Brown University Music Department

Sebastian Ruth founded Community MusicWorks in 1997 with the conviction that music and musicians have an important role to play in creating and transforming communities. With start-up funding from the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University, Sebastian created the opportunity for a professional string quartet to teach, perform, live, and become fully integrated into an urban Providence neighborhood. Today Community MusicWorks is a thriving community organization. Built around the permanent residency of the Providence String Quartet, we offer exciting programs that engage and inspire Providence youth and their families. Each member of the Providence String Quartet teaches instrument lessons, mentors students, performs locally, and organizes community building events for entire families. We receive strong support from the communities in which we are based, and we are excited to find that our students' enthusiasm for learning about music continually reinvigorates the many professional musicians and other performing artists who visit us each season. Among our annual visitors are members of our Advisory Council, a group dedicated to advancing and promoting our artistic and organizational goals. The numbers demonstrate the success of our organization. The fact that 90% of our students chose to re-enroll for our programs last year is an important indicator of the long-term relationships we are forming. We continually maintain a waiting list and special efforts are made throughout the year to include the families of children on the waiting list in educational events. In addition, hundreds of children experience the Providence String Quartet through a series of annual school presentations and free local performances in libraries and community centers. In 2005, 2007, and 2009, the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities recognized Community MusicWorks as one of the fifty premier after-school arts programs in the nation.