This article is part of Concentrate's Voices of Youth series, which features content created by Washtenaw County youth in partnership with Concentrate staff mentors. In this installment, student writer Tova Weiss examines the issue of accessibility in high school music education.

An asterisk (*) denotes that a student interviewee's name has been changed to protect their privacy.

In 2023, Elizabeth Knox’s* first year in the orchestra at Ann Arbor's Pioneer High School, the orchestra's tour to Germany and the Czech Republic cost about $3,800 per student. Limited scholarship funding was available for selected applicants, with the largest scholarships covering 50% of the cost and other ones covering smaller portions of the cost. That means that even students granted the largest scholarship, like Knox, would still have $1,900 to pay out of pocket.

"There's definitely kids below me who wouldn't have been able to pay for any of it,” says Knox. 

She describes her experience on tour as life-changing. 

“Not just the music and the experience of getting to play in another country, it was also the culmination of what we'd been working for the whole year, and I ended up meeting some of the friends that then led me to feel so much more confident in my own skin,” she says. “I don't think that I would have been able to, or we would have ran into a little debt, without that scholarship. It certainly eased the load to have that kind of helping hand.”

For socioeconomically disadvantaged students, playing a musical instrument can seem impossible. But Pioneer and many other high schools nationwide are working to break down the financial barriers and make high school music available to everyone, not just the privileged.

Knox, now a junior at Pioneer, started playing violin when she was only four years old. Coming from an upper-middle-class family, her parents were able to put education first and fund her musical journey from the very start. Though her family is comfortable financially, there’s never been a ton of excess money for extravagant vacations and splurges. Instead, that money has been poured into securing a strong education, musically and academically, for herself and her two sisters. 

“My parents always picked music to focus on,” she says. 

For the most part, all the materials useful for a young musician were readily available for Knox. If you ask around the orchestra, most students at Pioneer have similar stories to tell, many from even more privileged backgrounds. But that’s not everyone’s experience.

When you think about the expenses that go into being a musician, the obvious one is purchasing an instrument in the first place. For example, even a poor-quality beginner violin costs around $500, and a higher-quality professional instrument can cost $10,000 or more. Private lessons are another expense musicians face. Generally, private musical instruction costs around $50-$100 per hour, depending on the instrument and the teacher’s credentials. 

In reality, though, these are only the beginnings of the costs young musicians’ families face. Instrument maintenance, such as cleanings, new strings, reeds for woodwind instruments, and small repairs can be extremely expensive. Many musicians pay hundreds of dollars a year just for instrument upkeep. 

And even if students can afford to pay all of these expenses, Pioneer's band and orchestra programs host sleepaway camps and go on tour, both of which are very expensive. For the annual band, orchestra, and choir camps Pioneer holds at Interlochen Fine Arts Camp, the charge per student is over $500. While these camps are not required, almost all of the successful students attend, and peers and teachers strongly encourage students to be there. Similarly, every other year the ensembles go on expensive, often international, tours like the one Knox participated in. 

With all of these barriers, it’s very difficult for underprivileged students to make it as far as the high school level, and once they’re there it’s even more challenging to keep going.

But many schools want to change that. Jonathan Glawe, Pioneer's head orchestra director and music department head, hopes to tackle these barriers. His goal is to provide as many resources for students as possible and spread awareness about those resources. Sometimes, he thinks, the biggest barrier to participating in music education is that students just don’t know it’s possible. 

“Most people don't know that we take new musicians at any age,” he says. The Pioneer music program welcomes students with little or no experience playing instruments. “People may have gone through a few years without an instrument, and when they get to high school they think they no longer have the opportunity.” 

All the schools in the district provide instruments to any students who need them, and Pioneer is no exception. However, these instruments are generally quite low quality. 

“There does come a point where the quality of the instrument can be a barrier to improving,” Glawe says.

To help address this barrier, Pioneer has obtained a couple of special scholarship instruments over the years. One such example is the Elizabeth Green violin, the best string instrument the orchestra program owns. Every year, violinists in the orchestra program are given the opportunity to apply to play the multi-thousand-dollar instrument for the duration of the school year, free of charge. Glawe reviews the applications, and selects one student to receive the instrument to based on both students’ need and musical proficiency.

Kinneret Weiss, a graduate of Pioneer and sister of this story's author, was a recipient of the Elizabeth Green violin for her junior and senior years. Weiss is now studying music therapy at Eastern Michigan University. She was in concert orchestra (the middle ensemble) for her freshman year, and in symphony (the top ensemble) for the remaining three years of high school. 

When she started at Pioneer, Weiss played on a violin she inherited from her great aunt.

“It did the job,” she says, but it wasn’t a very high-quality instrument, and it put her at a disadvantage from her peers. In her junior year she learned about the Elizabeth Green violin and successfully applied for the instrument. 

"I used it for my college auditions, a lot of performances, and it is to this day the best instrument I've played on," Weiss says.

But the Elizabeth Green is the only violin of its kind that the school owns. 

"A lot of the orchestra was fairly privileged, and probably had instruments even better than the Elizabeth Green. So in some ways, [getting the Elizabeth Green] lifted me up to their level, but in other ways, it definitely left some people behind who could not afford those instruments,” says Weiss.

“The Pioneer music department is trying,” Weiss says. “But it’s not foolproof.”

Pioneer orchestras also provide limited subsidized private lesson scholarships. This year, $12,000 worth of funding was requested by a total of 20 applicants across the orchestra program.  These scholarships help to pay part, but not all, of the cost for private instruction. The scholarships cover the majority of the cost, and the students pay the remaining few dollars for each lesson. The scholarship applications are carefully reviewed and funding is distributed to students whom Glawe determines would benefit most from the help. Not every student who applies is able to receive a scholarship, but for those who do it can be a total game-changer.

Although she appreciates everything that the orchestra program has already done, Knox thinks there’s still a long way to go.  

“The music world is very elitist, specifically in Western education and in orchestra specifically,” Knox says. “There's still a financial gap.” 

That gap is huge, but hopefully, as free and subsidized opportunities in the high school music world become more readily available, the gap is beginning to shrink.

“Music is something that's so wonderful and so important. ... The very act of playing and creating is a very artistic thing. It's something that I've always held very close to my heart and as a core part of my identity, and I think that we should have that option be open to as many people as possible,” says Knox.

Glawe feels the same way. 

“The arts are precious gems for the community and everyone should have access to that precious gem. We can make it affordable, we can make it accessible, and it can enhance the beauty of everything else you do in your life. Every student deserves an opportunity to show expression through art in some way,” he says. “It’s not a privilege. It’s a right.”

Tova Weiss is a primarily homeschooled high school junior in Ann Arbor. Her interests include but are not limited to music, writing, and advocacy on a wide array of issues.

Concentrate Managing Editor Patrick Dunn served as Tova's mentor on this story.

Photo courtesy of Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels.

To learn more about Concentrate's Voices of Youth project and read other installments in the series, click here.