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By Jim Melchiorre

Dante Vega Lamere, an eighth-grader at the Manhattan Academy of Technology, is that rare young teenager with a lengthy institutional memory.

“The first time I walked in they had six chairs set up, and only five people were there,” Lamere said, recalling his introduction to the Trinity Youth Chorus in 2005.

Since then, the Trinity Wall Street music program for young people has resembled a growth industry. The Trinity Youth Chorus includes seventy current performers in three different groups. Musicians between five and seven make up the Peppercorns, Junior Choristers are eight through ten years old, and youth between eleven and eighteen sing as Senior Choristers.

As impressive as that growth seems, it’s only a small part of the Trinity Wall Street children’s music program.

“What has expanded greatly is the number of children in our outreach program,” said Melissa Attebury, Program Coordinator for the Trinity Youth Chorus and Music Education.

“I think we reached about 750 kids this fall alone.”

That musical outreach includes two elementary schools, Brooklyn’s P.S. 315, and P.S. 117 in Queens, and the High School of Economics and Finance in Lower Manhattan, a stone’s throw from Trinity Church.

“We were able reach out to children who otherwise would have no opportunities for music education,” Attebury said.

Now Trinity’s young musicians are celebrating an experience which generations have coveted: a performance at Carnegie Hall. The occasion was the February 2 gala marking the fortieth anniversary of the Interschool Orchestras of New York, which describes itself as the “only program in New York City where students see children their own age performing orchestral music.”

“The Trinity Florentine Youth Orchestra is one of seven ensembles that are part of the Interschool Orchestra organization,” said Attebury.

“During the initial planning stages last summer, the ISO thought about possibly using a youth chorus during the concert.

“Both Julian Wachner (Director of Music and the Arts at Trinity Wall Street) and I suggested that using the Trinity Youth Chorus would be a great collaboration and opportunity for our choristers,” Attebury explained.

So both the Trinity Florentine Youth Orchestra and the Trinity Youth Chorus collaborated on the Perelman Stage of Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The Junior and Senior Choristers performed an arrangement of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, in the original German, with the youth orchestra playing alongside, under the direction of Robert Johnston and Amelia Hollander Ames.

Shameeka Harris says she’s very excited that her daughter India Cordero, got to play Carnegie Hall at the age of ten, as a violinist in the Trinity Florentine.

“I think it’s a honor. I tell my daughter ‘do you know how many people dream of playing Carnegie Hall?’”

At their last pre-concert rehearsal, in Trinity Wall Street’s Parish Hall, the young musicians kept the focus on their music, while acknowledging the big event later in the week.

“I’m really excited,” said Janeva Dimen, a fifth-grader and a three-year veteran of the Trinity Youth Chorus.

“I’ve never been to Carnegie Hall. Once you hear Carnegie Hall, you know it’s big.”

Performance opportunities on world-famous stages notwithstanding, Trinity Wall Street’s commitment to music education has its foundation in what the church calls its mission to “raise up a generation of leaders.” In addition to the three public schools currently served by the music outreach program, Trinity plans to expand next year to P.S. 140 on the Lower East Side. In the past several months, a staff member of Trinity’s music education program has taught an after-school chorus at the Queens-based organization called Hour Children, which serves formerly-incarcerated women and their families.

Nick Pisano’s fifth-grade daughter Sarah plays in the Trinity Florentine Orchestra. Pisano says Sarah’s been exposed to a model for life that’s relevant well beyond the concert hall.

“It’s kids from all over the city, different socioeconomic groups, all coming together to play beautiful music and make new friendships.”