On February 10, the Edgecombe County School Board approved a new middle school music program with support from Calvary, Tarboro. Photo courtesy of the Rev. Stephen Mazingo
How Calvary, Tarboro, is bringing music back to Edgecombe County’s middle schools
By Summerlee Walter
Calvary, Tarboro, is a musical church. The congregation supplies both an adult and a children’s choir with singers. They have performed community concerts ranging from Handel’s Messiah to Advent Lessons & Carols with a full orchestra, and in the past the church has run music summer camps for children. They just finished a capital campaign to raise funds for a new organ.
Tarboro itself is also a musical community. Nettie Williams, who served as Calvary’s music director in the late 1960s, taught chorus at West Edgecombe High School during integration and now conducts the Tarboro Choral Society; Calvary hosts some of their concerts. Lloyd Owens, another former Calvary organist, was a beloved music teacher at Tarboro High School who started a music appreciation class, led summer drama workshops and took the chorus to sing at the former Tarrytown Mall in Rocky Mount at Christmas.
Despite a community culture of music, as so often happens in education, several years ago Edgecombe County Public Schools lost its middle school choir and band programs due to budget constraints. While the high school music program continues, burgeoning performers are at a disadvantage compared to their peers who started their musical educations earlier, and the district is less able to compete in band and choral competitions.
Happily, Tarboro is a small town where people know each other. And when people know each other, the Holy Spirit has an easier time moving amongst them. And when the Holy Spirit can move freely, good things happen.
A LEGACY BUILT THROUGH TIME
Calvary is blessed with an endowed rector’s discretionary fund to which generations of parishioners have contributed. When the Rev. Stephen Mazingo arrived as the church’s new rector in the summer of 2023, one of the first conversations he had with the vestry was about how to use the blessing of the rector’s discretionary fund.
“We had the opportunity to do more than what we were doing,” he explained. “I started engaging in conversations with the community to see what the needs are in our community. We wanted to do something that supports the community, something that will connect us to the community and the community to us in a deeper way, and something that is tied to some of our passions.”
It was Mazingo’s children who ultimately formed the connection that would lead to a fruitful new partnership. The mother of one of their playmates, Erin Swanson, is the assistant superintendent of innovation and strategic planning at the school district, and she offered to introduce Mazingo to the new superintendent, Dr. Andy Bryan, who, as it turned out, was looking for a way to restart the middle school music program.
It felt like a good fit. The church cared about music. Two of its former music directors, Owens and Williams, had made an impact on music education in the district. Mazingo comes from a family of educators, including a father who once served as the interim superintendent of Edgecombe County. His wife, Abigail, had performed in Owens’ summer production of “Annie” as a child. As Swanson walked into the superintendent’s office to tell him about Calvary’s desire to make a difference in the community, a group of music teachers and board members were walking out after a conversation about finding a way to bring music back to the middle schools. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is not subtle.
A SIGNIFICANT GIFT
After more conversations with Williams, music teachers and the superintendent, a plan formed, and during the February 10 meeting of the school board, it became reality. Mazingo was joined by Candis Owens, widow of Lloyd Owens and an active Calvary parishioner, along with other parishioners and a representative from the North Carolina Community Foundation, to present the formal plan for the Calvary Middle School Band and Chorus Program. Calvary would fund a weekly after-school middle school music program led by staff from the current high school music program. The church’s initial gift of $30,000 will purchase instruments, and its sustaining annual donation of $30,000 will fund teacher salaries and buses to bring students to a central location each week. The ongoing support will continue into the foreseeable future.
The Lloyd Owens Endowment for the Arts in Edgecombe County, a fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation established in honor of Lloyd Owens and devoted to supporting the arts in Edgecombe County, also donated funds to purchase sheet music for the program.
Details are still being finalized, but the program has a planned launch this fall. One of the high school band teachers has been doing some programming for middle schoolers, and the students are excited about the expanded opportunities the next school year will bring. Calvary is also excited about the new music program, and the congregation envisions hosting concerts in the sanctuary, running a summer camp and helping the after-school program partner with the Tarboro Choral Society.
“We want to be involved. We want them to know that we are part of this with them and for them to know us,” Mazingo explained.
There’s one final interesting footnote to this story, another movement of the Holy Spirit. Re-establishing the middle school music program isn’t the first time the rector’s discretionary fund at Calvary has been used to support a musical student. During Lent 2024, Mazingo heard a story that helped jump start the entire process. During the tenure of former rector the Rev. Charlie Riddle, Williams, who was teaching at the newly integrated West Edgecombe High School, asked her priest to consider using his discretionary fund to pay for the college education of one of her choral students, a Black teenager with a gift for music but no money for college. Riddle agreed.
One bachelor’s and one master’s degree later, James joined St. Peter’s in Fernandina Beach, Florida, where he met the Rev. Stephen Mazingo and became friends.
“That connection to the support the discretionary fund has been able to give over time, that connection to music, it just made for this beautiful God moment of coming together,” Mazingo explained.
“It’s really a gift to be able to use the generous gifts that people gave to that rector’s discretionary fund over a long time period to be able to do this.”
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