March 3, 2025 • 15 mins
The Bloomingdale School of Music, a non-profit music education institution on the Upper West Side, celebrates it’s 60th Anniversary! Executive Director Erika Atkins leads this very special community of 800 musicians of all ages from their historical brownstone on West 108th street. For more, visit bsmny.org.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to get connected. Thanks for listening. The Bloomingdale School
of Music, a nonprofit and a music education institution on
the Upper West Side, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, serving
over eight hundred students of all ages every week from
their historical brownstone on West one hundred and eighth Street.
Theirs is a very special community of musicians. I am
(00:32):
pleased to welcome Erica Atkins, executive director of Bloomingdale School
of Music, to the show. Thanks for being here, Erica,
thanks for having me. You can find out more about
the school at bsmany dot org. Bloomingdale School of Music
is a nonprofit. It has built a foundation of making
high quality music education accessible to all ages and skill levels,
(00:54):
no matter their financial background. But could you tell us
about the community.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The community at Bloomingdale is so special. As you mentioned,
the school is sixty years old. So our community has
made up of young students who are just coming to
the school now, who are as young as six months
up through high school.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Then we have.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Adult students including older adult student, retirees who have come
back to study an instrument that maybe they had to
leave behind a while ago, parents who are studying alongside.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
With their children.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And then also when you look at our community, you
know our boy president kid Michael, the former student and
his kids went to Bloomingdale as well. I have a
member of my staff who are former Bloomingdale students and
their kids went here, go here now, And so it's
really a great mix of people, all all ages, all
walks of life.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But also we have so.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Many people who have been in the community for a
long time, including over fifteen faculty members who have taught
the school for fifteen years or more.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, I'd like to talk about the faculty too. I
think when we talk about music schools, you talk about
the kids, but the teachers, right, They're really the underpinning
of what you do. And New York is so full
of musicians beyond technical skills. What kind of qualities are
you looking for in your teachers and how do you
pair up your teachers and students At Bloomingdale.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
What's really important is that the teachers are driven by
the opportunity to serve all different behind the student the
fact that we offer over three hundred thousand dollars of
a year in financial aid and scholarship means that there
are students who come through our door who might not
otherwise have access to the music lesson. So the teachers
(02:41):
who come to Bloomingdale are excited to teach with and
work with those people.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
The teachers who.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Come to Bloomingdale, they have a mission in or teaching
of bringing excellent and access to all students, but meeting
the students where they are because they're coming from so
many variet backgrounds. Were looking for new faculty members. We
look for people who those are clear values in them
and then they'll along very well with us. In order
(03:09):
to go through the process of matching student with teacher,
they actually reach out to our registration office. If you're
studying private lessons, that would be the first step, and
we do trial lesson for.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Our trial lessons are for a much reduced cost.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You can try different teachers to see how it fits,
and then we move forward. We also listen to the
families and hear what they say they're looking for. From that,
our registration team and our admin team kind of has
a good idea of who might be a good match
and then we'll go from there. So there's also a
lot of time and resources put into making sure we
understand what the strength are of our faculty so that
(03:48):
we can align them with the best student.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Since you mentioned students coming from backgrounds where they might
not be able to afford lessons, can you talk a
little bit more about the scholarships that you give and
being able to help students. Because it's arts, budgets get
smaller over time, there's more need for that of course.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So we have really four main vehicles in which we
offer financial aid, the first of which is the General
Financial Aid. This is when people apply for financial aid,
they give us a little bit more about their background
from understanding of their income and what's happening. We then
we'll go through and will allot out financial aid according
(04:27):
to that the average income of a family who is
getting General Financial Aid varies between thirty five thousand to
forty five thousand dollars a year, so though there's families
who are applying for and receiving financial aid. Then we
have two scholarship program one of the Music Access Project
with a dark pre college program. It's a great program
(04:49):
for kids who are thinking that they want to do
deeper advanced study of music when they go on to college,
and it gives them a taste of what that's like.
For anybody who's been a music major life myself, you
know that it's not just about your going to classes
now you also you have the lessons, you have the rehearsal,
you have the music theory you have to be practicing
(05:11):
in addition to doing all your homework. So this is
giving the students a taste of what that's going to
be like. You're the deciding that's how they're going to
move forward and when they're applying for college, and we
are providing them support through that process. Just last year
we had students get into Berkeley College of Music, Harvard
and Juilliard right, so really also pushing them to know
(05:33):
that they could strive for those more.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
P teagerous institutions.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And also in that group, we had students go to
Queens College and like other local schools right really trying
to help them find it right there. The other full
scholarship program is Project Bridge. Project Bridge offers forty five
minute lessons a free lesson. Many of the kids often
do go into math, not always, but often, and now
they's from middle school through high school students. And then
(05:59):
we offer flight and Gale tuition on some of our
program including the Bloomingdale Training Program, which is for a
students who are more targeted elementary age early middle school,
and we have a piano track, a guitar track, and
a string track, and we're building some additional ones as well.
And then we have a Composent Program Album for the
(06:21):
Young which is a student composer program, and we offer
tuition for that on a site in Gale as well
as low as twenty dollars to join that program. So
it's a combination of ways that we work to make
our programming more affordable. And then of course if you're
at one of our partner schools, could we have school
partnerships as well. They get up to twenty percent off
for all of our school and community partners.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Our guest is Erica Atkins. She's executive director of Bloomingdale
School of Music, a nonprofit music school on the Upper
West Side, celebrating their sixtieth anniversary. They are on West
one hundred and eighth between Riverside and West End, and
you can find out more at BSMNY dot org and
to get connected on one of six point seven light FM.
I'm Na del Rio and I wonder Erica if you
(07:05):
could tell us a little bit about your background and
how it informs the work you do now.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, So I am an artist myself. I am a musician,
an actor, and a dancer. I do consider myself always
to be a musician first. My bachelor's degree is in
vocal performance, so I am a singer myself, and for me,
the arts were a huge part of developing helping me
into a leader, and then including as I moved through
(07:33):
my career, even everything I learned around budgeting and HR
and building operations and fundating, it was all driven by
my desire to replicate for people the ex variance I
had that I was really really fortunate to grow up
with a supportive family in an area with a really
(07:53):
good public school offering and really great public school arts
offering at the time that I went there, and it
really helped shape me and gave me confidence to move
forward in the work, which was especially important to me.
One the hearing impaired child and two growing up at
the black Gun in a predominantly white neighborhood. I mean,
the others were a huge part of the confidence that
(08:15):
I developed and sow I like to go about in
my career giving people access to those same things, and
that really drives me then in the work that I
do here at Bloomingdale and also looking at how do
we not only create this access, but how do we
keep doing it for another sixty years.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, I think that kind of leads into where I
was going to go next. When you join an institution
like Bloomingdale Music School, because you're coming in with this
long history of the school behind you, it has an
established reputation. There are community members that generation after generations
and their kids there. What is your role? What do
you see is your particular role in mission?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, that's a really a really interesting question.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
So I came in also in September twenty So the
original first goal was we got to keep this place open.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We were completely online for my first year, and I
was just really focused on making sure that we were
getting resources to keep our programming running through twenty twenty
one twenty twenty two, and then we built a strategic plan.
So for me, my approach was to have been my
(09:30):
first year learning as much from the community as I
can while focusing.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
On keeping the school open.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
But then in my second year, we began the process
of creating a strategic plan, and what I wanted to
do with that was to create some really clear objectives
that were actually formed by the community. So we formed
a DEI test for made a list of recommendation, and
then we went into a bigger strategic planning process that
(09:57):
involved faculty, staff, board members, adult students.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
We called we.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Did a survey with family foundation, former employee, We get
as many opinions as we could about what do we
want to see Bloomingdale as in twenty twenty seven, and
then from there we ended up developing our strategic plan
for MAP twenty twenty seven, and we really decided to
focus in on who do we want to reach? Are
we already reaching them or are we not? Do we
(10:26):
have the programming to reach those people? Do we have
the capacity to do that, is our space in the
right place to do that?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And or do we have partnership.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
For example, being in our one hundred year old brownstone,
there are some accessibility issues, but now we're partnering with
more retirement home than school to be able to overcome both.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And then a lack of people with connection. Once you
do all that work.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How are we connecting internally, externally and really raising voices
to have as many people included in the conversation of
how we're moving forward to Bloomingdale. So, for me, a
great way of honoring that institution is to include those
voices of what had made bloom Medale Bloomdale.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And at the same time, music education or the practice
of listening to music studying music is very different. It's
changed over the last decade or so. Especially kids are
watching videos, kids are online and not listening to music
in the same way gathering their favorite songs like they
might when they listen to the radio. That's not the
same thing anymore. Can you talk about sort of? And
people are more interested in electronic music and editing and
(11:26):
all those things. Can you talk about sort of, how
not only is music education still relevant to which it is,
but how do you also advance along with what kids
are seeing in their own world?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Right? Yeah, that's actually something that we've been talking a
lot about at Bloomingdale and also something that we've been
seeking funding for, seeking support for.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
One major step for us a few years ago was
we actually.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Brought a fleet of iPads that can be incorporated both
into having remote lessons, but also into the less than
themselves when the teachers request them. We have teachers who
bring in their computers as a way to be able
to work with the student. We're actually supposed to receive
a new set of Yamaha Baby grants from the city
(12:13):
at some point in twenty twenty five twenty twenty six
that actually have a digital component in them where you
can plug in your USB and like take music from
piano to piano. And a big thing that we're working
towards is trying to have smartboards in the school because
we recognize the kid that, like you mentioned, they're working
with the technology day today.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Then they come to.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
The school and it's all whiteboards and chockboards and that's
actually not how their brain they're wired anymore, and we
need to upgrade our technology.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
To meet with them.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
A lot of our teachers are very inventive about how
they also incorporate that we actually had this when I
first came on the Giant library and the school and
the library still exists, but we recognize that a lot
of people are also getting their mute bi from PDFs
and software like music Note. So working with the kids
(13:05):
to get them their music electronically, working with the kids
to make sure that they have recording of the music
as well so that they can listen to them. A
couple of years ago, we also insulled TVs in some
of our rooms, and one of our voice teachers had
told us that she actually had the kids watch their
(13:26):
performances afterwards, because especially when you're a vocalist, the way
that you hold your mouth, the way that you're standing,
all these different things influencing how you play, and she
can now pull up the video and show them what happened,
and that's huge to be able to do that. So
we're definitely finding ways to incorporate that technology, and I
(13:49):
think in a way that technology actually makes music education
more accessible to people.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
But one other things that we.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Did learn from COVID is that nothing touches and in
person lesson. And one of the reason white people specifically
like to come to us is because they can get
that in perth and music lesson.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
But there's some flexibility maybe I need to do it
online today or etc.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But when we came back from COVID, our numbers shot
back up because people were waiting for us to come
back for Imperth and lesson.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
That's what they want to do.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
They want to have that connection even today for everything
right in person is so much better than zoom, although
I'm pleased to talk with you on zoom as we
have this conversation about Bloomingdale Music School. Erica Atkins is
executive director. You can find out more about the school,
which is on the Upper West Side at BSMNY dot org.
Erica Atkins, thank you for being on to Get Connected.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website. We're
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven at
fm dot com. Thanks for listening. Hmm
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to get connected. Thanks for listening. The Bloomingdale School
of Music, a nonprofit and a music education institution on
the Upper West Side, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, serving
over eight hundred students of all ages every week from
their historical brownstone on West one hundred and eighth Street.
Theirs is a very special community of musicians. I am
(00:32):
pleased to welcome Erica Atkins, executive director of Bloomingdale School
of Music, to the show. Thanks for being here, Erica,
thanks for having me. You can find out more about
the school at bsmany dot org. Bloomingdale School of Music
is a nonprofit. It has built a foundation of making
high quality music education accessible to all ages and skill levels,
(00:54):
no matter their financial background. But could you tell us
about the community.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The community at Bloomingdale is so special. As you mentioned,
the school is sixty years old. So our community has
made up of young students who are just coming to
the school now, who are as young as six months
up through high school.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Then we have.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Adult students including older adult student, retirees who have come
back to study an instrument that maybe they had to
leave behind a while ago, parents who are studying alongside.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
With their children.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And then also when you look at our community, you
know our boy president kid Michael, the former student and
his kids went to Bloomingdale as well. I have a
member of my staff who are former Bloomingdale students and
their kids went here, go here now, And so it's
really a great mix of people, all all ages, all
walks of life.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
But also we have so.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Many people who have been in the community for a
long time, including over fifteen faculty members who have taught
the school for fifteen years or more.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, I'd like to talk about the faculty too. I
think when we talk about music schools, you talk about
the kids, but the teachers, right, They're really the underpinning
of what you do. And New York is so full
of musicians beyond technical skills. What kind of qualities are
you looking for in your teachers and how do you
pair up your teachers and students At Bloomingdale.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
What's really important is that the teachers are driven by
the opportunity to serve all different behind the student the
fact that we offer over three hundred thousand dollars of
a year in financial aid and scholarship means that there
are students who come through our door who might not
otherwise have access to the music lesson. So the teachers
(02:41):
who come to Bloomingdale are excited to teach with and
work with those people.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
The teachers who.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Come to Bloomingdale, they have a mission in or teaching
of bringing excellent and access to all students, but meeting
the students where they are because they're coming from so
many variet backgrounds. Were looking for new faculty members. We
look for people who those are clear values in them
and then they'll along very well with us. In order
(03:09):
to go through the process of matching student with teacher,
they actually reach out to our registration office. If you're
studying private lessons, that would be the first step, and
we do trial lesson for.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Our trial lessons are for a much reduced cost.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You can try different teachers to see how it fits,
and then we move forward. We also listen to the
families and hear what they say they're looking for. From that,
our registration team and our admin team kind of has
a good idea of who might be a good match
and then we'll go from there. So there's also a
lot of time and resources put into making sure we
understand what the strength are of our faculty so that
(03:48):
we can align them with the best student.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Since you mentioned students coming from backgrounds where they might
not be able to afford lessons, can you talk a
little bit more about the scholarships that you give and
being able to help students. Because it's arts, budgets get
smaller over time, there's more need for that of course.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So we have really four main vehicles in which we
offer financial aid, the first of which is the General
Financial Aid. This is when people apply for financial aid,
they give us a little bit more about their background
from understanding of their income and what's happening. We then
we'll go through and will allot out financial aid according
(04:27):
to that the average income of a family who is
getting General Financial Aid varies between thirty five thousand to
forty five thousand dollars a year, so though there's families
who are applying for and receiving financial aid. Then we
have two scholarship program one of the Music Access Project
with a dark pre college program. It's a great program
(04:49):
for kids who are thinking that they want to do
deeper advanced study of music when they go on to college,
and it gives them a taste of what that's like.
For anybody who's been a music major life myself, you
know that it's not just about your going to classes
now you also you have the lessons, you have the rehearsal,
you have the music theory you have to be practicing
(05:11):
in addition to doing all your homework. So this is
giving the students a taste of what that's going to
be like. You're the deciding that's how they're going to
move forward and when they're applying for college, and we
are providing them support through that process. Just last year
we had students get into Berkeley College of Music, Harvard
and Juilliard right, so really also pushing them to know
(05:33):
that they could strive for those more.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
P teagerous institutions.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
And also in that group, we had students go to
Queens College and like other local schools right really trying
to help them find it right there. The other full
scholarship program is Project Bridge. Project Bridge offers forty five
minute lessons a free lesson. Many of the kids often
do go into math, not always, but often, and now
they's from middle school through high school students. And then
(05:59):
we offer flight and Gale tuition on some of our
program including the Bloomingdale Training Program, which is for a
students who are more targeted elementary age early middle school,
and we have a piano track, a guitar track, and
a string track, and we're building some additional ones as well.
And then we have a Composent Program Album for the
(06:21):
Young which is a student composer program, and we offer
tuition for that on a site in Gale as well
as low as twenty dollars to join that program. So
it's a combination of ways that we work to make
our programming more affordable. And then of course if you're
at one of our partner schools, could we have school
partnerships as well. They get up to twenty percent off
for all of our school and community partners.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Our guest is Erica Atkins. She's executive director of Bloomingdale
School of Music, a nonprofit music school on the Upper
West Side, celebrating their sixtieth anniversary. They are on West
one hundred and eighth between Riverside and West End, and
you can find out more at BSMNY dot org and
to get connected on one of six point seven light FM.
I'm Na del Rio and I wonder Erica if you
(07:05):
could tell us a little bit about your background and
how it informs the work you do now.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, So I am an artist myself. I am a musician,
an actor, and a dancer. I do consider myself always
to be a musician first. My bachelor's degree is in
vocal performance, so I am a singer myself, and for me,
the arts were a huge part of developing helping me
into a leader, and then including as I moved through
(07:33):
my career, even everything I learned around budgeting and HR
and building operations and fundating, it was all driven by
my desire to replicate for people the ex variance I
had that I was really really fortunate to grow up
with a supportive family in an area with a really
(07:53):
good public school offering and really great public school arts
offering at the time that I went there, and it
really helped shape me and gave me confidence to move
forward in the work, which was especially important to me.
One the hearing impaired child and two growing up at
the black Gun in a predominantly white neighborhood. I mean,
the others were a huge part of the confidence that
(08:15):
I developed and sow I like to go about in
my career giving people access to those same things, and
that really drives me then in the work that I
do here at Bloomingdale and also looking at how do
we not only create this access, but how do we
keep doing it for another sixty years.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, I think that kind of leads into where I
was going to go next. When you join an institution
like Bloomingdale Music School, because you're coming in with this
long history of the school behind you, it has an
established reputation. There are community members that generation after generations
and their kids there. What is your role? What do
you see is your particular role in mission?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, that's a really a really interesting question.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
So I came in also in September twenty So the
original first goal was we got to keep this place open.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We were completely online for my first year, and I
was just really focused on making sure that we were
getting resources to keep our programming running through twenty twenty
one twenty twenty two, and then we built a strategic plan.
So for me, my approach was to have been my
(09:30):
first year learning as much from the community as I
can while focusing.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
On keeping the school open.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
But then in my second year, we began the process
of creating a strategic plan, and what I wanted to
do with that was to create some really clear objectives
that were actually formed by the community. So we formed
a DEI test for made a list of recommendation, and
then we went into a bigger strategic planning process that
(09:57):
involved faculty, staff, board members, adult students.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
We called we.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Did a survey with family foundation, former employee, We get
as many opinions as we could about what do we
want to see Bloomingdale as in twenty twenty seven, and
then from there we ended up developing our strategic plan
for MAP twenty twenty seven, and we really decided to
focus in on who do we want to reach? Are
we already reaching them or are we not? Do we
(10:26):
have the programming to reach those people? Do we have
the capacity to do that, is our space in the
right place to do that?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And or do we have partnership.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
For example, being in our one hundred year old brownstone,
there are some accessibility issues, but now we're partnering with
more retirement home than school to be able to overcome both.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
And then a lack of people with connection. Once you
do all that work.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How are we connecting internally, externally and really raising voices
to have as many people included in the conversation of
how we're moving forward to Bloomingdale. So, for me, a
great way of honoring that institution is to include those
voices of what had made bloom Medale Bloomdale.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And at the same time, music education or the practice
of listening to music studying music is very different. It's
changed over the last decade or so. Especially kids are
watching videos, kids are online and not listening to music
in the same way gathering their favorite songs like they
might when they listen to the radio. That's not the
same thing anymore. Can you talk about sort of? And
people are more interested in electronic music and editing and
(11:26):
all those things. Can you talk about sort of, how
not only is music education still relevant to which it is,
but how do you also advance along with what kids
are seeing in their own world?
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Right? Yeah, that's actually something that we've been talking a
lot about at Bloomingdale and also something that we've been
seeking funding for, seeking support for.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
One major step for us a few years ago was
we actually.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Brought a fleet of iPads that can be incorporated both
into having remote lessons, but also into the less than
themselves when the teachers request them. We have teachers who
bring in their computers as a way to be able
to work with the student. We're actually supposed to receive
a new set of Yamaha Baby grants from the city
(12:13):
at some point in twenty twenty five twenty twenty six
that actually have a digital component in them where you
can plug in your USB and like take music from
piano to piano. And a big thing that we're working
towards is trying to have smartboards in the school because
we recognize the kid that, like you mentioned, they're working
with the technology day today.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Then they come to.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
The school and it's all whiteboards and chockboards and that's
actually not how their brain they're wired anymore, and we
need to upgrade our technology.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
To meet with them.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
A lot of our teachers are very inventive about how
they also incorporate that we actually had this when I
first came on the Giant library and the school and
the library still exists, but we recognize that a lot
of people are also getting their mute bi from PDFs
and software like music Note. So working with the kids
(13:05):
to get them their music electronically, working with the kids
to make sure that they have recording of the music
as well so that they can listen to them. A
couple of years ago, we also insulled TVs in some
of our rooms, and one of our voice teachers had
told us that she actually had the kids watch their
(13:26):
performances afterwards, because especially when you're a vocalist, the way
that you hold your mouth, the way that you're standing,
all these different things influencing how you play, and she
can now pull up the video and show them what happened,
and that's huge to be able to do that. So
we're definitely finding ways to incorporate that technology, and I
(13:49):
think in a way that technology actually makes music education
more accessible to people.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
But one other things that we.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Did learn from COVID is that nothing touches and in
person lesson. And one of the reason white people specifically
like to come to us is because they can get
that in perth and music lesson.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
But there's some flexibility maybe I need to do it
online today or etc.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
But when we came back from COVID, our numbers shot
back up because people were waiting for us to come
back for Imperth and lesson.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
That's what they want to do.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
They want to have that connection even today for everything
right in person is so much better than zoom, although
I'm pleased to talk with you on zoom as we
have this conversation about Bloomingdale Music School. Erica Atkins is
executive director. You can find out more about the school,
which is on the Upper West Side at BSMNY dot org.
Erica Atkins, thank you for being on to Get Connected.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website. We're
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven at
fm dot com. Thanks for listening. Hmm
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!