Students and staff at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster have a special reason to celebrate this holiday season.
The school’s music director, Rutland native Lisa Bianconi, is one of ten finalists for the first-ever Grammy Award for a music educator.
Bianconi has led the choirs and taught musical instruments at Kurn Hattin for almost thirty years. Students at the K-through-eight residential school have seen more than their share of trouble in their young lives.
But in Bianconi’s music program, they become stars.
“They love to sing and they love to perform,” Bianconi says. “Through music they find happiness and joy.”
Now it’s Bianconi’s turn in the limelight. This fall she was selected as a semifinalist -- one of twenty-five out of more than thirty thousand nominees -- for the Grammy Foundation’s new Music Educator Award.
A few weeks before Christmas Bianconi got another call from the Grammy Foundation, saying that she’d been chosen as one of ten finalists.
“And that they were going to be announcing it on CBS that evening at ten forty-five. I could not tell anybody except my immediate family and just a few of our Kurn Hattin staff,”Bianconi says.
That night Bianconi led a concert in Brattleboro featuring the school’s select choir with Natalie McMaster, the Grammy-winning fiddler.
“We could not even announce it at the show,” Bianconi recalls.
The news has brought a deluge of interview requests and media visits to Bianconi and Kurn Hattin.
Bianconi says she never expected so much attention for doing a job she loves showing up for every day.
But she says the kids are thrilled. And it’s great for the school.
“This could be the national exposure we’ve been wanting here at Kurn Hattin,” she adds. “So it’s all good.”
Since 1894 Kurn Hattin has offered education, safety, and a fresh chance for children in need. It serves about a hundred students from around the country who live in cottages on campus.
Every child is involved in the music program.
Bianconi says music gives the students a sense of belonging and a chance to shine.
Connie Sanderson, the school’s co-administrator says Bianconi deserves a Grammy and more.
“You just have to listen to her to hear what an amazing teacher she is and what she brings out in the kids and why music is so important,” Sanderson says.
The winner of the Grammy can expect another phone call in early January. Only one of the ten will fly to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony in February.
Even if she isn’t that person, Bianconi says she’s already a winner.
