After School Music Academy

Nate Krieger talks a lot with his hands, and when the subject is music education, he gets into it. Clearing off a space on his desk at Broadway Baptist Church, the executive director of Fort Worth After School Music Academy spreads a pair of big, freckled appendages out on the surface much like his music-teacher father must have done when sitting down at the organ keyboard.

“I’ve watched it transform people,” Krieger said of music education, his resonant tenor voice quivering with passion.

Music and music education have demonstrably been central to his life, first and most fundamentally as son of the late George Krieger, then with the Texas Boys’ Choir, Fort Worth’s Dorothy Shaw Bell Choir, scholarship student in TCU’s vocal performance program, and continuing today as a Fort Worth Opera chorus member and professional soloist for First Presbyterian Church.

For the past two years, after long stints with Billy Bob’s Texas and his own marketing company, Krieger has funneled much of his organizational, promotional, and musical talent and energy into the after-school music program. FWASMA began as a re-boot of the 60-year-old bell choir, which had been put on hiatus during the pandemic.

When Krieger was recruited to help get the choir going again, instruction and performance in voice, piano, strings, and guitar were added to bells. This past June, the music education program wrapped up its summer music camp. For a week, 25 kids from across the city studied children’s choir, guitar, drums, recorder, and piano, finishing with a 45-minute recital concert.

“They were so enriched by this,” Krieger said. “The confidence I saw in these kids by Day 3 was amazing, and some of them had never touched an instrument before.”

Supplying that enrichment to anyone regardless of prior experience or financial resources is the purpose at FWASMA. And, in an era of declining public-school funding, it’s particularly relevant.

“Music is one of first things to get cut,” Krieger said.

Still, Fort Worth’s public-school music education program was this year named for the 13th time one of the National Association of Music Merchants’ Best Communities for Music Education. But the district’s lengthy roster of recent and planned school closures can reduce local students’ access to music education. FWASMA aims to help keep that loss as small as possible.

One academy initiative supports local public schools’ existing music education efforts. Last year, the group worked with after-school programs at W.M. Green and Mary Louise Phillips elementary schools. FWASMA supplied the schools, both in economically disadvantaged areas, with instruments, training and transportation, and other resources to access competitions.

With the help of individual donors and grants from the Sid Richardson Foundation and others, FWASMA aims to remove financial as well as logistical and material barriers to music education. The academy’s weekly private lessons normally cost $275 a month, for instance, but students with financial needs can qualify for a discount of up to the full amount.

“We’re not going to turn anybody down,” Krieger said.

The academy’s lessons currently are taught to 62 children. Seventeen adults attend bell music lessons. Scholarships are anonymous so no one knows which students are getting financial assistance.

At Broadway Baptist, the Southside congregation that dates to 1882, the academy occupies a suite of spacious group instruction and individual breakout rooms at other times used for Bible classes. There’s plenty of room to expand in the massive Gothic Revival building completed in 1952. Pete Nelson, Broadway’s director of community ministries and partnerships, said this partnership is good for the long term.

“Broadway, for all its history, has been very committed to music education,” Nelson said.

Fort Worth’s favorite musical personage, Van Cliburn, was a long-time member, Nelson pointed out. The church’s organ, the largest in the state, is named for the famed pianist’s mother, Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn.

This fall, FWASMA plans to expand from supporting two elementary school campuses and teachers to 10. Krieger hopes to go from helping 100 students to assisting 300. The private lesson program, if all goes to plan, could double to 120 school-age students.

Another big development is partnering with Tulips FTW, the venue just around the corner from Broadway Baptist. This will add sound engineering to the academy’s offerings. Students will get hands-on, real-world experience and micro-certificates attesting to their ability running soundboards, recording software, and other tools of professional sound engineers.

Publicly sharing the love of music through performance is a big part of FWASMA’s mission. The children’s choir entertained at Sundance Square last Christmas, and bell and vocal choristers did a joint concert with the Plano Symphony in Addison.

For all these efforts, Krieger’s lifelong Fort Worth roots and deep engagement with the city’s music industry seem well-positioned to provide access to whatever support is needed to keep the program going. The keyboard instruments and music scores for the FWASMA piano program, for instance, come from TCU, where he studied vocal performance.

And he’s been gratified at the number of small and large individual donors who’ve stepped up to augment the grants that provide primary funding. But there’s still lots to be done. Before offering a firm handshake and heading off to rehearse for a principal role in a local musical, he reiterates their mission of keeping music education accessible for all students.

“We eliminate any financial barrier that gets in the way of music,” Krieger said. “Music is not a privilege. It should be available for everyone.”