Dear friends,
Welcome to Community Music Center! Whether you’re a student new to music studies, a parent or caregiver looking for opportunities for your child, or you are looking to return to music, we have something for you! CMC is 100 years young, with a commitment to music for everyone. This year, we’re pursuing this commitment in even bigger ways!
Construction is underway on our Mission District campus expansion, renovating and restoring the historic building right next door to our home of over 100 years on Capp Street. This project will bring with it larger classrooms for groups and ensembles, an additional performance space, and ADA accessibility. We’ll be growing our tuition-free programs, and launching new programs developed to meet the needs of our community. Throughout construction, we’ll continue to provide lessons and classes on-site in our Mission District and Richmond District branches, as well as online, on over 30 instruments with an endless list of musical styles. It’s an exciting time to be at CMC witnessing this transformation!
As our physical space expands, we are also working hard to expand our vision of what music education can look like in the future. Over the last year, our students have been exploring their musical communities, sharing performances on the parade route during Carnaval, in concerts with community partners including Acción Latina’s Paseo Artístico and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and virtually all over the world with our (Re)Imagine project with Cava Menzies. As we expand, we’ll be bringing even more opportunities for our students to grow as musicians, and to celebrate and share their musical stories in our community, throughout our city, and around the globe. We are so excited for you to be a part of it!
With all that is new at CMC, we’re also looking back and celebrating the path we took to get here. Our doors at 544 Capp Street first opened in 1921, and we’ve been welcoming anyone with a love of music-making ever since. For those of you who might be new to CMC, we’d love for you to get to know us! We encourage you to explore our website and our YouTube Channel, where you can find videos from our many performance series and interviews with students and faculty. You’ll also find our recent Centennial video series, celebrating 100 years of music for everyone, and looking towards all that is still to come in the next century.
We’re grateful that you’re here to be a part of this new chapter with us. Whether you join us at one of our current branches, out in the community, in our newly expanded home, or online, we can’t wait to share space together, and to see – and hear! – where music takes you.
Sincerely,
Julie Rulyak Steinberg
Executive Director