Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute Names 2023–2024 Grant Recipients for PlayUSA

Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute has revealed the 2023–2024 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. As PlayUSA enters its tenth year, Carnegie Hall has selected 22 organizations, including 4 new partners—that will receive 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 webinars. In addition, site visits give partners a chance to come together in one national location 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.

“We’re excited to announce the new and returning PlayUSA partners, an incredible network of music organizations who provide crucial instrumental training programs to young people around the country,” said Sarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall’s Chief Education Officer and Director of the Hall’s Weill Music Institute. “The PlayUSA community is a dynamic cohort of leaders across the music education field who are creating pathways for young people in their communities. Being a PlayUSA partner is a way for educators to build community, deepen teaching, and share best practices. We look forward to collaborating and learning more from this incredible group in our 2023–2024 season.”

“It is challenging to carry out an ambitious music program in a small, isolated, rural community. The network created by PlayUSA makes us feel part of something larger—a community of music programs nationwide.”—Homer OPUS

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

About the New Grantees 

Austin Soundwaves (Austin, Texas)

Austin Soundwaves is an arts education organization focused on making learning music accessible and equitable. Founded as an El Sistema–inspired program in 2011, they serve more than 1,000 band, orchestra, and mariachi students in grades K–12 across 23 school and community partnerships. They believe in building communities where young people are supported, as they are, to lead meaningfully creative lives.
 

Music Haven (New Haven, Connecticut)

Music Haven creates an inclusive community for young people to learn, play, and express themselves through tuition-free classical music lessons and ongoing mentoring with world-class musicians. Music Haven is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides tuition-free one-on-one lessons, group classes and string instruments (violin, viola, cello, and bass) to students ages 6–18 years old in New Haven, Connecticut.
 

West Point School of Music (Chicago, Illinois)

West Point School of Music engages Chicago’s urban youth through music instruction and performance, cultivating artistically connected, socially conscious, productive, confident adults. They build on the legacy of formerly enslaved Trinidadians, who created the steel drum to celebrate their freedom and culture, using the steel drum and traditional instruments to inspire youth to achieve their goals with perseverance and excellence.
 

ZUMIX (East Boston, Massachusetts)

Since its inception in 1991, ZUMIX has offered award-winning after school and summer music and creative technology programs for low-income young people in greater Boston ages 7–18, winning national recognition. ZUMIX is designed to provide opportunities for creative learning, exploration, skill building, employment, and mentorship so that young people can transition into adulthood with confidence. 

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.
 

Capital Harmony Works (Trenton, New Jersey)
 

Capital Harmony Works 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.
 

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 Music Center of Boston (Boston, Massachusetts)

For more than 100 years, Community Music Center of Boston has provided unparalleled opportunity to explore arts instruction in a safe, culturally inclusive, and affirming environment. It is the largest outside provider of arts education to the Boston public schools, and a national leader in using music to effect social change. Twenty-five hundred students participate in weekly lessons and classes, and they invest more than $100,000 in wages to youth employees each year.
 

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts (Richmond, California)
 

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts annually engages 4,000 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. Their 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.
 

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.
 

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.
 

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.
 

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.
 

Make Music NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana)
 

Make Music NOLA’s (MMN) mission is to give the children of New Orleans the keys to claim their musical heritage and 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 specifically works with schools and communities that don’t have music programs, providing access to high-quality programs for all interested students. MMN provides music instruction for more than 400 pre-K–12 students each year.
 

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.
 

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.
 

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 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.    

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. This includes more than 155 orchestras, music presenters, and education organizations in 40 US states as well as internationally in 15 countries on 6 continents. WMI’s hands-on programs tap into the creativity of audiences of all ages, inviting them to make their own music in all genres, express their viewpoints, and raise their voices. WMI shares an extensive range of online music education resources and program materials for free with teachers, families, orchestras, arts organizations, and music lovers worldwide. As a leader in music education, WMI generates new knowledge through original research, which inform Carnegie Hall’s own programs and are also available as a resource to artists, organizations, and peers.

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