program, an initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, brought together local families with young children and professional teaching artists for the performance of 10 lullabies written in collaboration between the families and the Carnegie Hall musicians. The lullabies were written and performed in Spanish and English.
“Music is a way to strengthen the connection between parents and children,” said Erika Floreska, president, Long Island Children’s Museum. “There’s actually scientific study that shows when music is a shared experience, brain waves start to align between a parent and child.”
Created by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents with artists to create personalized lullabies that support parent-child connection, emotional health, and early learning.
“Bringing the Lullaby Project to Long Island is about strengthening the earliest bonds between parents and their children through the power of music,” said Jeffrey Reynolds, president and CEO of FCA. “The nice thing about this is it also creates some legacy for families, and our hope is that these lullabies that these families have created will go on for generation after generation.”
Musicians included Camila Cortina, a Cuban-born pianist; Linda EPO, a Queens-born vocalist and multi-instrumentalist of Haitian and Mexican heritage; Gerson Lazo-Quiroga, a Chilean bassist, composer, and Grammy-winning recording engineer; and Takafumi Nikaido, a Japanese percussionist from Sapporo and Berklee College of Music graduate.
“Not a lot of organizations believe in the power of music the way FCA does,” said Camila Cortina, one of the musicians who worked with the families to write the lullabies. “When the moms heard what came out, they became proud. You see the magic start happening.”
