Jemima Adeyinka found Merit as a young child. As an adult, she enthusiastically returned—this time to hold the door open for the next generation.
Jemima Adeyinka was an enthusiastic and eager seven-year-old when Merit School of Music showed up at Beasley Elementary. That’s when a kind teacher handed her a violin and sparked a lifetime love of music. Before that moment, violin and classical music had been unfamiliar to her. She knew that nobody in her family played a string instrument. To her, music mostly happened at church with drums, piano, and voices. Beautiful, yes. But a violin? Or an orchestra? Those felt like things that happened in other parts of the city, for other kids. “I grew up in a neighborhood where orchestral music was not something anybody really did,” she says.
She still remembers how the instrument felt in her hands when she held it for the first time. Full of wonder, she explored the sounds it could make. As she began to study, something shifted. This instrument that once felt so unfamiliar became beloved and a part of her identity.
Merit inspired Jemima and taught her so much more than music, unlocking new opportunities and grit. “I considered myself a mid-tier violist by the end. But I had to hone that skill to get there. I got to watch the kids who were really, really strong—and I could see exactly what hard work looked like. Being first chair. Section lead. Concert master. You could see the work,” shares Jemima.
These new opportunities required a level of focus and determination that she hadn’t experienced before. And that’s what she carries with her—not just the party trick of identifying a chord by ear (though she can, and she will), but something bigger: the understanding that skill is built, not bestowed. The concert stage isn’t magic, but hours of practice made visible to the world.
Merit is more than just hard work and music, though. It’s also a joyful, musical, magnetic force—drawing young people from all over the region and making unlikely connections inevitable. Like many alums, Jemima met her best friend at Merit, despite living in completely different parts of Chicagoland. Jemima lives in South Shore. Her best friend, Nicole, grew up in the suburbs. They were an hour apart living in distant zip codes, attending different high schools, and eventually setting off to different colleges (Jemima to University of Chicago, Nicole to University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana). In the typical Chicago narrative, their paths simply would not have crossed, but Merit put them in the same music theory class and that was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Fast-forward to today. “This morning, I literally called Nicole,” Jemima laughs. “I was like, do you realize it’s been a decade since we met in that theory class?!”
Now, Jemima is paying it forward as a staff member of Merit. As the Program Liaison for Merit’s budding South Shore branch, she engages with the community right in her home neighborhood. The new branch is just five minutes from her childhood home and two minutes from her old high school. Why did she come back? She grins, “somebody at Merit, in like 2005 or whatever, said there should be a violin program at Beasley Elementary, and if they hadn’t, I would never have learned to play, and I never would have met my best friend. I see my role as making that possible for other kids.”
As she works to build the program, Jemima tells new Merit parents the same thing someone told hers: learning an instrument isn’t only about becoming a professional musician. She uses what she learned at Merit every single day—listening, collaborating, and understanding that showing up and doing your part is what makes the whole thing work. “A life where you can understand, appreciate, and enjoy music — the way Merit cultivates that — is so much richer,” she says. “I genuinely believe that.”
Her dream for the new and growing South Shore branch? A program strong enough to send kids up to Merit’s West Loop campus with more program offerings, so they can sit in a theory class next to someone they’d never have met otherwise, and find their own Nicole. That is one of the things she wants most for her students—not just the music, but the connections and friendships that geography alone would have made impossible. Her ultimate dream for the future of the new South Shore branch? “A full youth orchestra!”
