A Community Music School That Bridges Social and Economic Gaps

Neighborhood Music School has been a musical home for generations of families going back a century in Boyle Heights. Located in an old Victorian house since 1933, the school was originally founded in 1914 as a place for newly arrived immigrants to learn English and music. 

“Neighborhood Music School is one of those safe spaces. You come here, it’s almost like you’re stepping out of time, into your own unique journey,” says Karen Louis, executive director. “Physically, it feels like you’re going into your grandmother’s house or your auntie’s house, like you are literally stepping back in time. But personally, every student is received by their teacher/mentor at the level they are at with their own goals in mind. Whether it is at age six and they’re seeing a piano for the first time or they’re 66 and they are learning guitar for the first time.”

The school provides low-cost, high-quality one-on-one music instruction to those who need it most. Its scholarship program means the low-cost fee can be as low as $5 per month for many of their families, the instrument rentals are also low-cost, and group lessons are free. No one is turned away for need. For many students and families, music lessons would be unaffordable without the Neighborhood Music School. 

Students also have unparalleled opportunities to connect with professional musicians. The school recently hosted a master class with acclaimed pianist Althea Waites in partnership with Piano Spheres. In 2023, students worked with groundbreaking Grammy-winning Latina composer Germaine Franco, an NMS board member, and performed her songs from the Disney film Coco with the L.A. Master Chorale at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The school is proud to be a warm and welcoming gathering place for the neighborhood. It opens its doors to the community for movie nights, concerts, and special events throughout the year. And it is a safe, uplifting, artistic home to its community of families, teaching artists, and students. 

“I have always loved music and I completely fell in love with the clarinet the first time I heard it,” says Victor Eliseo Rivera, 20, who has been taking lessons since he was 16.  “It is a way for me to enter into a world where the stress from work and the expectations I have from family and school do not apply. Whenever I stop and play the clarinet, I feel that nothing can go wrong and that I have something to offer the world.”

Neighborhood Music School teaches over 350 students per month at the school, and its outreach program serves an additional 400+ students in partner schools like PUENTE Learning Center, the John Tracy Center, Long Beach Unified School District, and Little Lake School District. The students learn piano, classical string, brass, and reed instruments, as well as percussion and voice from accomplished teaching artists, some of whom are Neighborhood Music School alumni. 

“When you come into Neighborhood Music School,” Louis says, “you have the opportunity to give a literal voice to the music that’s inside you and that’s really important and it’s something that can be shared and something that can heal.”