Indian Hill Music (Littleton, Massachusetts), a non-profit center for music education and performance, has named Lisa Fiorentino as its chief executive officer. Fiorentino has been at Indian Hill Music for 10 years, most recently as the organization's chief operating officer. She is stepping into the chief executive officer role as Susan Randazzo, co-founder and current executive director, is transitioning into a role focusing on long-term institutional advancement. 

Indian Hill Music is currently in the process of creating a world-class education and performance center on 110 aces in Groton, Massachusetts, which will be home to a 1,000 seat concert hall, a 300 seat recital hall, rehearsal and recital spaces, and a lawn for summer concerts. Slated to open in 2022, the Music Center will be a regional gathering place for music education and performances in Central Massachusetts and beyond. 

We have an extraordinary opportunity to create one of the most ambitious cultural projects in New England," Fiorentino says, "a world-class music center for teaching, performance, and community partnership. Our organization provides exceptional and vibrant music experiences that educate, energize, and enrich our community. I look forward to working with Indian Hill’s outstanding team of staff, faculty, musicians, and board members to deepen our impact in the region.”

Read the full release and learn more about Indian Hill Music.

The Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth—which consists of nine partner organizations including Guild members Settlement Music School, Play On, Philly!, and Temple Univiersity Music Preparatory Division—and the School District of Philadelphia's Office of the Arts & Academic Enrichment collaborated to host the first ever shared professional development day on January 18. The free event drew 252 music education teachers from local cultural organizations as well as district music educators in an effort to align, enrich, and expand music education opportunities for students across the city. 

Attendees heard from Nicole Robinson, creator of Cultural Connections by Design, a music educator with a special interest in working with urban school districts. Breakout sessions focused on topics ranging from building relationships with students, the importances of emotional health and career longevity, and coding in the music classroom. 

Read more about the event here.

Carnegie Hall's Play USA program supports partner organizations across the country with funding, training, and professional development for teachers and arts administrators working to offer instrumental music education to low-income and under served K-12 students. 

Application forms open February 1, and are due March 15. Partners will be announced June 28. Read more here. 

RAW Art Works (Lynn, MA) Reel to Reel Film School student Michaela Olabisi has been awarded the Questbridge National College Match Scholarship to attend Vassar College in the fall. The scholarship, which covers her full tuition, helps low-income, first generation students get into and attend prestigious schools. 

Michaela has been involved with RAW since eighth grade, and says she does not think she would be where she is today without the after-school arts organization. Through their Reel to Reel Film School, they engage students in the art of visual storytelling through the process of making a film. Michaela's film, "The Missing Element," is a film highlighting the lack of acknowledgment towards people of color in the STEM field.

Read the full story here. Learn more about Reel to Reel Film school here, and watch Michaela's video here.

The San Francisco Community Music Center (SFCMC), in collaboration with UC San Francisco and the San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult Services, has completed the Community of Voices Trial. The study, funded by a five-year grant to UCSF from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, aimed to examine whether singing in a community choir is a cost-effective way to promote health and well-being among culturally diverse older adults. The results have now been released in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, as well as being shared publicly on the Community of Voices Website.

“We hear from our older adult choir members all the time how singing in the choirs lifts their spirits, but it’s wonderful to get this confirmation from a research study about the impact of singing in a choir for older adults. We are grateful to UCSF and Julene Johnson for their work on this,” comments Julie Rulyak Steinberg, executive director, Community Music Center.

The study followed twelve community choir groups made up of 390 socioeconomically and racial/ethnically diverse adults aged 60 and over. Led by professional choir directors and accompanists, choirs practiced and performed music that was culturally specific to each community and appropriate for older adults with varied singing and music-reading abilities. Researchers examined the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial impacts on choir members by measuring health and wellbeing outcomes including memory, cognition, feelings of loneliness, and interest in life.

Researchers found significant improvements in loneliness and an interest in life for older adults who sang in a choir for six months. There were no substantial differences in cognitive ability, physical outcomes, or health care costs. “We were a little surprised not to see improvements in cognitive and physical function, especially because the literature, although small, suggested there should be improvements,” said lead author Julene Johnson, PhD, associate dean for research and professor in the UCSF School of Nursing. “However, our study is one of the first randomized controlled trials of a choir intervention, whereas the others were cross-sectional or did not randomly assign the participants.” More research is needed on how choirs improve well-being and the potential long-term health impacts, said Johnson.

With an aging population and a lack of social systems to adequately support them, the risk for social isolation, depression, and loneliness is older adults is high. Community choirs represent one creative and accessible approach to engage older adults in the arts because they are low cost to deliver, engaging, and can be culturally tailored to each community.

You can read the full press release here, and access the Community of Voices Study Choir Program Manual here for a guide to creating a community choir for older adults.