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The three-year MetLife Youth Music Project was developed in collaboration with MetLife Foundation. The program makes available free, private and group music instruction to middle school children from underserved communities in 10 cities. Instruction is provided by artist/faculty on a weekly basis during non-school hours throughout the year. Each participating site received a $10,000 grant to fund its activities, renewable for an additional two years.A special feature of the MetLife Youth Music Project will be a National Performance Week. During pre-specified dates during Arts Advocacy Month (March of 2004 and 2005), all participating sites will hold community performances. Program site administrators will convene annually to share successful strategies, best practices and lessons learned.
Ten member schools of the National Guild were selected to participate in the MetLife Youth Music Project. The ten participating community schools of the arts are:
v Crowden Center for Music in the Community, Berkeley, California www.thecrowdenschool.org/ccmc
Crowden’s Metlife Youth Music Project started with an enrollment of six students from underserved communities who were recruited through public school music and classroom teachers. They received free group and individual instruction. One of these students entered the program as a beginner on her instrument; the other five had some previous exposure through their public school music programs.
In addition to receiving weekly individual instruction on their instrument, Crowden’s Metlife Youth Music Project students are participating in the Arethusa Wind Ensemble, the Violin Ensemble, the String Ensemble, Exploring Music, the Summer Music and Opera camp, and Summer Music Berkeley. We anticipate a significant increase in enrollment in the program this fall as some of our younger students in the Music Pathways Program move into Middle School, and because of the increased visibility and awareness of the Metlife program and the funds available to support full scholarships.
v Los Angeles Music & Art School (LAMAS) Los Angeles, California
www.lamusart.org
The Los Angeles Music & Art School’s MetLife Youth Music Program in partnership with Stevenson Middle School has been a complete success and has impacted the lives of approximately 50 underprivileged middle school students in the community. This partnership has given students exposure to professional musicians and the opportunity to enhance their musical skills with small group instruction for strings, woodwind and brass instrument ensembles.In May 2003 Stevenson Middle School held its annual end of year music concert showcasing the talent of many of the youngsters in our community and reflecting the impact music can have in re-directing young individuals away from involvement in negative activities. The MetLife Youth Music Program will continue during the summer with continuing and new students to increase participation and have more prepared and engaged students in the new school year.
v Community Music Center, San Francisco, California
www.sfmusic.org
The MetLife Music Project grant supports fourteen low-income at-risk middle school youth through the Inner City Young Musicians Program (ICYMP) which includes private lessons, musicianship and ensemble classes and performances. Visiting guest artists provided ICYMP students additional opportunities to listen to and learn more about music from diverse cultures and traditions. In January 2003, Parag Chordia, a North Indian classical musician, did a lecture/presentation to the middle school classes. He played the sitar and the tabla and talked about the fundamentals of Indian Music (ragas, scales, aesthetics, etc.) In February, Gamelan Anak Swarasanti came for a two-hour presentation on Balinese gamelan traditions. They taught students a piece that students then performed during a concert that evening. In June 2003, ICYMP students presented an end of the school year concert that featured a mixture of baroque, romantic, contemporary, and jazz musical selections.
v Neighborhood Music Schools, Atlanta, Georgia
music.gsu.edu
Neighborhood Music Schools’ MetLife Youth Music Program has had a very successful first year. More than 35 children have been involved in the project to date. These youth have participated in African Drumming, Afro-Cuban Music, and Music and Movement classes on a weekly basis beginning in March 2003. In addition to the classes, ten students had the opportunity to participate in Neighborhood Music Schools’ annual collaboration with Atlanta-based youth development organization Moving in the Spirit. The collaboration, which culminated in a performance at the Rialto Theater on May 14, involved a total of 50 Neighborhood Music Schools’ musicians and 150 dancers from Moving in the Spirit. The plan is to begin to integrate the Afro-Cuban Music class and the Music and Movement class when the program resumes in September.
v Community Music Center of Boston, Boston, Massachusetts
www.cmcb.org
The MetLife grant is more meaningful now than ever before to the children in Boston Public Schools and the Community Music Center of Boston is very pleased to be able to implement it. It has already made a difference. The Community Music Center has provided musical instruction to 23 students in three middle schools this past spring. The program included private clarinet and bassoon lessons and group violin classes. The vast majority of the students were in families which were eligible for subsidized lunches, and therefore economically disadvantaged. Community Music Center charged them very small co-pays and subsidized the rest of the cost with MetLife Scholarships.
v MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, Minnesota
www.macphail.org
The first six months of the MetLife Music Project at MacPhail Center for Music have been productive and rewarding for everyone involved: the students, teaching artists, the Interdistrict Downtown School band and orchestra program. Ten students in grades 4 through 8 were placed in private half-hour lessons with a MacPhail teaching artist during MacPhail’s spring semester. The 10 students who took private lessons during spring semester studied cello, flute, saxophone, clarinet, trombone and percussion.
v Community Music School of Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri http://www.webster.edu/depts/finearts/cms
Twelve students were selected to participate in the MetLife Music Ensemble. A tremendously successful recital was held in June 2003 where students performed solo pieces as well as in the Ensemble. Most of these students do not have an ensemble available to them in their schools. This is the only opportunity they have had to experience the teamwork and camaraderie of a band. The program has continued throughout the summer with private lessons and ensemble rehearsals. Music history classes and master classes are planned for September and December.
v FrankfordStyle, Philadelphia, PA
The youth of this inner-city community have been very excited about the music lessons offered for the first time from the MetLife Foundation. It has been a life-changing opportunity for them. FrankfordStyle offered classes in guitar, guitar ensemble, Latin percussion, piano and voice off site and at their own facilities this summer and still continuing. The greatest excitement and the most observable technical progress has been in the Guitar Ensemble and Latin Percussion classes. Luis DiCupe, instructor of Latin percussion observed and reported the following:
"In drumming, three of my students are really good, they are really catching on, I am very pleased with them. And their parents are thrilled, as this is the first time their boys really like something, and that the classes are free. All of these boys are good, and they just started."
Plans to have the Guitar Ensemble perform concerts, as well as issue tapes, are already being organized.
v Music School of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Providence, Rhode Island
www.ri-philharmonic.org
The program provides choral and Latin Percussion classes that integrate historic/cultural background into instruction and provide opportunities for participating students to present ensemble performances. After meeting with several organizations, The Music School added a partnership with the Providence YMCA, “a partnership made in heaven.” The program at the “Y” serves two groups of 12 (24 total) middle school youth in a Latin percussion ensemble. The students have made tremendous progress and have had three performances to date. In March, enrollment in the choir reached a maximum of 15 students and the drumming class maintained a steady enrollment of 12. Both groups performed at the end of the year school concert.
The Providence Schools have completely eliminated music education from their budget and curriculum for next year. Nathan Bishop had retained a band program, down from strings, choral and general music. Next year they will have only the music programs that we are providing. We intend to wed the two programs together so that those students who are excited by the music they are exposed to during their academic daytime classes will have the chance to develop that interest and their talents through the Youth Music Program after school.
v MECA, Houston, Texas
www.meca-houston.org
In the short time since the Met Life Youth Music Program was initiated, MECA’s Intermediate Mariachi Ensemble has developed into a full-fledged performing ensemble with its own repertoire and the capability to accept paying gigs from families and area restaurants to help fund the program. The Ensemble currently consists of 16 students, who attended rehearsals at MECA three days a week, January through May. Summer classes resumed in June. The Ensemble performed six times during this period.
In the next semester, the ensemble will perform at a parade, an arts festival, and for various school and United Way events. MECA is also very proud to report that the Ensemble will be competing in the Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza, a national mariachi competition. This is the first time that MECA will bring two full performing groups to this competition. All of the students in the program have maintained nearly 100% attendance, and they did not even want to take the two-week break between the summer semester and the fall. This eagerness to learn and commitment to the ensemble is precisely the outcome MECA hoped to achieve with its students, and would not be possible without the Met Life Youth Music Program’s support.
The MetLife Youth Music Project was developed in collaboration with MetLife Foundation which since 1990 has contributed more than $30 million to support arts education. For more information about the Foundation, please visit its web site at www.metlife.org.
