About the Music in Schools Initiative

Our Mission

In keeping with the Yale School of Music’s commitment to cultural leadership and service to society, the Music in Schools Initiative was established in 2007 to explore how music can foster social change in New Haven and beyond.

History

While the Yale School of Music has long had a presence in the New Haven Public Schools, it was in 1997 that YSM’s Music in Schools program was conceived. At its 40th reunion that year, the Yale College Class of 1957 envisioned the establishment of a national arts policy that could also help “strengthen the association between Yale and the City of New Haven,” Class of ’57 member Don Roberts explained.

“I vividly recall the class meeting in November 1997 at which Don and his classmates outlined a vision for a national arts policy that would ensure the birthright of music for all children in America,” Yale School of Music Dean Robert Blocker wrote in a letter nominating Roberts for a Yale Medal, which the University bestowed on Roberts in 2022. “None of us could have begun to imagine the impact that the Initiative has had as a national model and lodestar for diversity, equity, and inclusion in city schools.”   

On the occasion of its 50th reunion, the Class of ’57 established an endowment that outlined a working partnership with the New Haven Public Schools, a biennial Symposium on Music in Schools, and a visiting professorship. The formalized program was launched as the Music in Schools Initiative by Michael Yaffe, a nationally renowned leader in community engagement who had been appointed Associate Dean the previous year.
A gift from Enid and Lester Morse ’51 in 2010 created the Morse Summer Music Academy, an intensive, month long camp for young musicians from the New Haven Public Schools.  “In the Academy we saw the opportunity to complete the circle” of year-round mentorship by offering an immersive experience during the summer, Blocker explained.

In 2017, the Music in Schools Initiative took a meaningful step toward the national arts policy the Class of ’57 had envisioned 20 years earlier. More than 40 participants at YSM’s sixth Symposium on Music in Schools were engaged to “help us craft and complete a declaration about why music has the potential to change children's lives and have an impact on issues of exclusion," Yaffe said. The yield of the 2017 Symposium on Music in Schools was the Declaration on Equity in Music for City Students, in which the School of Music and stakeholders throughout the United States called “for every student in every city in America to have access to a robust and active music life.”