The Brooklyn Porch Music Program provides high-quality and free music education to middle and high school youth from Title I schools in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. Through intensive mentorship with local musicians, original composition workshops, large group ensemble rehearsals, and performances in interactive multi-generational community concerts, participants develop their skills as creative artists and explore the role of music in community building.
Our program
With a focus on creativity, storytelling, collective improvisation, and music composition, Brooklyn Porch Music encourages students to think independently and try new forms of expression. Participating youth write songs and stories about their neighborhood and perform them alongside their mentors and peers in underutilized public spaces – subway stations, public plazas, laundromats, and the local Indian restaurant where we rehearse. Sign up for our program here!
- Years of Community Programming: 4 years
- Current Teaching Artists: 10
- Youth Who Have Received Free Music Programming: 200
- Total Hours of Instruction: 1600 per season
Donate
Jazz Passengers Music Projects, Inc., a New York not-for-profit organization (NYS Charities Registration Number 47-67-89) with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from the IRS in (EIN 45-556-8813). All donations to our program are tax deductible. Our program is partly funded by generous donors and community members. Donations help compensate professional musicians to mentor and teach, provide instruments to those who have few resources for their own, and provide equipment for our joyous public performances, and much more. Donate to our Youth Program!
Bk PoRCH MUSIC Origin story
It was March 2020, two weeks into the complete shutdown of New York City and veteran jazz musician and educator Roy Nathanson had an idea. “I was just so shaken by the enormity of the situation, the kind of web of fear,” he remembered. “My tours were all canceled, people I knew were getting sick, the streets were so eerie. I heard about the Italians singing out on their balconies in Italy and I just wanted to play something beautiful for the neighborhood and myself.” He went out with his alto saxophone onto his second floor balcony in Ditmas Park and played one song: Amazing Grace. “I thought, play one song exactly at 5 pm and walk back inside.” But what would happen next stunned him, as the community began to gather outside his house everyday at 5PM, hungry for ritual, for community, and for hope.
