Multi-lingual families from across Long Island took part in the first-ever Long Island presentation of Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, a nationally acclaimed initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, hosted by Family & Children’s Association and performed at the Long Island Children’s Museum here tonight.
The live music program brought together local families—many with newborns and toddlers—and professional teaching artists for the performance of 10 custom-made lullabies written in collaboration between the families and the Carnegie Hall musicians. The lullabies were written and performed in Spanish and English.
“Bringing the Lullaby Project to Long Island is about strengthening the earliest bonds between parents and their children through the power of music,” said Jeffrey Reynolds, president and CEO of Family & Children’s Association. “The nice thing about this is it also creates some legacy for families, and our hope is that these lullabies that these families have created will go on for generation after generation.”
Created by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, The Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents with artists to create personalized lullabies that support parent-child connection, emotional health, and early learning.
“I felt good, very happy, to sing the song I wrote for my son,” said Isidra Mejia, of Hempstead, who performed the song she wrote for her son Joseph.
“Music is a way to strengthen the connection between parents and children,” said Erika Floreska, President, Long Island Children’s Museum. “There’s actually a scientific study that shows when music is a shared experience, brain waves start to align between a parent and child.”
Musicians included Camila Cortina, a Cuban-born pianist; Linda EPO, a Queens-born vocalist and multi-instrumentalist of Haitian and Mexican heritage; Gerson Lazo-Quiroga, a Chilean bassist, composer, and Grammy-winning recording engineer; and Takafumi Nikaido, a Japanese percussionist from Sapporo and a Berklee College of Music graduate.
“Not a lot of organizations believe in the power of music the way FCA does,” said Camila Cortina, one of the musicians who worked with the families to write the lullabies. “When the moms heard what came out, they became proud. You see the magic start happening.”
