UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — In music and life it can take practice to progress towards harmony.
"FAME honestly has built me into the person who I am today," said high school senior bass player Jasmyne Wilson talking about a humble kind of "fame."
As in the Foundation for the Advancement of Music and Education (FAME), conducted behind the scenes by its founder A. Toni Lewis.
"My dad was a sharecropper in Virginia. He didn't have the education opportunities, and I saw how he worked very hard and how the community came together to make sure that we as his children were able to succeed," Lewis said. "And, you know, that stays with you."
Twenty years ago when Ms. Toni, as her students call her, retired from the federal government she started FAME to help this generation succeed through music.
And while she’s never played an instrument herself, she has listened.
"I was a very introverted child, so I was in the basement with my music," said Lewis. "That music helped to make me and bring me to who I am because it calmed me down. It helped me to focus on my academics. It helped me to excel. And if you did it for me, I said, 'You know what? This will work.'"
And it has.
"I feel like FAME has really impacted the trajectory of my life, has made me such a better musician, but it's also made me a better student," said senior trumpetist Ian Patience.
Based in Prince George’s County, FAME reaches close to 1,200 students a year across greater Washington with programs to support music education in schools, individual music lessons with professionals, a 31-piece jazz band, and a professional jazz ensemble playing gigs across the region.
And when the music stops tutors take center stage.
FAME musicians received individual academic instruction ranging from college prep to career readiness.
"I was really struggling in math especially," said Patience. "But once I started (the tutoring) I was able to really improve my SAT scores and get a 1390 SAT...I was really proud of that," he said.
"We turn out some of the best musicians but we have students who are also going to medical school, who are turning out to be engineers," said Lewis. "They say the music is what helped them to focus and to be successful."
Former students like current FAME instructor Julian Wilson who recently graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.
"FAME has a had a major part to play in that," he said of his success. As for what made him want to return to the program as an instructor, Wilson said, "there's something special about in this organization, the caliber of students that we pull. And it's so refreshing to see students that look like me so hungry."
And while all of this instruction and support cost FAME more than $9,000 per student, per year, it is all virtually free for the students.
Lewis fundraises year-round to cover the costs.
"She's a saint," Ian's mother Joelle Patience said while attending one of her son's practice sessions. She's constantly working and pouring and pouring and pouring into the students, the organization."
"Ms. Toni is already showing us what we can become if we continue with this rigor, this discipline that she's providing," said student Jasmyne Wilson. (No relation to Julian.) "We... I love her very much for everything that she's done for us, and we're just so grateful that she's making us into the better people and musicians that we can be."
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