- April 19, 2024
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When Flagler Youth Orchestra Executive Director Cheryl Tristam began volunteering for the youth orchestra in 2004, the program was fee-based. Some families couldn’t afford it.
Tristam, whose own parents had to choose between getting her music lessons and getting her braces — they chose braces — wanted to change that, and helped the Youth Orchestra create a financial relationship with the School Board so that all parents could enroll their children.
“We want to make this available to every child so that they can see if this is something that they might be interested in,” Tristam said. “We’re providing this opportunity to kids that through their circumstance — whether it be living in poverty, living in cultures that don’t perhaps embrace these particular instruments — we’re saying to them, ‘Yeah, you can do this. Why not?’”
The first year the financial barrier was removed, the Youth Orchestra hoped it might have as many as 40 kids. It got 125. This year, enrollment peaked at 375.Tristam’s daughter and son have both played in the orchestra, as well.
The School Board recognized Tristam’s work at its Tuesday, March 17 meeting, granting her its Power of One Award, which is given periodically to community members who have made a positive impact on students. A group of 22 string students, dressed in their concert blacks, assembled at the front of the commission chamber room and played “Irish Party,” honoring Tristam and St. Patrick’s Day.
“I think I can tell you why you do this,” board member Colleen Conklin said to Tristam as she presented the award. “It certainly has nothing to do with money. But I think it has something to do with witnessing that magic and seeing what happens when students get on the stage and they really get to discover who they are. And for a moment, for a moment, we get to share in that magic. That’s pretty amazing.”
Local business owner and Youth Orchestra parent Jon Hardison called Tristam “the wielder of the fairy dust that’s needed to keep the magic happening.” The orchestra, he said, offers “the pulling together of all children, in the most democratic of ways, to take part in something far greater than themselves. It’s the most generous of gifts, granted, in part, by one who was denied it herself. …In fact, in Flagler County, no parent has to choose between braces and music lessons. Not one.”
Tristam thanked the School District and the Youth Orchestra’s teachers and volunteers for their support, and said the program is about more than the music itself.
She mentioned a boy “who would go up to the back of the room during class time and avoid being in class because he wasn’t very confident about what he was doing,” and who had some trouble with technique. But at the end of last year, she said, he told her he was relocating. “And obviously, I wished him well and so forth — and he said to me that this was the best thing that had ever happened to him,” she said. “And I know for a fact that it didn’t have anything to do with the music. He had found some safety in coming to string class on Monday and Wednesday.”
Tristam has taken satisfaction in seeing children she knew struggled to get three meals a day able to take their place beside the county’s wealthiest at the same music stand. “That tickles me to know it, that they would be able to understand that they had every right to be there, just as much as the families that have. And I’m very, very proud of that,” she said.
The Flagler Youth Orchestra will hold its final concert of the year, which will feature full orchestral music through a collaboration with the Flagler Palm Coast High School Band, at 7 p.m. May 4 at the Flagler Auditorium.
Tickets are $6 for adults and $1 for children, and can be purchased at the Flagler Auditorium website at http://bit.ly/18GZRdd.
