When it was time to enroll their two children in a music education program, Alex and Yelena Ovando found themselves thinking outside the box. They were on the hunt for the Goldilocks of music education — not too strict to be fun, but still rigorous enough to teach the basics of music theory. They wanted something that would teach the kids to read music, but not at the expense of learning to improvise. When they couldn’t find that “just right” music program, the Ovandos decided to make their own.
“We’re literally a mom-and-pop shop,” Yelena says. “Alex and I are a husband-and-wife duo.” And what’s more — the idea for Music Box originated with the kids, Marco and Sofia. “What I’ve learned early on in my career is that you should always involve the folks that you serve into the journey, into the ‘making of’ process. Our kids are guinea pigs for ev-er-y-thing,” Yelena says. “We were watching The Greatest Showman, and the kids were like, ‘You should open your own music school.’ And we were like, ‘Riiiight.’”
But the idea stuck with them, and before long, Alex and Yelena were planning their very own music school. They took a year to do research and plan. They designed their logo, business model, and curriculum, found a location for the school, and got to work. Music Box opened in Germantown — about six months before the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ovandos wouldn’t let that stop them though. So, just half a year into its journey, Music Box pivoted to a remote learning model. “We didn’t know how we could help,” Yelena remembers. “We decided we should keep going. We made sure that all of our educators were taken care of. We took instruments to their homes.”
Now the instructors and the students are back in the school, in one-on-one, group, and band-style lessons and performance opportunities. “We had all of our showcases and masterclasses online, but now we’re back in the building, which feels great!”
But how to describe the Music Box curriculum? “We teach music as a language,” Yelena explains. “We’re a trilingual family. I am from Russia, my husband is Guatemalan, and the kids are just confused half of the time. They speak three languages. They think everybody else is that way.
“We know a little bit about how to learn other languages, so we apply that same concept to music.” Yelena says parents of young children often ask if they should wait until their child is older to begin music lessons. But, she says, “We always say ‘Well, when did you start talking to your child?’” Music has rules, yes, but there are patterns based on those rules — patterns a child can begin to intuit if they are surrounded by music from an early age.
“This is our approach,” she explains. “When a kid is talking, they make mistakes. They are not saying things right, but you embrace those. There are no wrong notes. Don’t be intimidated.” Yelena invokes bassist Victor Wooten as she explains, saying that one should never lose the groove to find the right note. In this way, the instructors at Music Box create a non-judgemental environment, where students can make mistakes without fear.
That’s not all the instructors at Music Box do to meet students where their interests lie.
“The first question we always ask is, ‘What kind of music are you into?’” Yelena says. “You can learn how to speak ‘music’ as well on ‘Old Town Road’ or ‘Baby Shark’ just as well as you would on ‘Moonlight Sonata.’” So, for piano, guitar, bass, drums, and voice, they teach students to play (or sing) along with backing tracks — in a wide variety of styles and genres. That way the student can internalize what it feels like to play in sync with other music. They incorporate an app, video, and recordings — technology is part of the process, too, making Music Box a truly 21st century-style learning experience. They’ve taken the things they learned from remote teaching and incorporated those elements into the lessons.
Yelena says that all of the things taught at Music Box — how to read music, improvise, play with others, and more — are designed to help create well-rounded, confident individuals. They’re not setting out to create Mozarts or Jimi Hendrixes, but they do hope students will have more confidence to go along with a well-developed skill. Maybe it will even yield other benefits. “I went to college on a full scholarship because I knew how to play piano,” Yelena says.
In the end, though, it’s about cultivating a love of music, a goal borne out by their business model. “To this day we don’t have a contract,” she says. “They take lessons for as long as they love it.
“We come from an honest place. We really want to make a difference,” Yelena says of the Ovando family business. “We come home exhausted, but we come home happy and accomplished.”
Music Box is located at 7516 Capital Dr., Germantown. For more info, visit musicboxinc.com.