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Encore Gala
Berklee City Music
Making Dreams Come True One Note At A Time
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Berklee City Music Scholarship recipients with Roger Brown |
Your participation in the Encore Gala ultimately supports a very important educational outreach service to urban youth. All proceeds from the Encore Gala supports Berklee City Music. Berklee has received a $2.2 million challenge grant from the Theodore R. and Vivian M. Johnson Foundation to expand the number of full-time scholarships to 11 per year. In order to access these funds Berklee must raise close to $2.9 million for this purpose.
The Mission
Berklee City Music is a strategic initiative to engage talented urban 6th through 12th graders in a yearlong
music education program with a mission to prepare students for a college education. Its purpose is to reduce
the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their more advantaged peers.
The successful outreach program provides scholarship and mentoring opportunities for youth who have musical
talent but few avenues to pursue their dreams and aspirations. City Music was established to provide underserved
students with access to postsecondary and pre-professional experiences and expose these students to sustainable
career options in music.
Program Components
Over the past 16 years, Berklee City Music has grown with inspiring vigor. Talented urban students participate
each year tuition-free, through scholarship support, in the various components of the program including:
- Berklee's Five-Week Summer Performance Program
- Yearlong college after-school preparatory mentoring program
- City Music Saturday Preparatory School
- City Music Saturday Upper School
- Faculty Outreach
Berklee faculty and students work with these young people not only to nurture their music skills but also to
develop the discipline and professionalism they will need to succeed in higher education.
City Music Continuing Scholarships
Up to ten full four-year scholarships are given each year to qualified City Music students to attend Berklee
College of Music. Participants have also gone on to pursue degrees at Harvard, Brown, Wesleyan and NYU to
name a few. Other City Music graduates are working with well-known artists.
Successes and Highlights
Since the programs inception in 1992, over 2,500 youths have benefited from participating through scholarship
support in the Berklee City Music program with annual enrollment now reaching 500.
Through this program, 92 Boston-area high school students have received full, four-year scholarships to attend
Berklee College of Music.
In 2005, Berklee received ceremonial recognition from the Higher Education Partnership and Mayor Thomas M.
Menino for its City Music Program and for demonstrating exemplary best practices for grades K-12 in partnering
with the Boston Public Schools.
Berklee now plans to expand City Music nationally by forming partnerships in communities across the country.
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