J. Andres Ballesteros’ Music and Magic: Taking Harvard Education to East Boston
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Andres Ballesteros recalls composing classical music in his head as a child, creating his own world inspired by movie soundtracks he loved.
“Music is like magic. I get to play with sorcery and cast spells,” he joked about his long-running relationship with creating.
Today, he’s 35 and a Harvard-trained classical musician, composer and teaching artist, working to bring the magic that has so long captivated him to immigrant and working-class youth, including many in his East Boston neighborhood.
For his last creative project, “Portraits of Us,” he teamed up with local singer-songwriter Angelina Botticelli on a youth songwriting initiative at ZUMIX, the East Boston youth music nonprofit.
While Ballesteros has only lived in East Boston for a little over three years, he has made it a point to educate himself about the environmental problems facing the neighborhood, such as the ultrafine particle emissions pollution aircrafts shower on residential neighborhoods from nearby Logan International Airport.
“Where do all of these pollution-creating industries and factories end up?” he said. “In communities of color, in poor communities,” like East Boston and the surrounding areas.
(photo courtesy of Ballesteros)
Ballesteros is also interested in using music to explore the country’s attitude toward communities of color.
“We, Latinos, are constantly questioned in this country about belonging,” Ballesteros said, “particularly with the current administration, there is this message that you’re not welcome here. This is not your home.”
With these injustices in mind, he designs musical projects that involve high school and college-aged students.
“One reason I enjoy working with young people is getting them to value their own voice … their own perspectives,” he said.
He shared a similar migration experience with many of his students. While he calls the neighborhood home today, he moved a lot as a kid. Born in Kentucky, he moved back home to Mexico with his family before he was a year old, then settled in North Carolina by the time he was 7.
As a result, his family had to create a family with people who were not blood relatives. In East Boston, he said the same dynamic applies. He has made many connections through his husband, Jordan, a fifth grade teacher at a neighborhood public school.
Ballesteros said that he attaches the word “home” more to people than to places.
He credits his immigrant experience with informing him of the dynamic between voice and location. Voice becomes rooted in geography and what’s going on in that place at the time.
While at Harvard, where he majored in music, he earned a minor in government, fearing, he said, that music alone wouldn’t be enough to have an impact on society. Today, Ballesteros has created a professional life that combines the two. He composes music to educate his students on how systems of power influence their lives — even within their neighborhoods.
His former professor, Harvard musicologist Anne C. Shreffler, who taught him over a decade ago, remembered him as a good listener who could bring people together. But it was after he graduated and had started teaching music history part time at Boston Arts Academy High School, “when I first noticed Andres in this capacity…of using this magic to make change,” Shreffler said.
In the early 2020s, Ballesteros considered teaching full time but instead decided to focus more on freelance composing, teaching workshops and guest work for community organizations and schools, like the projects that occupy him today.
(photo courtesy of Ballesteros)
“On some level, I was scared,” he said. “I don’t know if … I was scared of shelving a dream, or … committing to one single thing the whole time.”
Early on, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from hosting in-person events. “We had to make everything virtually for an audience we couldn’t see, with tools many of us had just started learning how to use,” he said.
In 2023, as the pandemic was subsiding, he began writing “Five Suns,” a narrative musical piece based on the Aztec creation myth commonly known as the “La Leyenda de los Soles,” preserved in the “Codex Chimalpopoca” but reimagined for schoolchildren.
Conductor, Tianhui Ng, the music director of the Victory Players, an ensemble that premiered “Five Suns” at the Veronica Robles Cultural Center in East Boston on March 20, said that, “‘Five Suns’ is deliberately trying to introduce young people to cultures beyond the old colonial powers in England — to give voice to the people of the formerly colonized places.” The performance included singing by Veronica Robles and an animated video projection created by Mario Martinez.
“Andres has a way of firstly creating a safe space, encouraging these young people to feel like they’re seen, and so they can ask questions,” Ng said about Ballesteros’ ability to engage children and youth.
Botticelli, Ballestero’s former student and recent teaching partner, has a similar view of him.
“He has always been a teacher who felt like such a safe space,” Botticelli said. “A judgment-free zone, where I could learn open-minded, open-hearted, and not feel like I was supposed to have it all together right off the bat.”
Visit Ballesteros’ website to learn more about his work.
— Story by Marvin Juarez
— Copy edited by Channing Matha and Valerie Izquierdo
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