The Music Lives On: Nanni’s Strings to a New Generation

Aurora’s living-room orchestra continues to shape young musicians across Southeast Indiana

Photo provided.

(Aurora, Ind.) - At 10 years old, Crystal Kessen was ready to quit. She wanted to quit school, quit music lessons and stomp away from the struggle of learning something new. Then someone from her church gave her a used violin, and that gift led her to the Aurora home of violin teacher Albert Nanni.

In Nanni’s living room, Kessen discovered that music was not just about notes, scales or practicing alone. Nanni brought his students together to play as an orchestra, surrounding young musicians with others who were learning their own parts while discovering how those parts fit together. For a child who had been ready to stop trying, that sense of belonging made a difference. She stayed.

Decades later, Crystal Kessen Powers is still making music and helping other young people find the same encouragement she found in Nanni’s home. Today, she conducts the Southeast Indiana Youth Orchestra, an organization that grew from the musical tradition Nanni began with Nanni’s Strings.

Al Nanni studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before making his home in Aurora with his wife, Helena. He loved teaching violin to children and adults. But he did more than offer individual lessons. He gathered his students into an ensemble that first rehearsed in the family living room. As Nanni’s Strings grew, rehearsals moved to the Aurora Fire Station, and the orchestra became part of community life, performing for local events, churches, nursing homes and gatherings across the area.

While Al taught, Helena helped make the students feel welcome. She provided snacks, including brownies Crystal still remembers as especially good, though the recipe remains a secret. For Powers, those details mattered. Music lessons became more than instruction. They became community.

Nanni continued teaching and conducting into his later years, even as arthritis and hearing loss made the work more difficult. He died in 2011, but the music did not end with him. Former students and supporters remembered what he had given them with Nanni’s Strings, and in 2015 Powers helped create the Southeast Indiana Youth Orchestra.

The connection between the two groups is more than symbolic. Helena gave Powers Al’s conducting wand, much of his music and violin-related decorations. Today, SEIYO honors Albert Nanni and Nanni’s Strings as the beginning of its story while carrying that legacy into a new generation.

The orchestra focuses on string instruments, including violin, viola, cello and bass, and welcomes students from Dearborn and surrounding Indiana counties as well as Ohio and Northern Kentucky. Beginners and experienced players can take part. Powers believes students learn not only from instructors but also from one another.

Accessibility is part of the mission. Rental instruments, discounts and scholarships help families participate. Students receive music to practice at home, then come together on Saturdays to rehearse. The goal is not simply to play individual notes correctly, but to listen, adjust and help create the sound of the whole orchestra.

Powers sees those rehearsals as lessons in discipline, creativity, teamwork and perseverance. She has kept thank-you notes from students and parents who say the orchestra helped shape them in lasting ways. To her, the program offers hope, and she sees that hope every Saturday and at community concerts.

The Southeast Indiana Youth Orchestra will continue celebrating its tenth year with free concerts this fall and winter. One familiar event will be missing from this year’s schedule: the Aurora Farmers Fair in October. Powers is expecting her second child around the same time as the fair.

The influence of the orchestra Albert Nanni began in his Aurora living room has traveled far beyond that room. Today, Crystal Kessen Powers is passing the lessons on. One student. One instrument. One Saturday rehearsal at a time. The music continues.

For more information about lessons and concerts, email Crystal Kessen Powers at operationjoybell@gmail.com. Or contact seiyorch@gmail.com