With new piano lab, East Boston students straddle two worlds

Axios

22-04-2025

An East Boston school has drawn students to Beethoven, Vivaldi — and the likes of Mexican superstar Juan Gabriel.
A new piano lab aims to give a boost to the majority-Latino school's bicultural music program.
The big picture: Mario Umana Academy is the 10th school enrolled in the Lang Lang Music Foundation's Keys of Inspiration program, which works with Title 1 elementary schools serving students in underserved communities.
Playing the news: The K-8 school received new electric pianos earlier in April for its program, which has 245 students across grades 2-5 enrolled.
The program has also worked with Dever Elementary in Dorchester, the Hennigan School in Jamaica Plain and Chittick Elementary in Hyde Park.
Zoom in: On a recent Wednesday morning, Virginia Lopez Alvarez directed her third-grade class to practice "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the pianos.
The students once shared seven old keyboards with notes painted on the worn keys.
Now each student sat at an upright piano, pressing each key with an index finger, trying to match the sounds of their classmates.
What they're saying: "Seeing how they build a community in this classroom is amazing," Lopez, a classically trained harpist from Colombia, told Axios.
One day, Lopez said, those students will follow in the footsteps of their older peers, playing classical European music alongside Latino classics like the beloved Christmas song, "El Burrito Sabanero."
Last year, older students performed a cumbia by the late Ecuadorian artist Julio Jaramillo.