In Rhode Island, a Music Center Becomes a Community Haven
Students outside the CMW Center during the Youth Salon, 2025. Photo: Rebecca Atwood / Atomic Clock Photography.
Last weekend, in the U.S. city of Providence, Rhode Island, the renowned pianist Emanuel Ax visited Community MusicWorks for a pair of concerts in collaboration with our students and our professional ensemble in residence. Manny’s visit helped to celebrate our CMW Center, which was only a dream when he first came in 2017.
During Manny’s first visit, one concert took place in a neighborhood taqueria, and another on the basketball court of a nearby community center. In many ways, the concerts last weekend marked the new chapter we find ourselves in, welcoming children, families, musicians, and special guest artists into our purpose-built center.
We haven’t abandoned the nomadic, pop-up qualities that are embedded in the DNA of CMW from our 29-year history, but the new center is allowing us to amplify our impact in many directions.
In September 2024, two weeks before the Center’s grand opening, our staff and board, along with alumni and community members, gathered in a large circle in the Performance Hall to launch a new strategic planning process. Sitting in that circle marked both an arrival and a new beginning. Certainly, this purpose-built center was something to celebrate: we were preparing to welcome families and audiences into a community center for music.
The building was the result of many years of dreaming, planning, gathering people and resources, and trying to realize a collective vision. It was poignant to remember the years of charrettes with students, families, musicians, and community members in which we brainstormed what a future space could be for the organization.
At this point, it was time to ask ourselves the question: “Now that we are here, where are we going?” As it turned out, this was really four questions:
How would this new resource challenge us to do more? What was it asking of us? During the design process, the architects had captured something we’d said in a meeting: we needed the building to include a performance hall, because that dark hall waiting for music would be an instigation for us to create. In the same way, the café, studios, practice rooms, and library would be resources at the ready, challenging us to make our programs more available to our community and to serve our current students with more ways to fuel their musical progress.
How could we ensure new levels of support for our staff?—who had been devoting their hearts and souls to this mission?
How could the new building help generate revenue for our program while at the same time serving our mission? How could our deeply held values inform our decisions about space rentals?
How could we invest more deeply in our professional performing ensemble, the MusicWorks Collective? How could we hone our artistic planning process and elevate the visibility of the ensemble’s performing life, supporting them in experimenting with new forms and collaborations both in and outside the new center?
These questions launched twelve months of deep study and input gathering from community members, under the guidance of talented planner/facilitator Dulari Tahbildar. In September 2025, when we had fully moved into the building, we gathered again—staff, board, students, parents, alumni, community members—to celebrate the conclusion of the strategic plan with another retreat in the Performance Hall.
What decisions have emerged, and what have we learned, throughout these eighteen months of exploration? Here are a few key insights gained and priorities established.
Our students are eager for opportunities to widen their musical knowledge—to study music history and theory, and to learn about multiple musical genres. Our teaching artists are clear that opportunities outside CMW can be helpful sparks—summer music programs, youth orchestras, travel opportunities. The message is clear: the more ways kids can keep developing musically, the better.
Our resident musicians, who make up the MusicWorks Collective, serve invaluable purposes, both inward- and outward-facing: they inspire and elevate the aspirations of our students, and they also serve as ambassadors to our community. It’s important to increase their compensation, and it’s important to explore other ways to support their work, like supporting student debt or instrument care.
Our greater network is important. We’re investing in supporting the MusicWorks Network, which includes eight programs throughout the northeastern U.S. and Canada.
Our new building offers a kind of “third space,” not only for students but also for community involvement. And we’ve established values and guidelines that inform our decisions about renting our spaces. We have begun renting space to arts and community groups—a youth poetry reading; a local entrepreneurial group; musicians doing recording sessions. We’re also planning for a public café that could be open during the hours we’re not actively in session.
Our alumni have emerged as one of our great strengths and joys. They are involved, and leading, in all areas of the organization: on our staff, from the finance department to teaching artist staff; on our board, and—for the first time—as parents of new students! Having alumni fully present as leaders tells its own kind of story about growing deep roots in our community. Thinking of the building as a resource for these coming generations has given us urgency and energy about launching the next chapter.
In the meantime, as we watched students and our resident musicians with Emanuel Ax, we could see that the challenge of that once-dark performance hall had been met: it is becoming the place that inspires creative joyous moments for our whole community.
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