The sounds of the city thrum through the Massachusetts General Hospital/Charles River MBTA stop in Boston, but music emerges above the din.
The strains of lemon drops and chimney tops wiggle through commuters as David France and his violin case stand open for donations.
France, an accomplished violinist who settled in Boston after a fellowship with the New England Conservatory of Music, plays in subways to raise money for a bootstrap nonprofit he founded for inner city kids called the Roxbury Youth Orchestra, which he calls a revolution of hope.
He accepts 10 kids from throughout the city at any given time. The orchestra practices after school five days a week, three hours a day in a cafeteria in the John. D. O'Bryant School in Roxbury.
They play everything from Bach and Brahms to Pharell Williams and Michael Jackson. They've played everywhere from Harvard University to the Museum of Fine Arts, and they rely on the kindness of strangers to fund their endeavors.
When France first started the program two years ago, they had a donated space, they had kids interested in the program, but they didn't have one thing they crucially needed: instruments.
To solve that, they went to the streets outside of the Berklee College of Music.
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"And we found people who had instrument cases that were the shapes of the instruments we needed and we asked them if they had extra instruments and lo and behold they did," France said.
When 13-year-old Shani Boykin joined the orchestra, France said her grades were suffering and she had so much nervous energy, he literally had her run laps around the room before settling in with her violin each day.
She said she love the violin, adding, "It was soothing. It was a way to calm me down, calm my nerves down."
France hopes the kids learn three things: confidence, endurance and resilience.
"If the cards are stacked against you and you have a platform to actually dream to actually envision your life outside of your situation, then that's going to be some of these kids' way out," he said.
Fourteen-year-old Kiana describes herself as socially awkward, but totally at ease among the strings.
"You get to express your feelings through it. You get to learn other people's feeling through it. I feel music is just that -- like an explosion of feelings if that makes sense," she said.
The orchestra is up for a $10,000 grant from KIND Snacks for its program recognizing people spreading kindness in the world. The cause that gets the most votes wins.
Click here if you'd like to vote for the Roxbury Youth Orchestra.
