The Monroe Summer Orchestra brings musicians together to share the joy of music with their community. WSHU's Good at Heart host Randye Kaye speaks with the co-founders and identical twins, Anand and Avinash Veeraraghav, about their mission.
Anand Veeraraghav: My name is Anand Veeraraghav, from Monroe. I am here as one of the co-founders, co-chairman, co-directors, shall I say, of the Monroe Summer Orchestra.
Avinash Veeraraghav: And my name is Avinash Veeraraghav, or just Avi for short. I am the other co-founder, co-chairman. And to those of you listening who can't see our faces, we are identical twins.
WSHU: Okay. And there's more than just the two brothers in your family, right?
Avi: Correct. We have a sister who is a second-year medical student out in Pennsylvania. We have a dog named Nemo. Don't let that fool you. He hates the rain and our parents, too.
WSHU: Oh, okay, so you're like the Property Brothers, but you're the orchestra brothers, that's how that works. Okay. So I'm going to begin with my first question: Who do you help and how? Tell us about the orchestra's mission, Anand.
Anand: Yes, Randye, so we are a community orchestra, so that means that we're members of the community. Sounds cliche when I say it like that, but I really mean it. Those of us who live around the area who like making music, we come together and we make music to put on a concert to serve our community. Our main goal is to have fun, but we also do it to show everyone how great a force music is. We're different from, say, a youth orchestra, and we're both youth orchestra alumni, in that we're not there for education; we're there for enrichment in the community, a way to have fun. But of course, we take people of all ages, so there are a lot of people who learn along with us, some children, some adults. We ourselves were not professional musicians, but by doing this, we are able to continue our musical abilities and do something great for the community while we're at it.
WSHU: What are your instruments? By the way? Anand..
Anand: I play Viola,
WSHU: Viola, and Avi…
Avi: …and I play violin.
WSHU: Ahh. So was it the stereotypical growing up and doing concerts in your living room for your parents?
Anand: Yes, indeed.
RK: I'm so jealous.
Anand: We started playing. We picked up our instruments just over 20 years ago, when we were in fourth grade, in October 2005. Our parents came here from India in the late 1980s and early 90s, and they grew up with the rich traditions from there. They, of course, were very familiar with the violin over there. And coming here and learning about the Western classical traditions, they thought, you know, we'd like our children to start learning string instruments. It wasn't the best thing for us at first, because it meant having to get up early in the mornings and go to school early to learn these instruments. But we actually started to become pretty good at it. Then in fifth grade, music became a graded subject, and that was when we thought, okay, we have to really try at this. A couple of years later, we joined a youth orchestra, and all the rest is pretty much history.
WSHU: All right, thank you. Avi, anything to add? We're kind of answering the first two questions at the same time. So the first one is, who do you help and how? But also, why you? Why does this matter to you?
Avi: So we were born at the UConn Health Center in the winter of 1995 for our parents, as immigrants from a part of the world where there is no snow. Imagine that your kids are born when it's all snow. But then we lived in Hamden for a year, and then we moved to Monroe. And with the exception of when the two of us have left for higher education, we've been in Monroe ever since. So developing this community-led organization in Monroe has been a big thing for us, because, well, this is the community that's raised us, and we want the ability to give something back to it. We both sit on boards and commissions, which we were appointed to, but at the same time, it's a case of, well, what about something that can involve all sorts of people? And like Anand mentioned, we have people of all different ages. We also have folks coming from not just within Monroe, but other folks coming to the orchestra from other parts of Connecticut. Like we had a father-son duo this past summer, and they're coming all the way from East Haddam, and then even from outside Connecticut. We had a special concert in December. We had this young man coming from Leona, New Jersey. So we have people really coming from all over just because they share this vision of giving something back to the small town and spreading music in and around it. Monroe has a little less than 20,000 people living in it. So say like Bridgeport has the Greater Bridgeport Symphony. New Haven has the New Haven Symphony Orchestra,
WSHU: …and Norwalk has an orchestra.
Avi: Norwalk has the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, yeah, and they're all much bigger than Monroe, but Monroe, it's like it's so small, but there's no dearth of talent in Monroe either.
RK: So how many are in the orchestra? And do people keep coming back?
Anand: So the interesting thing is, this past summer, I'm going to reference a man named Anthony. Anthony is our music director. Mr. Anthony Granada teaches at the middle school level in Fairfield. He has his training in conducting music education. He's also a professional violist. The two of us became acquainted with Anthony in mid 2024. And we thought maybe in our first concert in 2025 we'd have 10 to 15 people. We had 41. And then when we put on our special concert for the holidays last December, that went up to a little over 50. And that holiday concert only happened because people loved the summer concert so much. We heard audience members leaving the summer concert saying, Oh, that was so good, but too bad it's only once a year. We heard a couple of our members also saying, “If only we could do this more than once a year”. So then we talked to Anthony, and we said, “Do you think maybe we could do something for the holidays?” And he said, "Guys, that is a fantastic idea.” So when we had our holiday concert, I asked the audience, “Summer orchestra, winter concert, how is that possible? The answer, “I pointed to them, and I said, " It's all your fault”, and some of them too, pointing behind me.
WSHU: I love this. And that was Anand, by the way, because you guys do sound kind of similar. So I'm just curious, what do you guys do for your actual living that pays the bills? Sure.
Anand: Sure. So I work as an Assistant Clerk in the Danbury Superior Court. Assistant Clerk, being one of the administrators. I handle everything that comes in for small claims cases, those are cases, civil cases that are $5,000 or less, as well as everything in housing. So, for example, if there's an eviction around Danbury and it comes to court, there's a 99.9% chance I will have seen that case and will be the one scheduling it.
Avi: As for me, I'm a public health scientist. I got my MPH from the University of Bridgeport in late 2021. I started that degree in May of 2020, and I tell people all the time, what a time to get involved in public health, right?
WSHU: Oh, yes, that was also the University of Bridgeport's first cohort for public health, like that was the first class for an MPH and everything. So it's been a journey. So your lives are not just about the orchestra. You're good at heart in what you do for a living as well. So I love to hear that one more question about the orchestra, because people can go to https://www.monroectorchestra.org/ to find out more about how to join, and about what the commitment is, and then how to go to a concert, I would imagine, is important. I'm curious about how people found out. How did you get 51 people in your first year?
Avi: So initially, it was word of mouth. I remember I posted on Reddit and two people responded. One person was ultimately not able to play, but the other person is a cellist who is now a member of our board. And then we advertised at GCTYO (Greater Connecticut Youth Orchestra), one of the local youth orchestras, the one that we used to participate in. And we got a few interested people, but they really didn't know much about the concept of a community orchestra back then.
Anand: This was all last year in 2025 in January. That happened
Avi: Before the orchestra was a thing. It was still an idea. Then one magical day in May, I posted on the Monroe, CT, residence Facebook group. I said, "How are we starting this orchestra. We're looking for musicians. If you know people or are interested, send something in through our Join Us Form." And all of a sudden, all these people started to send things in. I thought, okay, maybe we're getting somewhere here. And within time, as we spoke with Anthony, we said, Anthony, it looks like maybe we can actually do a full-fledged symphony. And the big one came at the end of May, when I mentioned the father and son duo from East Haddam. We know them because we're all members of the Hampden Symphony Orchestra. The thing is, the son, he plays percussion, and to do a lot of higher up orchestra pieces, you need a percussion section, because the son said that he wanted to join. We realized we can do like actual big works. And thus, last summer, Fran Schubert's Unfinished Symphony became our big work, and we were actually able to dedicate that to an old friend of ours who tragically passed away in a car accident years ago, but that was his favorite piece.
WSHU: How many rehearsals are needed before your concert is ready?
Anand: Yeah, so for the summer, we have, I don't remember the exact number. It's about eight rehearsals. We start the first week of June, and our concert is the last week of July. The rehearsals are on Monday evenings, from seven to nine. The concert in July is on a Sunday afternoon.
WSHU: Just one. Just one performance.
Anand: Exactly,
WSHU: And where do you hold it?
Anand: We hold it at Masuck High School. And then for the winter concert, the one that we didn't even know we were doing until we realized how successful it was, we started that rehearsal schedule right before or right after Thanksgiving. It was that one was only five rehearsals, also on Mondays, and then the concert was on Saturday. It was a Saturday evening at Masuck High School.
WSHU: And do people audition to get in? As you said, you have youth, you have all levels, but I imagine there's an audition process. Correct?
Anand: That would be a fair assumption. But we actually do not audition members. We ask them to self-assess.
Avi: Yeah, and here's a story about that. Last summer, we had three middle school students join a fifth grader who was also participating in GCTYO, so he knew what his footing was. And then two sixth graders who were very unsure, because they'd never played music of that level. And for one of them, a cellist, her mother told us, “I don't know if she'll be up to it.” We said, well, give it a few weeks and see what happens. And then both of these sixth graders persevered, and by the end of it, they played this high level of music that everybody else was doing. We have some members of the orchestra who are retired from their day jobs. They've been playing music like this for years and years. And then on the other end, we have these folks who have been playing for like three or four years at most. So it's really a case of, if you think you can do it, and if you want to come and have that fun, there's a place for you in this orchestra.
WSHU: That is my favorite thing that you've said so far. See, it sounds like the mix of ages and levels that you have, that there's a lot of inspiration that happens, right? Okay, my final three questions, Anand, I'll start with you. What inspires you like, What's the best advice you ever got, or a quote that you live by?
Anand: Oh, very good question. So musically, one quote that I really like is by the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, it was something to the effect of, don't think about what the critics say, because nobody ever built a statue of a critic. Now you do have to, of course, think about what critics say, to an extent, but if you're always too worried about what could go wrong, and I know that I am very much a realist, I always think about every scenario that could happen. But if you get too bogged down in that, and if you don't take risks in life, then you're never going to do great things. If I was always concerned about the Monroe Summer Orchestra not doing well, and we've had our share of hiccups, we're still learning, of course, if I was always too concerned to actually do good things with this orchestra, I would never actually have gone forth with it, and I would have probably said, No, we're too inexperienced. We're too young. We can't do this, but we went ahead. We put on a good show, and I'm grateful for that.
Another major inspiration for us was our college orchestra conductor, Maestro Harvey Felder. He's now a conductor in the great state of Illinois. He would have a saying when we would sometimes go to high schools, and he would say, you always know how good a town is when you enter it, and then you can tell just how good the music program is. A very, very good music program is always in the presence of a very nice town. And we think about that, and we say, Monroe is a good town. We want, we want to do this for Monroe and also enrich the music program. So we've had so many great music directors and conductors along the way, but that quote by Maestro Felder has definitely stuck with me, and I will continue thinking about it.
Avi: So one quote I think about is by Eleanor Roosevelt, and that is when something along the lines of in darkness, it is better to light a candle than to curse that darkness. And the way I see it, that is, make the most of your situation. Don't automatically assume defeat. There's always a way out of something, even if it looks hopeless, which we've certainly applied to this orchestra, like when it came time for booking our concert venue last summer, it took weeks and weeks for that to happen, like we were promoting the concert to our friends, and they would say, well, when is it going to happen? Where's it going to be? And we'd say, well, it's most likely going to be on this day, because, again, as a new orchestra, that stuff we were contending with, usually you'd put stuff in months and months in advance. We did not know we'd actually like to be in need of a big concert venue until maybe a week or two before we started rehearsals. So that quote by former first lady Roosevelt is definitely one I go by within the MSO and life in general.
In terms of other inspiration, I think of, as Anand mentioned, Maestro Harvey Felder, the third, I think of two other great conductors whom I still play under. There's Dr. Randolph P. Laycock out in Parma, Ohio, and Vesna Mehinovic here in Connecticut, who conduct the Parma Symphony Orchestra and Hamden Symphony Orchestra, respectively. And the two of them have been conducting for decades and in all sorts of places, yet they are extremely down to earth, very, very humble, very personable. Dr. Laycock, I remember, once apologized to the orchestra for raising his voice a bit and said he was just so passionate in the moment that he forgot himself. And I thought, don't apologize for that. That's what we want to see. And Vesna Maehniovic, similarly, once somebody called her boss, and she turned to them and said, “Please don't call me that. I don't like that word.” But it's a case of in their positions of power, and in how much, like the conductors, they're the most visible people, they keep it real. They keep themselves down to earth and show that in that humility, that's a great way of making connections with people, not promoting yourself over somebody else, but keeping that sort of esteem.
WSHU: How can others help the orchestra?
Avi: Well, for musicians, of course, it's come and join us, especially if you want to play good music, because the summer is like an off-season for orchestras, both professional and other community orchestras. That's why we chose the summer for when the Monroe Summer Orchestra runs most of its season, because then you're not really competing with anybody else for that sort of attention, like even our high school, middle school, and elementary school. She taught us in all three levels. Orchestra teacher, Mrs. Lisa Homan, comes and plays with us for that time. And thank heavens for her. She's so great for us. If you're a musician, of course, consider joining us. We'd love to have you. If you're not a musician, first off, consider coming to our concerts. We don't charge admission. There’s just a suggested donation. That's about it. If you want to give more, we could always make do with it, because that helps us, and say, buying newer music that's not already in the public domain. Buying supplies for our musicians. Because as a community organization, we of course, rely on help from the community. What I tell people is, we are, to quote President Lincoln, we are of the community, by the community, and for the community, and we also work with the community. So any help.
Anand: So, mostly along the same lines as what Avi said when it comes to donations, specifically, we have a great relationship with the Monroe public schools. We both graduated from Masuk High School in 2014, our sister in 2018, and we still have a great relationship with all of our teachers and the administration there. So that's one of the reasons we rehearse in the schools, besides the fact that we're based in Monroe. But of course, rehearsal space and buying music. All of that does add up in terms of money, and since we don't charge for admissions or for concerts, the donations really are what power us through and keep us going. It's a good way not only for others to help us, but for us to help others. And that way, we can keep on putting out good shows. In terms of other things that people can do to help us really take a look at our social media, we're on Facebook, and take a look at our website, and read through our stories, and you will find some inspiration there. You never know. We came up with this idea in its earliest forms back in 2014 when we were graduating high school. So you could do yourself a favor if you look around the world and see how to inspire yourself. And who knows, maybe you'll end up being one of our patrons or one of our musicians.
WSHU: Or starting an orchestra in your own community. Because this podcast goes everywhere, and it's just it's so much fun for me. I have a sign-up in my office and at home. It says, Trust Your Crazy Ideas, because half the things I've accomplished, I thought, well, that's kind of nuts, and you have each other to bounce off of, which I don't have a twin, so that might have been nice, but you know, if you collaborate with someone else, it helps you, just like in an orchestra, it helps you to build that crazy idea into action and steps and so I would imagine you inspire each other. I'm not going to put those words in your mouth, but final question, and I'll start with you, Anand, why do you think we're here on Earth?
Anand: It's a very, very good question. So I think our god or gods or the heavens, or whoever our makers are, they look at us and want us to do something to enrich this pale blue dot in the middle of the universe. We come here with a purpose to enrich our communities, and in doing so, we enrich ourselves, but we make a difference for everyone. We all come in with a purpose. We are all told somehow subliminally to follow our hearts and our dreams to do good, and we keep on striving to do more good, to keep on, to take a line from one of my favorite franchises, Pokémon, to not give up until it's over. Have that kind of strength, that determination, and we'll just keep on fighting for what we want. And that's our purpose.
AVI: Sure, so like how he quoted Pokémon. I'm going to quote Downton Abbey, the great Dowager Countess, who said: “All life is a series of problems which we must try and solve.” I think about that - an endless series of solving problems. When I think about humanity and why we're here, I like to think about it in terms of always moving forward, becoming better versions of ourselves, making the world better, and making everything around us better. Little actions make somebody's world a little better, even in ways that we don't necessarily know. Music, spreading music brings people joy. It brings people peace. It gives people a way to connect in a way that they might not have known before. Something I told myself years ago: in chaos, there's art, and in art, there's chaos. And in the orchestra, I can see both of those things. But it speaks to how sometimes the journey can be rocky, yet it is the journey. It keeps things moving forward.
