Piano Without Borders: Kimball Gallagher & 88 International

Kimball Gallagher 

[Speaker 3]

Welcome to the Trout Show, where stories of passion, purpose, and possibility come alive. Today we spotlight concert pianist, composer, and visionary Kimball Gallagher, a true pianist without borders. From a groundbreaking 88 concert tour that spanned every continent to the founding of 88 International, Kimball has transformed music into a powerful force for change.

Through 88 International, he empowers secondary school students across Tunisia, Senegal, Morocco, Myanmar, and beyond to lead, create, and reshape their communities through student-run music clubs and youth leadership. Join us as Kimball Gallagher shares the journey from Carnegie Hall to classrooms around the world, and the enduring belief that music can change lives.

[The Trout]

The first question I have for you is this, and that is, so here you are, a well-known concert pianist, playing Carnegie Hall. People love your music, your styles, and all that stuff. And then you said, you know what I think I need to do?

I need to go to another country and set up an organization to help kids love music. Why did you get that started in the first place?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Well, I think the straightforward answer is just music is always a connecting bridge between people. And so as artists, almost any type of music one plays, that's kind of the fundamental, one of the fundamental goals is just connecting with people. But actually, I started with something called the 88 Concert Tour, and it's just meant to be a playful name because there's 88 keys on the piano.

And so this was a self-managed global tour that ended up going to all seven continents. And what I was trying to explore at first is, as you may know, a lot of early, you mentioned Bach, but a lot of classical music like Mozart, including Bach or Mozart piano music or Chopin or Beethoven or Schubert. A lot of it was conceived to be played not in large concert halls like we might imagine, but actually in small, more intimate spaces like private homes and things.

And my idea of the 88 Concert Tour was to do a world tour, but of small homes in general. That was the intent. And so having this intent, it led me, and I like that because you talk to the audience more freely.

It's much less formal. It can provide a much more immediate experience, a much more intense emotional experience for the audience, for the music, because they're right next to it. You know, in a lot of theaters, you need, it's a cliche, you need binoculars to see it if you're far away.

There's a certain distance, there's a certain distance. So by doing this, my intent was really also to connect much more with audience members. And those audience members would then in turn kind of help me find new possibilities of where to play.

And that led to playing not only in homes, but in conventional venues as well as numerous schools. And as I started to travel, it's just a natural thing that the audience members in these home concerts thought of. They thought of, you know, their kids, or like, oh, could you go to my kids' school in the afternoon before the concert?

So the education piece, working with youth, is just the natural extension of playing, you know, concerts. And I'd always been teaching private piano lessons and things like that, so I always saw the role as teacher and performer not to be two totally separate and distinct things, but things that were intimately linked. At least for me, you know, different musicians would have a different opinion on that, of course.

But yeah, as I traveled, especially traveling outside of the U.S., but also in the U.S., it was always evident to me that while it's always nice to have a concert, the need, if you will, was, globally speaking, was really just to, you know, can you come do a workshop? Can you do a masterclass? And after a while, it's like, well, it's nice that you came and did a masterclass and had a, in some cases, like this small music camp for 10 or 20 students.

But, you know, we need a program for 10,000 students or 5,000 students. And so it was really this organic process of kind of, you know, in a way barnstorming, you know, doing just the usual tours and then seeing the need and then going to places again and again and noticing that if I really want to make an impact from an educational perspective, you need to have, you need to be working sort of at a so-called institutional level. You need to have an organization.

You know, that's how you can make partnerships with other organizations, apply for different types of grants and be sort of a viable actor. You know, as an individual, one can't necessarily do that all the time. And so that's really how that was the sort of natural process that occurred.

And one of the countries in particular that I like to highlight is in Tunisia, where there was, of course, a revolution in 2011 and led to the so-called Arab Spring. And there was an education minister at around 2015. And he said, and I had been performing in Tunisia and teaching in Tunisia a lot.

And the edge of this minister said, we need to have a piano in every school. We need to revive our cultural clubs. And all my friends there were like, you've got to talk to this minister.

He's talking about pianos and cultural clubs. And this is not a typical discourse for a Tunisian minister necessarily to have.

[The Trout]

I would think not. Yeah.

[Kimball Gallagher]

So long story short, that was how one of our education programs got started, really from this this need to to revive these after school culture clubs. And then we ask ourselves all these questions. Well, what is the program going to be?

How is it going to work? So I could talk like this for a week. Oh, I understand.

[The Trout]

But I think that I thought about when I was reading about the organization and and that is, first off, you said that we all I've been a musician my whole life to obviously playing a little bit different instrument than you do. But there are people and especially what you play, there are no lyrics per se. So music is international.

It doesn't matter. And I've had the privilege of interviewing people throughout the world that are musicians. Everybody's the same way.

But the one thing I think I like about this is the fact that it takes out and the world is this way. It takes out the politics of the world, because kids, as you know, they don't care about politics. They don't care about that.

And kids, what I learned about being at the Boys and Girls Clubs, they don't pay any attention to race. It's just another kid. So when I when I saw this and saw these kids and I watched a couple of videos and things like that and see the joy that they have as as an instrument, as a person who's played your whole life, we can all go back to remember when we first started how difficult it was.

And we also remember the time when we succeeded, whether it was playing three chords on a guitar or play a short little Bach piece. So I kind of envision these kids working together and that that success brings happiness. And it changes everything as far as economic situations.

You don't think about that. You're just over there to provide them the pleasure of writing or doing music. I'm sure you've seen that over the years that you've done.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Oh, absolutely. We think of ourselves as doing sort of not to sound lofty about it, but it's sort of like human development with music because we're giving kids, as you mentioned, the Boys and Girls Club. And it's very similar.

A lot of the kids we work with, first of all, they do all different types of genres of music. I may be a classical musician, but in our program there they play guitar, they play cajon, they play oud, they play traditional instruments, they sing in many different languages and they create their own music. And for most of the students, this is the only time they've even been asked to express themselves.

Because in the various countries where we work, there isn't a lot of space for the so-called voice of the youth to come out at all. It's usually like you just have to go memorize things or something like that. And even music education is like that.

Even if there are some music education, it's more like rote learning rather than creation. And so we focus a lot on the creation, which leads to some of those really positive impacts, self-esteem going up, number of friendships, sincere, high-quality friendships going up, all these memorable moments that groups are creating when they have a performance or when they make a recording or when they overcome the numerous obstacles that they have to go through in order to do the activities we have asked them to do, namely create and write songs. And then, you know, sort of crystallizing the expression of their group, which really represents something that's important to those kids.

[The Trout]

The question I had too was, do you have relationships? I know you've got all these different countries, set up these different organizations. Do they talk amongst themselves, like Tunisia talks to whatever country they want to talk to?

Do they have that interaction?

[Kimball Gallagher]

To some extent, yes. We're trying to nurture that. I mean, the first step is actually nurturing it inside of a country, because like even Tunisia, it seems on the map pretty small, but it's quite regional.

In other words, you'll find kids from one region and you'll find out they never met kids from another region. So that's kind of like the first, I don't want to say barrier because it's pretty easy, but they still have cliches, you know, cliches about the way people are in that other place, you know. And so within their country, right?

[The Trout]

Within their country.

[Kimball Gallagher]

OK, OK. Yeah. So that's sort of the first kind of network to nurture.

Right. And yes, they do. And, you know, they meet each other and they don't know each other.

They find out they were both in, for example, a Tunisia 88 or a Morocco 88 club. There can be like this instant bond, like you were talking. And now we are working a little bit on how do we link together the various clubs that we have from country to country?

And of course, that's a different exercise than within country to a certain extent. But yes, the short answer is yes. And we're trying to do that more, encourage that more.

[The Trout]

Well, that's no different in the United States. Other people are not liking New Yorkers. It's not different.

[Kimball Gallagher]

I'm a Bostonian, but I went I lived in New York for a long time, but I went to school in Houston.

[The Trout]

I saw that you went to Rice, didn't you?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Yeah. So I have a lot of great memories of Texas. Of course, I love Texas.

[The Trout]

Well, as a native, we like that. Come back anytime. Yeah.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

[The Trout]

Unless you're from Oklahoma. And it's like, wait a minute, just a second. People don't understand us Texans, you have to be a Texan to understand us.

And we're very egotistical about it. So when I hear people in New York talk about politics in Texas, I just laugh like, oh, yeah, yeah, you don't have a clue.

[Kimball Gallagher]

But I think that's the correct that's the correct response, I think.

[The Trout]

Well, it's like people, Boston and, you know, Yankees versus the Sox.

[Kimball Gallagher]

So, you know, versus the Sox. Yes.

[The Trout]

So, you know, you know how that goes.

[Kimball Gallagher]

I do. I do.

[The Trout]

Well, hey, and you've done it long enough now. And I was reading about this, that you've actually created mentors for the younger kids that are coming up.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Absolutely.

[The Trout]

And where do you see, though, as you've grown this, these kids, do any of them get in? I hate to say this like this, but do any of them get into the music business, so to speak, or take it, whether it's just local or something, that's what they end up doing for a livelihood?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Yes, there's I would say five to 10 percent, you know, go on to do music studies in university or they join. Yeah, not or they do. They're part of orchestras.

They're part of groups. They're part of bands. They try to have their own initiatives.

There's there's a strong number. Yeah. And we kind of pride ourselves on having that aspect.

But we also have students that do a whole number of other activities, you know, economics, medicine, engineering, communications, architecture. And we love that because, you know, those are also people who love music, who've had very meaningful experiences in their own lives with with music and with the arts more broadly. And then, you know, they attend, you know, musicians need audience.

Right. So our goal is more about getting people involved in music in whatever way is appropriate to them. And for some, obviously, it's to become a musician.

And for others, it's a beautiful experience. You know, some some of the people in our programs, you know, the most talented ones, they tend to be talented in a lot of areas. And so they're very, you know, quote unquote, in demand.

So, yeah, they a lot of the people who have some of the best talents in music end up still going into other non-musical fields. Yeah. All kinds of life paths.

[The Trout]

So you have all these countries. Is there a common thread? I had to look up Tunisia to see what the language was, because I didn't I mean, I had no idea because a lot of times French and all that stuff and like Morocco.

But is there is there a common language? I mean, obviously, you probably picked up some of the Arabic or whatever, you know, to be able to relate with them. But do all of them kind of speak the same language?

I mean, obviously, English is what we want to have them speak, but that's probably not the case in a lot of these countries. Well, I mean, it's I was talking to. Yeah, go ahead.

[Kimball Gallagher]

No, no. English is pretty popular. I mean, it really there's a huge range.

There's a huge range. There isn't a really straightforward answer to that. Believe it or not, you know, in a country like Senegal, for example, they have so many different national languages, like up to 28.

So I don't even know how many languages they speak. But but we do have I was going to say one common language they speak is we have some very basic terminology in our program that is used across programs. Things like it might sound silly, but the word club, the word member, the word leader, stuff like that.

So then, you know, who's the leader of your club? And then that means something to people in our program. You know, we're not trying to create, you know, this deeply like cultish coded language, but we have some basic terms that refer to certain things within our program that I think there's a common understanding.

We talk about executive alumni. We have different squads like the media squad. They manage the media, the leadership training squad.

They become leadership trainers, the creativity training squad. And so this is sort of the common and those those terms also represent for some the path that they followed within our program. Maybe in the first year they were a simple member.

The next year they become a leader. Then later they become an executive alumni. Then they go on to be a leadership trainer themselves.

That's one of the transformative aspects in our program. Actually, it's very interesting when somebody participates in the program and then realizes I myself could potentially have a very powerful impact on my own community or in my own right. And this is part of that real growth element you see, especially in teenagers or young adults, when it's not only about them, they can make it make impact on others.

And this is how they're building, building community.

[The Trout]

Well, you said this earlier about playing in smaller venues. One of the things I'd always admire about musicians I interview is that they can bring an acoustic guitar and sit down in front of two or three hundred people and hold their their, you know, their own for an hour, an hour and a half. That's that to me is really cool because you can't do that unless you're kind of talented to do it.

So you've recognized that, too. And also, I mean, as a rock blues musician, do I want to play in front of 16,000 people? Sure, I would.

But there's also the difference. But you don't know anybody after the first row. You can't see them anyway.

Exactly. You know that you played like that. So it's like, OK, who's that guy I'm going to sing to in the front row?

Because that's the only one I can talk to right there.

[Speaker 3]

Right.

[The Trout]

And then when you go into a smaller venue and you can be closer to it, then it changes the way you think, too. But I bet you didn't think that as you grew this, that you'd actually had a impact within the community as far as developing leaders. I mean, and I'm not talking about people that are leading music, but they they start having you can start saying, I mean, I've always been a big believer that people are born to be leaders.

You can train people to be leaders. It's kind of like people that have it when it comes to music. You either have it or you don't.

You can play, but you either have it or not. I bet you didn't see that coming, that all of a sudden you see these people grow and then they're there. Next thing you know, oh, no, he's the ministry.

Wait a minute. He started in our club 15 years ago. He's working for the ministry.

Whatever. Fill in the blank.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Yeah, I mean, the thing that that that I've really grown with is because I was really just like a musician, you know, study and work. My main focus is how how am I playing? And then as I've grown, I've realized that music can play a role in, like you were saying about the Boys and Girls Club, it can play a very important role just in the development of of any human.

And so as we've built our programs, we've actually found that what what I'm calling leadership, which is really just creating cohesion in a group, making sure everyone participates in a group and they're sort of committed to the same purpose. This is creating that sort of fertile territory where so many creative things can happen. And we've tried to do that systematically, even at scale.

And that's where really wonderful things can happen because it sort of creates this healthy competition and everyone's doing it, this type of sensation. And so I think that's that's the thing that I didn't see coming is the role of music to to provide something far beyond just the music itself, which is still the tool in the central focus. But to see so many other ways that these human beings are able to grow through the process.

[The Trout]

What I thought about, too, is the fact is that, you know, we had the. Soccer situation over here and all the people came over from all places, I'm sure you saw it where people came from other countries because I didn't know this is like this in America. Yeah, well, this is really cool.

And a lot of them ended up in Texas. They're like, who eats this much food?

[Kimball Gallagher]

You know, exactly.

[The Trout]

But so here's what I thought about was. I don't know how we hear it, we don't know because I'm not there, all we hear about different countries is what the media feeds us. OK, and I've traveled some.

I just know that people pretty much people, no matter where you go. So just pretty much the same. But my point is this, I would assume because of what they've heard about America, that kind of probably more I mean, probably gets a little bit softer because you're an American.

You don't talk about I mean, there's no political reason to talk about politics. All of a sudden they're not like, well, maybe it's American guy and America is not as bad as I was told. I mean, I assume you probably felt that.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Well, let's see. I mean, most of the kids, if you told them most of the kids that I've run into in most of the countries where we have programs, and if you tell them they're going to come to the U.S., it's still they would see that as an amazing opportunity. Oh, yeah.

So the general, let's say, soft power. Also, they all know American music, you know, basic American. They all know Guns N' Roses and Michael Jackson and Billy Joel.

And, you know, you mentioned the Beatles earlier. Different groups, you know, it depends on the country. There's some, you know, in North Africa, I think everyone knows those things, those different various artists I mentioned.

But in West Africa, it's a little different. They're more oriented towards, I don't know, different types of music as African artists as well. But yeah, like the from I'm just trying to say, like, I think there's there is like tendencies like in Tunisia.

It's kind of a running joke. Everyone says that I work for the CIA, but they're saying they say it tongue in cheek. But I'm not kidding.

I get asked that question every single day because in their imagination, it's like you're they make it sound really weird. Wait. So you're a classical pianist.

You're from New York and you came to Tunisia to start music clubs. You know, you're obviously working for the CIA and in their line of thinking. That's like the only explanation.

Right. And it's like I try to tell them. And then I make fun of them.

You know, I was like, yes, we've noticed how you hold the pencil in your right hand and then you switch, you know, and you stuck your tongue out every single time that you I don't know, whatever. You know, I haven't gotten any offers from the CIA. So, yeah, but I think we work with ministries of education.

So there is like the content of our program is completely nonpolitical. But the sort of framing around it and what we have to do to get the program started does have some, you know, because as a foreigner in the countries that I'm working and we have to create partnerships with people and entities and governments within those countries and in the past, a lot of our funding has come from other governments. So there are kind of, you know, one does have to take into consideration a little bit what is the relationship between country A and country B, depending on what you're talking about.

And you don't need to be an expert, but you don't want to be completely blind to points of sensitivity and which word choices to use. You know, there's a little bit of finessing that that often has to happen. And then each education system kind of has their norms.

This is an interesting point. Like to give an example, in Tunisia, there was a period after the revolution where free speech was an enormous value, very similar to how we understand it in the US. And that played a huge role in songwriting because it was like, well, now the youth can say whatever they want.

So they're going to be bold and say whatever they want. Of course, there's still enormous pressure from parents and teachers to kind of conform in certain ways. Certain styles of music are seen in a certain, even music itself in some regions of Tunisia is seen kind of as, you know, you'll have, sounds ridiculous, but in some rural areas, the parents will be like, oh, they would say to another parent, oh, I'm so sorry.

I heard your child got involved in music. Like it was some terrible thing, right? Like, because that's their understanding.

You know, oh, it's like it's a distraction from school or it like stirs the emotions too much and you're out of control. You know, I don't know, like something like that. These types of things exist.

Yeah. But still in Tunisia, I would say there's a really strong sense of freedom of speech. You know, we can say whatever we want.

In the Gambia, they're very socially active. So there's a habit of youth coming out and speaking their mind on social issues, whether it's immigration or they do. They're not doing it for political purposes per se, but it's like, well, we know that it's not good to burn trees down because a lot of people were burning, you know, chopping down trees to get the firewood or whatever and don't do that.

So here's all the reasons not to do that. And they would put that into their song because that's kind of one of the topics that they have around them in other places like in Morocco. It's a kingdom.

So they have a king. So it's a very strong kind of top down. This is the acceptable thing to say.

So everything has to pass through teachers. And since we are working in school systems, we're not totally outside of them. There are examples of kids that have started to write songs where the teacher peers over their shoulders like, no, no, no, don't write a song about that.

Choose a different time because that's don't do that. You know, and it may be a topic that the youth really cares about, but, you know, we we got to keep them in line kind of thing. And so our stance on that as an organization is that, I mean, of course, I would favor freedom of speech in my own personal beliefs and everything.

But as an entity, we're really there to support, you know, the education system. So in a way, we have to align ourselves with the norms of that system. And if we can't be OK with that, we probably shouldn't go to that country because our business is not to go against the current.

[The Trout]

No, no, no, no.

[Kimball Gallagher]

I just go with the current. So there's there's a huge, huge space in there. You know, they in Morocco, they would still say we're trying to get the kids to express themselves.

You know, it's just within a certain range of acceptable.

[The Trout]

Let's talk about the logistics here. How many countries is the organization in right now?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Are you working in a way? Yeah, we have we work in one, two, three, four, five, six, I guess seven, seven places for the moment.

[The Trout]

OK, so then you you have to have people in each one of those countries kind of lead. You have to have a leader or a director or something like that in each one. So I'm looking at it from the business side of it.

What are you doing? Yes, of course. So you got to have somebody there that's taking the charge because you're out doing whatever you're doing.

Absolutely.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Absolutely.

[The Trout]

And you mentioned this earlier, because as a nonprofit person, where do you get most of your funding? Is it from the countries? And where would you where would you like to get more money from?

[Kimball Gallagher]

That's a great question. Thank you for asking that. Yeah.

In the past 10 years, more or less, we've gotten a lot of funding, believe it or not, from the German government for most of our programs in the African continent. And we've gotten some funding from the U.S. State Department. We've gotten lots of small amounts of funding from private businesses or foundations and things like that within those countries.

And the place we'd like to get more funding is private philanthropy within the U.S. And even though I've been based in the U.S. for many years, all this work that we've been discussing, I haven't put as much energy as I would have liked into communicating all about that as these years have gone by. So this is really going to be our focus for the next couple of years. Let's start from the very beginning real quick.

[The Trout]

So you go into a country and you go, one of the children that goes and these are middle-aged. I mean, what's a typical, when do they start? What ages?

Are they teenagers or they start earlier than that?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Yeah, our programs target mainly high schools. So we work with teenagers, adolescents and then young adults as they grow out of high school. They stay with our program.

Some of them do.

[The Trout]

So is it kind of like American schools to a certain extent? You know, you started, excuse me, started in fifth grade, learned how to play a trumpet or clarinet or whatever, but you're older and you come in and you say, oh, I want to, I want to go to 88 International. And I know nothing about it.

My friend told me about it. What's kind of the course? Yeah.

So what's kind of the course that I take if I'm just a newbie to this thing? I just show up and go, I want to learn more. How does that work?

[Kimball Gallagher]

Well, when we initiate a program in a school, we usually come to the school, do some sort of presentation and then kind of, quote unquote, recruit students or ask them to join and then they would form a club and then they start having club meetings and we give them certain types of trainings like leadership training. And that's for certain members of the club who are then tasked to keep the club well organized and moving forward in their tasks and their their activities as the year goes on. And there is a teacher that's meant to be like a supervisor of sorts, but the teacher is not meant to like lead the club per se.

And then they do their songwriting, they do their video, they do some events that they create. And then as we get to the end of the school year, they need to recruit new members because, of course, just like in any school, some students will leave, some students will come. And depending on the makeup of the club at that particular time, they need to assess, you know, do we need to recruit new members or not?

And how do we do that and how many and this and that? And so that's that's how they would bring new people into it within a particular school. And then, you know, we're working with the government to know and also depending on how many funds we have, you know, how many schools can we add?

Like we we spent this whole summer, right after this, I have a meeting with one of the regional governments in Morocco, believe it or not, just to discuss like how many new schools in his particular region can we manage to start next year? And we'll come to say we have a proposal for that, like six new clubs or something in six new schools. And of course, that's all funding.

A lot of it's funding contingent. And it's also human resource capacity. You know, how much capacity do you really have to manage these things?

But you want to keep it exciting. So there's always some degree of feeling of continuation and growth and something to look forward to and and all that.

[The Trout]

Yeah, I would think it's fun. It would be for me to go to different countries and hear their different music, the way they approach music.

[Kimball Gallagher]

Yeah, it's super interesting.