Carnegie Hall

(NEW YORK, NY; June 8, 2022)—Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) today announced the 2022–2023 grant recipients for PlayUSA, a program that supports community partner organizations across the country to help ensure equitable access for instrumental music education programs that serve K–12 students. For its eighth anniversary year, Carnegie Hall has selected 23 organizations, including 9 new partners—for a total of $500,000 in grants. In addition to financial support, the grantees join a nationwide network of innovative organizations committed to providing transformative music education opportunities for youth across the country.

 

Through PlayUSA, partner organizations receive consultation with Carnegie Hall staff, professional development for teachers, access to online resources, and monthly webinars. In addition, an intervisitation gives partners a chance to come together in one national site and learn from each other’s practices. PlayUSA grants may be used to underwrite teaching fees for music instruction, purchase or rental of musical instruments, as well as instrumental repair and other programmatic costs.

To better suit the needs of a wider range of community music organizations around the country, this season PlayUSA is offering two different kinds of funding: the traditional grant, benefiting an entire organization as well as a new grant, specifically created to offer professional development to a singular stellar educator within an organization. This flexibility allows PlayUSA to reach a larger number of organizations than ever. All PlayUSA partners will discuss strategies to better facilitate and give space for peer-learning, the programmatic theme that will be explored throughout the 2022-2023 season.

 

“We are thrilled to welcome more organizations than ever before to the PlayUSA family, all of whom do amazing work supporting music-making in local communities across the country,” saidSarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall’s Chief Education Officer and Director of the Hall’s Weill Music Institute. “As the needs of music organizations evolve, we know PlayUSA must do so, and this new granting structure helps to better serve a wider range of partners. PlayUSA has built a robust and diverse national network of leaders in the music education field, and we look forward to collaborating and learning from new and returning partners in our eighth anniversary season, reaching more young people than ever before.”

 

In the 2021-2022 season, the current cohort of PlayUSA partners have worked on a season-long creative learning project alongside the members of PUBLIQuartet—PlayUSA’s inaugural ensemble-in-residence— entitled Reflections on Resilience. This project charged partners to gather biographical narratives from the young musicians they serve and collect their artistic responses to living history. Partners will share their culminating projects during the PlayUSA national convening from June 27-29 at Carnegie Hall, the first time partners have been able to convene together in-person since 2019.

For more information about PlayUSA, visit carnegiehall.org/PlayUSA.

 

About the New Grantees

Community Music Center of Boston (Boston, Massachusetts)
Community Music Center of Boston is an arts nonprofit founded in 1910. Each week, 3,000+ students participate in a combination of lessons and group instruction, music therapy, and arts-sector job skill development. We are proud to be the largest outside provider of arts education to Boston public schools—supporting rigorous, relevant, culturally inclusive participation across one of the most diverse districts in the nation.

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (Richmond, California)
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts annually engages 3,500 children and youth in imagining and creating new worlds for themselves and new visions for their communities through rigorous training performance traditions from around the world. Our goal is to use art and culture to achieve healing and wholeness for young people and ultimately the larger community, while recognizing the complexity of each student’s experience.

Homer OPUS (Homer, Alaska)
Homer OPUS is a nonprofit organization that delivers string-based music programs to youth and adults in Homer, Alaska. Our mission is to build a stronger community by creating music together. Our programs are privately funded and are free or low-cost, making music instruction—and the joy of music—available to young people across our community. All told, our programs serve some 200 children. And the number grows every year.

Make Music NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Make Music NOLA (MMN) has a mission to give the children of New Orleans the keys to claim their musical heritage and the tools to build their creative legacy through music education. Through consistency, discipline, and a supportive community, MMN strives to create opportunity and access for students from marginalized communities. MMN provides music instruction for more than 400 students each year in grades pre-K–12.

Play on Philly (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Play On Philly (POP) provides high-quality music education to students who would typically lack access, as a vehicle for life skills and academic achievement. It provides tuition-free instrumental instruction and ensemble practice every day after school and a season of more than 25 performances. POP has proven results: Students score ten points higher on standardized tests and have improved behavior and study skills.

Sphinx Organization (Flint, Michigan)
The Sphinx Organization is the social justice organization dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. Sphinx develops and supports diversity and inclusion in classical music at every level: the artists performing on stage, the repertoire being performed, the audiences, and the administrative leadership in the field. Sphinx programs reach more than 100,000 students and artists.

Wake Forest Community Youth Orchestra (Louisburg, North Carolina)
Wake Forest Community Youth Orchestra (WFCYO) is dedicated to providing expert orchestral instruction and free instruments for K-12 youth living in rural and under-resourced communities. WFCYO is a place where diversity is valued and collaboration thrives. WFCYO is a student-centered and family focused organization. More than 400 students participate in string programs that take place both during and after school.

Worcester Chamber Music Society (Worcester, Massachusetts)
Born of the belief that every child has the innate ability to make music, Neighborhood Strings is a community-based program of the Worcester Chamber Music Society that offers free music lessons in violin, viola, and cello to youth from Worcester’s marginalized neighborhoods. Through high-quality arts education, the program gives youth a voice, fosters family involvement, and becomes an agent for deep-seated community change.

Yakima Music en Acción (Yakima, Washington)
Yakima Music en Acción (YAMA) emphasizes shared learning and collective accountability through our instruction of string instruments. We are más que una orquesta (more than an orchestra) and we aim to disrupt cycles of intergenerational poverty by using music as a vehicle to provide access to opportunities, leadership development, and community cohesion.

 

About the Returning Grantees

Buffalo String Works (Buffalo, New York)
Buffalo String Works’ mission ignites personal and community leadership through accessible, youth-centered music education. It provides rigorous music instruction and a creative home for refugee, immigrant, and historically marginalized youth in Buffalo, New York. It recognizes music as a universal language, and by lifting up the voices of students and parents, the organization cultivates youth to be agents of social change.

Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (Chicago, Illinois)
Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (CJP) presents Third Stream to bridge communities, educate the next generation of musicians, encourage cross-cultural dialogue, and expand creative practice. CJP also provides access to music education through Jazz Alive, a weekly program for Chicago public school students, and Jazz Academy, a weekly Saturday ensemble program culminating in a summer camp that includes music theory and practice.

Community MusicWorks (Providence, Rhode Island)
Founded in 1997, Community MusicWorks (CMW) seeks to create cohesive urban community through music education and performance that transforms the lives of children, families, and musicians. CMW is centered around the teaching, mentoring, program design, and performances for its musicians-in-residence, the MusicWorks Collective.

El Sistema Oklahoma (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
El Sistema Oklahoma is a respected afterschool program with more than 200 underserved public schoolchildren in grades 3–12. A creative partnership by Cathy and Phil Busey, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, and the Wanda Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, it serves the community by engaging children with a free ensemble-based music program so they can share the joy of music and grow as responsible citizens.

Empire State Youth Orchestra (Schenectady, New York)
Empire State Youth Orchestra (ESYO) values the joyful pursuit of musical excellence and aspires to create tangible and lasting benefits for the community by nourishing the next generation of leaders. ESYO provides pathways into jazz, symphonic, wind, strings, choral, and percussion for novice to advanced students. ESYO ignites a lifelong love of music in our young people, breaking boundaries and fostering new connections.

Enriching Lives Through Music (San Rafael, California)
Enriching Lives Through Music (ELM) is a full scholarship, intensive program whose mission is to inspire and empower students to pursue their dreams through a community dedicated to an immersive music education. ELM provides instrumental, ensemble, and performance opportunities to young people from a primarily Latinx immigrant community to develop the social, emotional, and academic skills they need to succeed.

Hawaii Youth Symphony (Honolulu, Hawaii)
Hawaii Youth Symphony (HYS) celebrates the importance of music study on academic achievement and social-emotional development. Its programs include chamber music, orchestra, band, jazz ensembles, general music, and summer intensives. The only state-wide music education organization in Hawaii, HYS wants to make music a right for every child, bringing young people together from over 100 schools through the joy of music making.

INTEMPO (Stamford, Connecticut)
INTEMPO is an intercultural music education and youth development organization that aims to make music accessible, relevant, and inclusive. INTEMPO’s programs reflect the diversity of its students and help them build musical, language, social-emotional, and interpersonal skills that will serve them in every aspect of their lives.

Juneau Alaska Music Matters (Juneau, Alaska)
Juneau Alaska Music Matters (JAMM) is a tuition-free school-readiness and enrichment program that uses music and community partnerships to promote academic success for students. Serving more than 500 students from a range of backgrounds and cultures in three public elementary schools and one middle school, JAMM and its partners support underserved students with year-round programs that take place both during and after school.

Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra (Kalamazoo, Michigan)
Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra (KSO) works to make symphonic music a part of everyday life. KSO is proud to support Kalamazoo Kids In Tune, an afterschool orchestra program that creates inclusive, accessible, and intensive music learning for students in grades 3–12 in Kalamazoo Public Schools, and Orchestra Rouh, a sister initiative designed around the experience of young people from refugee and immigrant communities.

Scrollworks Music School (Birmingham, Alabama)
Scrollworks Music School is dedicated to making music instruction and ensemble playing available to all, developing character and a sense of community with exceptional teachers who foster a sense of beauty, compassion, appreciation, tolerance, empathy, self-esteem, and respect. Young people of diverse racial, social, cultural, cognitive, and economic backgrounds come together to explore and cultivate their musical talent.

Soundscapes (Newport News, Virginia)
Soundscapes is a nonprofit organization in Southeastern Virginia that uses music to foster life skills for students from early childhood to early adulthood. It provides daily after-school music programs, a regional youth orchestra, and several weeklong summer camps. Through Soundscapes, young people up to age 25 develop skills that prepare them to be today’s successful students and tomorrow’s engaged citizen artists.

Tocando (El Paso, Texas)
Tocando is an after and during-school music program of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra serving urban and rural communities. Inspired by the highly successful El Sistema movement, Tocando (which means “to play”) is designed to engage and empower youth at under-resourced elementary, intermediate, and middle schools through intensive music instruction while offering cultural, educational, and performance opportunities.

Trenton Music Makers (Trenton, New Jersey)
Trenton Music Makers is a high-intensity El Sistema–inspired program for students in grades K–12. Young people learn violin, viola, cello, bass, or percussion, study music theory, and play five days a week as an orchestra. They are empowered to find and use their voices, and to work together to cultivate harmony and pursue ambitious goals for their orchestra and their city.

 

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About Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute
Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) creates visionary programs that embody Carnegie Hall’s commitment to music education, playing a central role in fulfilling the Hall’s mission of making great music accessible to as many people as possible. With unparalleled access to the world’s greatest artists, WMI’s programs are designed to inspire audiences of all ages, nurture tomorrow’s musical talent, and harness the power of music to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. An integral part of Carnegie Hall’s concert season, these programs facilitate creative expression, develop musical skills and capacities at all levels, and encourage participants to make lifelong personal connections to music. The Weill Music Institute generates new knowledge through original research and is committed to giving back to its community and the field, sharing an extensive range of online music education resources and program materials for free with teachers, orchestras, arts organizations, and music lovers worldwide. More than 800,000 people each year engage in WMI’s programs through national and international partnerships, in New York City schools and community settings, and at Carnegie Hall with many more taking part online. This includes more than half a million students and teachers worldwide who participate in WMI’s Link Up music education program for students in grades 3 through 5, made possible through Carnegie Hall partnerships with more than 115 orchestras in the US, as well as internationally in New Zealand, Canada, China, Japan, Kenya, and Spain.

For more information, please visit: carnegiehall.org/Education  

 

 

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Lead support for PlayUSA is provided by the Fund II Foundation.

The Weill Music Institute's programs are made available to a nationwide audience, in part, by an endowment grant from the Citi Foundation.