Judging by the audience’s loud cheers, fifteen-year old Tyler Thompson’s opera rendition of Justice Bao, a Chinese judge who fought government corruption, was spot-on. He hit all the notes, his Mandarin flawless, and the cheers he received from the nearly-packed Rawley Farnsworth Theater at Skyline High School Saturday evening were the loudest of the night. But Thompson’s teacher and mentor, Sherlyn Chew, knew the real reason the audience was so impressed.

“You have to be pretty good to have these Chinese people think you’re good,” she explained. “For you to really make a Chinese audience think you’re good, you better be authentic. [Thompson] was.”

Thompson, an African-American sophomore at the Oakland School for the Arts, is one of a handful of non-Asian students who play and sing in the Great Wall Orchestra and Chorus, the Laney College Chinese music program founded by Chew for Bay Area middle and high school students. Its sister organization, the Purple Bamboo Orchestra and Chorus, is made up of students from Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland’s Chinatown; third, fourth, and fifth graders play in the Purple Bamboo Orchestra, and younger students, some as young as five, learn Chinese opera and sing in the chorus.

Members of both orchestras performed at Skyline High School Saturday night to fundraise for the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation, the nonprofit Chew founded in 1995 to support the Chinese music education programs she started when her former music teacher, Pei Chang Sun, passed away. Chew bought the Chinese musical instruments she had purchased intending to start an orchestra—Chew paid $4,000 for the 30 instruments and brought them back to her Lincoln Elementary School students.

Her students became so interested in playing classical Chinese music that Chew began early morning orchestra rehearsals before school so they could play all together. Although she was a third-grade bilingual teacher at the time, the Purple Bamboo Orchestra caught on so well that Lincoln Elementary allowed Chew to become a full-time music teacher instead.

The Laney College program began soon after, when Chew’s Lincoln Elementary students started moving on to middle school. The program is harder, but also more inclusive. “You’re handpicked to play in the orchestra, so you have to hear pitch and have a sense of timing,” said Chew. “We audition those students. The orchestra members at Lincoln get to come and receive training. We take everyone on the weekends. You can come from wherever as long as you come and come on time.” More than 800 students now participate in one or both of the orchestra programs.

Professional Chinese musicians coach the students on their instruments, which include the yang qin (hammered dulcimer), the cello, the plucking strings, the sheng (mouth organ), the dizi (bamboo flute), the ehru (two-stringed violin), the gu zheng (zither), and percussion. “You tell me the instrument you want to learn how to play,” Chew said. “I listen to the kids more than I listen to the parents. The students will practice if they chose the instrument of their choice.”

The Great Wall Orchestra and select members of the Purple Bamboo Orchestra meet each Saturday for three hours at Laney College, and every student who participates—regardless of age—receives concurrent college credit. “There are kindergartners receiving college credit,” Chew said, laughing.

Each student pays $100 per semester to participate in the program, which for 51 hours—17 weeks at 3 hours of instruction—comes out to $1.96 per hour.