Eight months after moving in to its new home at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Nashville Symphony has announced a music education program that it hopes will be as impressive as its opulent hall.
Music Education City, as it’s being called, is a six-point initiative that will include an advocacy campaign, children’s concerts, fellowships for young musicians, and educational tours around the region by members of the symphony.
The program was developed by the New York-based firm Artsvison. Its president Mitchell Korn says Nashville area schools offer students an average of just 20 minutes of music instruction per week. And there’s only one music instructor for every 700 students. Korn says that’s far from enough.
“Without music education you don’t participate as being a musician. You’re not going to provide resources to music institutions. You’re not going to become audiences to music. So it’s imperative that this community takes a serious look at music education as part of its overall future.”
To drive home its point about music education, the Symphony turned to Robert Horowitz of the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University. He says while schools have cut music programs in favor of subjects covered on standardized tests, a growing body of research demonstrates that music instruction improves student performance in other areas, including reading and math. That message will be central to the symphony’s campaign to raise awareness of and funding for its education programs.
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