Bay Ridge School of Music at Carnegie Hall
Bay Ridge School of Music started in a basement. Darvin Lau founded it in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood, and over fifteen years it grew from a small studio on 72nd Street into a school serving hundreds of students each week.
The Carnegie Hall concert brought together students from Bay Ridge alongside two guest schools: Nutley School of Music from New Jersey and Easton Music Academy from Maryland. Over thirty students performed across the evening.
The repertoire ran from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Mozart's Sonata in C Major K.545 to Yiruma's "River Flows in You," Piazzolla's Café 1930, and a Wiz Khalifa track. Debussy, Scarlatti, Pachelbel, Duke Ellington, and Spyro Gyra all showed up too. A few students performed as duets or small ensembles, including a guitar and violin pairing.
The program reflects a community school, not a conservatory. Students weren't all working toward the same benchmarks. Nikita Gupta's Moonlight Sonata and Kyong Lee's Debussy sat alongside Ava Chan's Duke Ellington arrangement and Ian Lee's Canon in D. Some were beginners, others had been at it for years. That range is the point.
Carnegie Hall is a lot to walk out onto, especially as a student. The room doesn't get smaller just because you've practiced the piece a hundred times.
Bay Ridge also does work outside the concert hall. The school has partnered with homeless shelters in the South Bronx, orphanages in Thailand and Hong Kong, and a nonprofit running addiction recovery programs in Asia through music. The recital is one piece of that.
Student recitals call for a lighter touch than shooting a professional ensemble. People are still finding their footing on stage, and the camera shouldn't add to that pressure. The goal is to document what's happening, not clean it up.
If you're planning a student showcase or institutional concert and want to talk about photography coverage, you can reach me through the contact page or see more of my work at danwrightphotography.com.
