KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Cellist Trilla Ray-Carter is a Midwestern musical success story.  She traveled and performed throughout Europe and was a studio musician in Los Angeles for television and film before returning to the Midwest in 1993.  She is currently on the music faculty of William Jewell College in Liberty.  As a Kindermusik instructor, she serves 150 families a year in Leawood, maintains a private cello studio, and still finds time perform with the Liberty Symphony, lead the Kansas City Baroque Consortium, and freelance with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra.  The seed of her active musical life was planted in her hometown of Joplin, Missouri at Irving Elementary School and Joplin High.

Both schools were completely destroyed in the May 22^nd tornado that killed over 150 people and tragically transformed the community.   Thankfully, Trilla Ray-Carter’s family was spared the destruction that befell so many of their neighbors and friends.  “Because my family was safe, it gave me the chance to focus on the larger community more completely.”

In a recent appeal to the Kansas City community Ray-Carter remembers her first cello and the lessons she received at Irving Elementary.  “All of the school instruments at Irving and the High School, as well as many of the student’s personal instruments, were destroyed in the tornado. “  She is working with the Joplin School District to begin collecting donations of instruments in good working condition and/or monetary donations for the music programs.  She has already been contacted by K.C. Strings. “Joplin has received a significant gift of 44 string instruments from K.C. Strings in a variety of sizes and Johnson Strings of Boston, Massachusetts is sending instruments, accessories and sheet music to the cause.”  Band instruments are also being collected.

Chamber Music of America in New York City, Foundation for Music Education in Lubbock, TX and numerous schools and agencies around the country have also stepped up to help out.  Trilla Ray-Carter recommends a more direct route for assisting the students to Kansas Citians.

She recommends several ways our community can help.

• Donate an instrument no longer in use that you have in the closet or basement.  (She will be planning several trips down to Joplin from Kansas City over the coming months and will be happy to store them for the summer and deliver them when school starts.)
• Offer to help clean and make minor repairs to donated instruments.
• Assist her in coordinating contact with national instrument manufacturers and music dealers to ask for donations of instruments and music.
• Participate in a Classical Music Concert Fundraiser in September for the Joplin Schools Music Programs. This project is still in the development stage. 
• Make a monetary donation to:

Joplin Schools Tornado Relief Fund
Earmark your check  "Music"
send directly to:
Joplin North Middle School
Attn: Kim Vann
102 North Gray Ave
Joplin, MO 64801

According to Ray-Carter, the school district is using an empty big-box store as the location for their high school next year.  They are in the process of retrofitting it with classrooms and other educational spaces. The superintendent of the Joplin district sent a letter explaining that the insurance the district had on the instruments can’t come close to meeting their needs for next year.

“If  we are so successful that there are extra instruments, afterward they will go to students in need in the Kansas City area.” 

Please contact Trilla Ray-Carter at her email address trillmont@kc.rr.com  to participate in this worthy cause. 

Top Photo: Joplin High School Auditorium after the May 22, 2011 tornado

By Megan Browne Helm

Classical, Vocal and Theatre Contributor

Megan Browne Helm grew up singing, dancing and acting.  Inspired by Emma Kirkby as a high school student in St. Louis she went on to study voice and sing with the Collegium Musicum at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio where she also had a radio show of contemporary classical music on WOBC.  At the University of Kansas she had the pleasure of working with former Kings’ Singer, Simon Carrington in his Collegium Musicum and Oread consort. Years later, she was a choral fellow at the Yale School of Music’s  Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  She is currently singing with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus under the direction of Charles Bruffy. 

 As a freelance music and culture writer her work can be found on KCMetropolis.org, presentmagazine.com, the Lawrence Journal World, Shawnee Magazine, Leawood Lifestyle Magazine and KC Parent.  She was one of 26 journalists in the country chosen as a NEA Institute Fellow for Classical Music and Opera at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Her current interest is how classical music remains relevant through active collaborations with artists in different fields, including science.  She also sees a connection between classical music, travel and food as a way to engage all of the senses in a 360 degree cultural experience.  She blogs at raworganum.wordpress.com.