Music as Social Change

As performers

Musicians can inspire joy, provoke conversation, express the unspoken, comfort the vulnerable, and knit people together in a powerful, collective human experience.

As teachers

Musicians can help students build self-esteem, improve emotional development, inspire imagination, enhance intellectual curiosity, learn teamwork, and attain a sense of accomplishment.

This has been our central question at Longy: How might musicians employ their extraordinary superpowers to address the needs of the world?

How can musicians make a difference?

Here are just a few of the hundreds of ways our students are answering this question.

Engaging communities in need

Roy Lewis was inspired by the Lullaby Project. Initiated by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the program pairs new and expecting parents and caregivers with professional artists to write and sing personal lullabies for their babies, aiding parental health and strengthening the parent-child bond. Hoping to create a similar impact at Longy, Roy found the perfect partner in Horizons for Homeless Children in Boston. Roy proposed a class for Longy students that culminated in a four-week field experience during which Longy musicians would work with Horizon parents to help write and record a unique lullaby for their children.

“It was incredible to hear each parent’s story…seeing the connections formed over four weeks between Horizon parents and Longy students was a beautiful thing.”

Making music accessible to every child

Gabrielle Molina always dreamed of becoming the principal clarinet in an orchestra. Those aspirations changed when she saw a TED Talk about El Sistema, the Venezuelan program that uses intensive music education to create opportunity, connection, and safe spaces for children in under-resourced neighborhoods. After graduating from Longy’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, Gabrielle founded Teaching Artists International, a non-profit that connects musicians with socially based music programs around the world. “I had spent so many years in the practice room trying to perfect excerpts and my legato. And I was trying to figure out how these things intersect in making the world a better place…when I found the program (at Longy), I felt that I was finally finding a group of like-minded individuals who were also questioning their role in society as musicians.”

Bringing the healing power of music to the NICU

When Job Salazar Fonseca began studying to become a therapeutic musician at Longy, he never dreamed that his first patient would be his own son. Askel was born prematurely at 32 weeks. During his first weeks of life, he had trouble breathing and eating. The staff in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was skeptical at first when Job asked if he could bring his violin to play. But as his music filled the NICU, the nurses soon surrounded him with all the babies, who gradually stopped crying. It wasn’t long before Askel began to breathe and eat on his own. “I realized that music is not just an art form, but a powerful force that can provide an environment of healing.”

What’s next?

Imagine with us…a society where musicians are seen as essential workers, using their art to address needs at every level of society.

Imagine if every retirement community employed musicians to play concerts, teach lessons, and offer classes that enrich the lives of residents, replacing loneliness and anxiety with connection and joy.

What if every hospice were staffed with therapeutic musicians to improve improve end-of-life care? If addiction recovery clinics relied on music as an integral part of pain management, and neonatal ICUs staffed musicians to aid the development of young brains?

Imagine if every city and town supported music programs that created space for joy and connection, and where music events throughout the city drove cultural enrichment, tourism, and economic development.

Imagine afterschool programs in every community where children could find a sense of belonging, build self-esteem, and teach skills they have mastered to younger children.

What if prisons could offer music lessons to the incarcerated that help to instill purpose, reduce recidivism, and increase prospects for a meaningful life after release?

And what if communities torn by racial strife and political differences created ensembles where people from different backgrounds could share musical experiences that help to build bridges, create dialogue, and foster empathy?

This is our vision. This is what we train students for every day. And with your help, we’re just getting started.