Brian Slattery Photos
Ty Scurry.
“I have so much stuff planned for this place, and everybody’s like, ‘you’re crazy, you’re only 19 — how are you going to get all this done?”
So Ty Scurry — actor, singer, Wilbur Cross graduate, and theater director at Hillhouse High School — said with a humble chuckle about assuming ownership of Family Music Center in Hamden, which he hopes to not only rebuild out of its Covid-19 shutdown, but expand into a community-based center for students of the visual and performing arts.
“Regardless of genre, regardless of age, regardless of technique or abilities, I want you to come here and feel safe, to build off of what you have and make that even better,” Scurry said. He’s thinking in particular of “inner-city kids. When I was growing up, there was no place like this for me in the New Haven area. I always had to go to Wallingford, or to North Haven, or to Shelton. There was nothing in my backyard that I wasn’t going to pay an arm and a leg for, and my family didn’t have that type of money.”
For as long as he can remember, Scurry has wanted to change that. “I always wanted to teach, but my dream was to start my own school.” Taking over Family Music Center was “an opportunity to do something I had been dreaming of doing since I was four years old.”
Family Music Center had been co-owned and run for two decades by musician Bob Fortuna. His storefront school offered lessons in classical music, jazz, folk, and pop across a wide variety of instruments, It drew teachers and students from around the area and created a community out of them. Fortuna recognized students of the month and held regular student concerts in a nearby church on Leeder Hill Drive.
“Bob was that guy that, if you didn’t have the money — if you only had $150 but wanted to take an eight-week lesson plan, he would say, ‘give me the $150 and take the eight weeks.’ Even though it was a $280 lesson plan. That’s how Bob was,” Scurry said.
Fortuna closed Family Music Center to lessons when the pandemic began. His own health was already in decline by then due to chronic issues, and he died in hospice care in September at the age of 70. His brothers, Tom and John, decided to try to take over the business, and put out an ad for a general manager.
Meanwhile, Scurry had lost his job working at a restaurant in downtown New Haven, which he’d held while also working as theater director at Hillhouse High School just before the pandemic struck.
“I was looking for a retail job, or a food service job — something to pay the bills,” he said. Then he had a realization: “You’re not going to enjoy any of these jobs,” he recalled thinking. “Look for a job in something that you like and see if there’s an availability anywhere.” So he turned to music stores. I inquired at Sam Ash, where the manager told him he seemed a little overqualified due to his work at Hillhouse.
“I’m very spiritual,” Scurry said, and he prayed on his situation. “Something told me to type in ‘family music’” to look for employment opportunities. “I had never seen this store before,” he said. He saw a notice that the Fortuna brothers were looking for a manager for it, and he applied immediately. “God sometimes really will speak to you in your time of need,” he said. He got the job.
“I came in working that Monday, fixing up, helping with the store, starting to find people for lessons,” he said. Then, a week later, the brother apologetically said they might have to let him go. Though in the course of that conversation, Tom “offered me the chance to take this over.”
“I fought with it for a while,” Scurry said. “I’m 19. I have my whole life to figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it.” Did he want to shoulder the responsibility? But then he thought about how he had already written proposals for theaters and schools he wanted to start, documents that, at the time, felt more like plans and dreams. Reading them over, he said to himself, “this is what you’ve wanted for years, and it’s sitting in your lap, but you won’t take it because you’re scared.”
He worked through his fear and thought about the hard work that would be involved of rebuilding Family Music Center’s student base, and building the other components he wanted to add from the ground up. And he decided to go for it.
Scurry has now brought in 20 new teachers to expand the center’s offerings from music — both vocal and instrumental performance — to visual arts to dramatic arts. He is planning a major renovation of the storefront space to be able to start music ensembles and host dance workshops in the summer across a variety of styles, from rock and jazz to R&B and hip hop in music, and from tap and ballet to jazz and contemporary for dance. As the next academic year begins, he’s even considering having the space available for after-school tutoring.
But right now, he’s focusing on getting the word out — figuring out “how to market the store and market the teachers,” to tell people that “I have this great school that I just took over, and I am now making my own.” And he’s focused on making sure the lessons in the space now are Covid-19 safe. The air is purified, surfaces sanitized, even in the school’s Zoom classroom.
Scurry is also finding support from the community around him as he spreads the news about taking over Family Music Center. “If I don’t know what to do, I will call somebody, because I am not going to mess this up,” he said. The Fortuna brothers and the landlord have helped with the transition to owning the business. Scurry counts Billy DiCrosta at the New Haven Academy of Performing Arts in East Haven — a place with a very similar vision to Scurry’s — as a mentor. “I’m texting him once or twice a week,” Scurry said. As a graduate of Wilbur Cross, where he shone as an actor, he has also kept in touch with Ellen Maust, performing and visual arts supervisor at New Haven Public Schools, who has “been a support system for me” in helping him find students to work with.
He also has steady support from the people in his church, the Temple of Latter Rain on Goffe Street. The church’s pastor, Charles Simmons, has been “like a spiritual father to me” since Scurry joined the church two years ago. “He’s very big on Black excellence, on Black people succeeding, and young Black people knowing the way.” Simmons has also been a mentor in establishing a small business; he himself owns the Hamden-based Charlie’s Cookies and Tea, which ships cookies all over the country. “When I first took over the store, he was one of my biggest pushers and supporters,” Scurry said.
Scurry said that Simmons also reminded him to keep his eye on what he wants for Family Music Center as he works to make it grow. “This is for the next generation of great artists and great musicians and great actors — for the little kid that’s in fifth grade right now at L.W. Beecher wanting to do Annie, like I did,” Scurry said. “I want this place to feel like home, to feel like family. If someone comes in here and says, ‘hey, I’m having a bad day — can I come in and talk about it?’ Of course you can. I don’t want this place to be just arts driven. I want it to be a safe place.” He wants the center to be “for the kids in my city and around here that need the help — that love the arts but don’t necessarily have that outlet outside of school to help push that dream and cultivate that talent into something great.”
Family Music Center is located at 1396 Dixwell Ave. in Hamden. To contact Family Music Center for lessons or other inquiries, call at 203-288-5647, or email at familymusichamden@gmail.com. You can also find Family Music Center through its website or on Facebook and Instagram.