13
Apr
2020
The Bar Mitzvah Project Heard Around the World
By Marc Shapiro
Harrison Fribush wanted to get two choirs from two different parts of Baltimore together to unite through the power of music and raise a little money for music education. But he never expected his message to reach millions of people and raise more than $10,000 for local music programs.
“I wanted to use my passion for music to really make a difference in Baltimore, so I just thought of ways I could try and raise money for after-school programs.”
Last year, Harrison brought the choir from the Cardinal Shehan School, a Catholic school in Baltimore, to Krieger Schechter Day School, a Jewish school in Pikesville where he is now an eighth grader, to perform with its choir in a one-off performance.
“I wanted to use my passion for music to really make a difference in Baltimore, so I just thought of ways I could try and raise money for after-school programs,” Harrison, 14, said.
Harrison, who plays drums in Stages’ Rising Stars All Access Band, enlisted a videographer and sound engineer to document the day, which led to the project taking on a life of its own. The short documentary was widely circulated, and that’s when producers at ABC’s “The View” caught wind of it.
“When we first started, I thought that we were just getting together and we were going to raise one or two thousand dollars, but it turned into so much more,” Harrison, who has been playing drums since age 10, said. “It turned into something more than just music.”
The initial performance and fundraiser was for Harrison’s bar mitzvah service project, a community service endeavor many Jewish teens undertake as part of their bar or bat mitzvahs. As of March 15, its GoFundMe fundraiser had raised nearly $12,000 for Baltimore nonprofit Believe in Music and the music program at Cardinal Shehan. Harrison’s goal is to raise $25,000.
It all started when Harrison approached Krieger Schechter’s choir director, Erika Schon, about his idea. Although he doesn’t sing in the choir, he often accompanies them on drums. On Schon’s suggestion, Harrison sent a letter to Kenyatta Hardison, the choir director at Cardinal Shehan, to see if the school’s choir would want to come perform with Krieger Schechter students. To their surprise, Hardison wrote back and accepted the invitation.
On Jan. 18, 2019, the two choirs came together and performed for a small crowd at Krieger Schechter.
“They met for the first time, they shared lunch and we all sang together,” Harrison said. “It was really amazing to see how two different communities could come together through a shared passion.”
The documentary that captured the day was widely circulated, reaching the office of “The View,” and the students were invited to perform in the spring of 2019. But before the students were even told, the performance was cancelled as host Whoopi Goldberg contracted pneumonia.
That fall, the Archdiocese of Baltimore held its annual gala to raise money for Catholic school scholarships, and the evening featured a screening of the documentary and a performance by the Cardinal Shehan School choir accompanied by Harrison and four Krieger Schechter students. There were nearly 1,000 people in attendance that night. It got the project back on the radar of “The View,” and students were again invited to perform on the show.
The students went up on Jan. 14, and were featured on the show’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day episode.
“It was really amazing to see how the message spread from just one community to two communities to the whole nation,” Harrison said. “It was a really surreal experience.”
As the project continues to raise money, Harrison is bringing his passion for music to Stages. His first performance with the Rising Stars took place on March 3.
“They’re all amazing musicians,” he said of his bandmates. And he loves being in a studio environment for rehearsals. “It’s all really professional and that’s what I like about it.”
Contribute to Harrison’s Music Education Matters fundraiser here.