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The future of young musicians in Miami is considerably brighter — not to mention more melodious — today. The nonprofit Miami Music Project has received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to fund its Children’s Orchestras, the organization’s “free, after-school music program, students acquire the values to achieve their full potential and learn to positively affect their society through music,” reads a press release sent to New Times.
With chapters in Little Haiti, Miami Gardens, Little Havana, Miami Beach, Homestead, Miami Springs, and beyond, Children’s Orchestras offers intensive orchestral training — strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion, oh my! — to a racially and economically diverse group of students from traditionally underserved communities. For example, eighty-five percent of participants are also served by free or reduced lunch programs, fifty-nine percent are female, fifty percent are Latino, and forty-three percent are black. (The scholarship, which includes instruction, instruments, and performance fees, is estimated to be worth approximately $5000 per student, per year.)
On any given day, Children’s Orchestras students might be enriched by “masterclasses with professional musicians from visiting orchestras,” rehearsals or “side-by-side performances” with New World Symphony Fellows, prep work for auditions with music schools and summer festivals, coaching courtesy of “esteemed clinicians and conductors,” and more.
“We are deeply honored to receive this milestone investment from the National Endowment for the Arts,” Miami Music Project President and CEO Anna Klimala says. “Dedicated to advancing the values of opportunity, community, and service, our organization proudly celebrates Freedom 250 by ensuring more young people have access to exceptional music education and performances that honor the nation’s artistic heritage.”
In return, the students will mark that national 250th anniversary with twenty-five community performances.
An offshoot of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” efforts, the National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965 and has since, as its official website notes, become the “largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts” — and current chairwoman Mary Anne Carter sees its mission as essential as ever. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support opportunities across the country for Americans to experience and participate in the arts,” Carter said. “As we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary this year, it is a moment to recognize the important role the arts continue to play in our lives, communities, and heritage.”
Miami Music Project fits that bill, boasting an alumni base of more than thirty thousand students and programming that provides the “highest-quality, immersive conservatory-level education three hours a day, five times a week” and a one-hundred-percent rate of “senior students pursuing higher education.”
For more information, visit the Miami Music Project website.
