* Photograph by Shane Van Boxtel / Image Studios
Lawrence Community Music School
Karen Bruno grew up in New York, went to college in Massachusetts and taught overseas in Senegal before her first American high school teaching job brought her to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. More than 25 years later, she still calls Northeast Wisconsin home. It was a great place to raise a child, she says, but it’s also one of the most culturally rich arts communities anywhere.
Bruno started at Lawrence University as artistic director of its community girl choir 25 years ago, and 12 years ago she took over as director of the nonprofit Lawrence Community Music School. When she participated in a national survey about a decade ago, she says, the Lawrence Community Girl Choir ranked among the nation’s largest alongside choirs in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“Appleton alone has a professional symphony, a youth ballet, a youth orchestra program…it has the community youth music school; it has a girl choir program; it has a boy choir program; it has a semi-professional adult choir; it has a semi-professional community theater. It’s remarkable,” Bruno says.
Bruno, who calls the community music school “the most heart-centered group of humans” she’s ever encountered, serves in a key administrative role but also continues to teach through the girl choir program and as a member of the music education faculty at Lawrence’s celebrated conservatory. Teaching, she says, is first and foremost in everything she does.
“The combined passion for your subject area and passion for students is critical,” says Bruno, who is proud that many of her former students are now successful music teachers themselves. “I think what I love about teaching is that you continue to learn. It’s rare that I’m in any teaching situation where I have predicted accurately all the outcomes, all the responses. I love that. I love that the arts teach us that ambiguity is a safe place to be.”
While the study and teaching of arts thrives in ambiguity, Bruno’s former students are certain of one thing: Her impact upon them has been indelible.
“I’ve made sure to keep Karen on speed dial because of the impact she has had and continues to have on my life,” wrote her nominator and former student, Alyson Krokosky. “While the expectation of any participant of an auditioned choir program may rightly be that one will emerge as a better musician, there’s so much more that one gains from joining a choir with Bruno at the helm: a sense of community and a space for dialogue and learning about life that is unmatched.”
With all that she has meant to her students, Bruno says her students inspire her to be her best — and maintaining her connections with them keeps her motivated. When she started an alumni choir last September, she says she was hoping to hear from a dozen singers or so.
“But 30 women showed up,” she says. “They came ready to jump back into a space of vulnerability and connection through the music-making process that was just beautiful. I hear stories like ‘we never would have known each other if it weren’t for girl choir’ and ‘we couldn’t leave because we love it so much.’ They have grown up together in a very unique way.”
That growth, Krokosky says, is a credit to what Bruno “has cultivated in us,” creating opportunities for students to be both their authentic selves and supportive of one another.
“It’s like a farmer,” Bruno says. “I’m getting the land ready — you know, turning the soil and planting the seeds and making sure there’s water and sun. The plants do their own growing.”
