Naicha Breathes
Like A Bassoonist

Twelve-year-old Naicha Aguayo saw a picture of it online and thought ​“it looked cool.” She dropped the trumpet and clarinet and started playing the bassoon. A little more than half a year later, on Thursday morning, she was playing in a master class with world-famous bassoonist Frank Morelli.

The John C. Daniels student is one of 51 New Haven Public School kids enrolled this summer at the Morse Summer Music Academy on Yale’s campus.

Now in its second year, the academy is a rigorous musical boot camp that runs for four weeks for four hours a day, with full days on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That includes one master class for players of each instrument group, regular recitals, and one-on-one lessons, far more than Naicha and most of the kids have ever done.

Yet as she and her friends gathered in Hendrie Hall at 165 Elm St. as they do each morning to socialize before the day’s musical work and, this morning, the master class Naicha was going to take with two young oboist colleagues (the double reed players take the master class together), there were no signs of stress.

Naicha is the only bassoonist in this year’s crop of students, all of whom had to audition to be accepted, and none of whom was charged any fee. 

Because the practice is so intense, parental involvement is also critical, said YSM Associate Dean Michael Yaffe. His poll of the parents halfway through the program revealed the kids were still more than positive, practicing away, and very motivated.

Thursday morning Naicha was chilling with Rhianna Potasz, a Mauro-Sheridan saxophonist and Wun Jee Wong, a 13-year-old flutist from Betsy Ross Magnet School.

The three girls said that meeting new people as well as new instruments were highlights of the experience thus far.

Wun Jee was casually transposing Taylor Swift’s ​“You Belong With Me” from D flat to F so that her friend, also in the program and one of eight other flutists, could play it more easily.

They remarked that all the flutists in the program this year are girls; that Rhianna is the only female saxophone player with three boys but she doesn’t mind because she gets along better with boys than girls; and that Naicha is the only bassoonist, period.

At 9:30 a.m. Thursday Naicha gathered her instrument and said goodbye to these friends. She joined oboists Audrey Young from Augusta Troupe School and Allegra Ranelli from Worthington Hooker for a master class for double reed players.

She set up on the stage of the Morse Recital Hall at Sprague Memorial Hall on College Street with fellow double reeders.

As they waited for Frank Morelli, a Yale School of Music (YSM) faculty member and part of the famous and conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, to arrive, the three girls played ​“The Three Kings.”

It’s a venerable trio that was arranged by Laura Caruthers. She’s a music teacher at Benjamin Jepson School and she sat nearby, along with Michael Yaffe, listening intently and admiringly.

Of the academy’s 13 faculty members, eight like Caruthers are NHPS music teachers and the balance hail from the Yale School of Music.

In the John C. Daniels band, where Naicha plays during the school year, she’s the only bassoonist as well. She doesn’t mind being singular. She even has a different relationship to the bassoon than most other players.

“Every bassoonist likes the low notes,” her teacher told her. ​“But I like the high notes. The high notes sound like the flute. The high notes are happy. The low notes sound too low,” she said.

And sometimes too low sounds sad, she added.

When Morelli arrived he had the girls play the piece again. He listened carefully and began making suggestions.

“Think of the instrument as an extension of your body,” he said. He explained that meant he wanted the girls to move more as they played. That would also be a way of signaling each other to be together.

“Playing chamber music without a conductor means you’re all conductors,” he said.

He explained to them that with Orpheus, ​“35 people play together without a conductor. Don’t depend on me for the cue, let’s all do the cue,” he said.

The girls played again and they were indeed more together, and an audience member noticed Allegra visually checking in with Naicha in a way she had not before.

Then came the course that Morelli said he also gives to his graduate students. He calls it ​“remedial breathing,” and it requires that each musician lie down on the floor. Thus he demonstrated what the diaphragm is, how it works, and where precious breath comes from.

Now who’ll do it? Morelli asked.

After a beat of hesitation, Naicha was first to volunteer. She lay center stage on her back, Morelli instructed her to locate the diaphragm, and, sure enough, she breathed in and managed a breath twice as long as a one she normally held.

“When your mom asks you to get out of bed, say ​‘No, I’m practicing my breathing,’” he advised her.

Then the girls returned to the playing, with more knowledge of breathing and the role of physical movement of their bodies and instruments as a form of self-conducting.

Outside the hall, YSM Associate Dean Yaffe said he hadn’t known what Morelli was going to do with the young players but that he was impressed. ​“He’s doing stuff that helps kids at the beginning.”

Yaffe said that what often messes up musicians is they don’t get a good foundation of technical physical training and basic music training when they’re young. Double reed players in particular need to know as much as they can about breathing.

What also impressed Yaffe about the lesson is that he was communicating to Naicha and her colleagues that in effect, what we in Orpheus are doing you too are doing in New Haven.

Yaffe said kids often ​“find” themselves through music and the other arts. Kids already have to have a minimum B average to be accepted in the program, in addition to the audition. He speculated that academically the summer’s training would enhance discipline, teamwork, commitment to task, and concentration skills in general.

The program is so new they are just beginning to formally measure the effects. The overall goal of the academy, in addition to advancing the musicianship of the kids, is to create ​“musical leaders” of Naicha and the others when they return to their schools in September.

“They’ll come back so confident to school, they’ll help their friends in the band [for example] in ways they hadn’t thought,” he said.

Yaffe said he thought the NHPS music curriculum was in fine shape, with about 60 music teachers in an era when other school systems are slashing the arts. The Morse Music Academy complements and enriches, he said and when kids come to him, they have, at varying levels, experience with their instruments.

If a school system disbands its music program, when not-for-profits try to pick up, they have to start from the beginning, which is not the case in New Haven.

Naicha too has a sense of her own accomplishment. ​“I’m getting better at playing because every two weeks we have recitals and we have private lessons,” she said.

Will she end up a bassoonist when she grows up?

“I want to be a veterinarian and take care of animals. And learn how to dance. And be a chef, and also a famous bassoonist.”

At least there’s no competition from another instrument, for now.