Get Juntao to Carnegie Hall: A Life-Changing Opportunity

HELP JUNTAO GET TO CARNEGIE HALL!

Juntao is a young man whom I have tutored in writing and mentored in life for the last eight years. We often joke that he is my adopted son. I first learned that he was an accomplished piano player, when, one day, during a fire evacuation drill at the high school where I work and where he was a student, he played me a clip of a piece that he had arranged. It was so beautiful, and such a surprise, that I started crying right there in the staff parking lot, surrounded by other students and teachers waiting to be let back in to the building. I turned to him and said, "Juntao, you are remarkable!" I had never heard such raw talent, such musicality before.

Unfortunately, Juntao has not had an easy life. His Chinese immigrant parents have worked tirelessly to provide Juntao and his sister with the educational opportunities that they would not have had in China; however, his father's income as a janitor is not enough to provide financial stability. Juntao has worked one or two jobs for as long as I have known him to help support his family. Sadly, his father's job benefits changed this past year, and the family no longer has health insurance coverage, so when Juntao became ill and had to be hospitalized overnight, he received a whopping $7,000 bill. Along with the payments for the personal loans that Juntao and his sister have taken out to help finance their schooling at UW, this is too much debt for the family to manage. Juntao has had to increase his hours at his two jobs, while still attending college full time, to try to make ends meet.

But what does this have to do with Carnegie Hall, you ask?

Juntao has caught the attention of a music professor at UW who has connections to the directors at Carnegie Hall. The professor, along with a handful of promising young musicians (Juntao among them) have a college-funded weekend trip to NY planned on March 14 to meet with the directors of Carnegie Hall. This could CHANGE Juntao's life! However, because he feels such responsibility for paying off the debt he owes as quickly as possible, he is currently intending to stay behind so he can work that whole weekend.

I told him I WOULD NOT let that happen! When I asked him if he would consider going to NY if I could raise enough money to pay off the hospital bill, he accepted gratefully. The professor is aware that Juntao may have to forgo the trip, but is holding space for him, just in case his situation changes.

I hope that you will join me in getting this incredibly talented young man to Carnegie Hall, in the hopes that the directors find him as worthy of playing there as his professor and I do!