“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $2.5 million grant to New England Conservatory, in consortium with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Community Music Center of Boston, and the string education program Project STEP, to launch the new Boston Bridge to Equity and Achievement in Music initiative,” writes Zoë Madonna in Thursday’s (9/27) Boston Globe. “The initiative is designed to fund the musical education of middle- and high-school-age classical musicians from historically underrepresented communities…. Starting in the fall of 2019, the initiative will offer 60-75 students each year private lessons, orchestral experience, chamber music coaching, music theory lessons, support for summer program participation, and individual long-term mentorship…. Susan Feder, a program officer in the arts and cultural heritage program at Mellon, said that a primary goal of the BEAM initiative is ultimately to help increase diversity in classical orchestras. ‘We have been developing what we hope will be systemic changes to an intractable problem of there being 4 percent representation of black and Latinx musicians in orchestras around the country,’ she said, citing the League of American Orchestras’ ‘Forty Years of Fellowships’ study…. ‘It’s not an issue of talent, it’s an issue of access.’ ”
Posted September 27, 2018
In photo: Students in Boston’s Project STEP program. Project STEP (String Training Education Program) is one of a consortium of five organizations in the new Boston Bridge to Equity and Achievement in Music initiative.
