Berklee City Music is a unique and successful program designed to involve inner-city teens in a college level experience to develop their love of music and further their musical education while they are still in high school and middle school. Ninety percent of the participants have been members of minority groups concentrated in the city’s poorest neighborhoods in and around Boston.

The City Music Program has expanded steadily from its inception in 1992. The program began strictly as scholarship program for city high school students attending the college’s five-week Summer Performance Program. Ten Scholarships — called SYSTEM-5, Summer Youth Scholarship for Talent and Excellence in Music — were given out that first year. In the summer of 2000 that number has grown to 45. Each year the program has been capped off by awarding continuing scholarships to deserving students. These scholarships are full tuition for four years for full-time study at Berklee. This year the college awarded four such scholarships.

The strategy of Berklee City Music is aimed at preventing disadvantage youth from dropping out of school. And redirect them from taking part in self-destructive or negative behavior by engaging them in opportunities that motivate them to make positive educational, personal, and career choices.

For many students in the program, Berklee education continues year-round, with mentoring relationships with the college’s faculty and student volunteers. The mentoring program began as a way to maintain a relationship with certain SYSTEM-5 applicants who were too young or inexperienced to benefit from the summer program. It soon became apparent, it was a way to maintain and deepen summer students’ skills from year to year.

During the school year Berklee provides an individual mentor for these young musicians and music theory classes in after school classes. Only seven students were mentored that first year; now nearly 40 young people have Berklee mentors, and 50 more are on a waiting list.

Berklee City Music Program would not be possible without the generous support of Foundations, individual contributors and the continuing success of the New Trustees. Institutional commitment to the musicians of tomorrow by Berklee insures the ongoing strength of the program. The success of these students is what spurs the college on to someday expand the program to locations outside the borders of Massachusetts.

For more information about supporting Berklee City Music Scholarships, e-mail Beverly Tryon or see the Contacts for Giving page.