July 8, 2004
--
Latin Jazz musician Steve Pouchie is also
a Bronx high-school music teacher with a favorite theme — he
believes that inner-city students taught to play Beethoven
improve in English and math.
"Learning to play the piano
organizes and disciplines the mind and increases the attention
span of students," said Pouchie, who has taught music
appreciation and piano at Walton HS for seven years.
At the school, he set up a
digital piano lab with 30 keyboards and a CD recording studio
where "I take kids from learning the piano to how to produce
soundtracks for recordings.
"I'm a contemporary music
teacher," he said. "I teach kids how to play piano, but I also
teach them how to produce hip-hop tracks. I show them that you
can play classically and learn to do your own beats."
Grant Harper Reid, Pouchie's
friend since they both went to Bard College, said the
Bronx-born musician deserves the Educator Liberty Medal
because "he brings the kids to the music and it inspires them.
It's not limited to music."
Pouchie, who is of Puerto
Rican descent, plays the vibraphone and specializes in Latin
Jazz, "jazz improvisation over a salsa type of music without
vocals."
His quintet, the Latin Jazz
Society Ensemble, plays at different venues around town, and
he also produces a TV show called "Latin Jazz Alive 'n'
Kickin."
But it's through education
that "I've changed a lot of people's lives through music," he
said. "When I . . . get them off the street and into a
productive mode, I put them into writing their songs, hip hop,
rap and pop."
