Marcus Jones, a Pittsburgh Carrick High School senior, emerges from a storage area into the classroom at 25 Carrick Ave. (Photo by Kaycee Orwig/PublicSource)
25 Carrick Ave aims to connect people to careers and amplify a neighborhood’s future
At a former church in Carrick, a diverse crew learns audio technology and prepares to plug into an industry that could reverberate throughout the Hilltop.
by Rich Lord, PublicSource
XLR cables like the one looped around Marita Adams’ hand are the unsung heroes of concerts and conferences, carrying energy from microphones to sound boards to speakers.
So on a January evening, in a third-floor room in a former church in Carrick, Adams tried again to properly roll up one of the cables. “I know I did this last time,” she said.
“Yeah, but we’ve got to do it all the time,” said Marcus Jones, a student with Adams in this Audio Basics class. He then tutored her in the subtle twist necessary to wrap cables just right.
Properly wound, an XLR cable will not only last longer, but also unspool gracefully in mid-air as a crew member tosses one end across a stage to a colleague. “You should always be able to throw it out and it will come out perfect,” said Jordan Gilliam, director of education at 25 Carrick Ave.
That’s both the address of the former church and the name of a fledgling nonprofit dedicated to helping young people toward careers while seeding an industry in a changing neighborhood.
The program has the potential to “fill the hill with music,” said Sherry Miller Brown, vice president of the Carrick Community Council and a board member at 25 Carrick Ave. “Maybe eventually musicians will move up to Hilltop and we’ll get a revitalization of our citizenry.”
Carrick was once a millworker’s haven with around 16,000 residents as late as 1970. It bottomed out around the time of the Great Recession and endured a decade marked by property turnover and the opioid epidemic. Lately it has seen a surge in the diversity of its population, now around 10,000, as leaders like Brown seek to revive its Brownsville Road business district and establish an anchor industry.
Right now? “Carrick isn’t a destination for anything,” said Gilliam.
He intends to change that. But first the cables must be perfect.
“We pulled some cables out of there that looked crazy,” Gilliam told the class as he eyed a storage bin in the Audio Basics classroom. “Let’s do it again.”
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