Music: A Classroom Like No Other
This fall, as routines return and the year shifts into a new season, we invite you to embrace a time of discovery and renewal.
The fall back-to-school season often reminds us of sharpened pencils, backpacks, fresh notebooks, and the excitement of learning something new. We love the energy in the air, even as we notice the museum growing a bit quieter while families settle into their new rhythms.
At the Museum of Making Music, that sense of learning and new beginnings is with us always. Why? Because we experience music making in all its intricate layers as a lifelong classroom, one without age limits, grades, or final exams. Its doors are always open, its office hours never end, and its lessons, such as patience, resilience, communication and focus, last a lifetime.
In our galleries, visitors of every age become students the moment they walk through the door. They discover how an instrument takes shape in the hands of a craftsperson, how technology has transformed the way we play and create, how music has traveled across cultures and generations, and how an instrument feels in one’s own hands. A single story, artifact or experience can spark a question or evoke an insight that opens a whole new way of seeing or understanding the world.
In our live performance series, the classroom expands. Each concert teaches something unique: how a songwriter can turn personal stories into universal truths, how an ensemble can hold a conversation through melody, harmony and rhythm, or how live music can transform a room into a community connected by sound. These are lessons that transcend the textbook, are felt in the moment, carried in memory, and recalled again and again.
And in our programs, the classroom comes alive in still other ways. Adults discover—or rediscover—their instruments in our North Coast Strings and New Horizons Band groups, reminding us that music makes space for every learner, every time. Students arrive on field trips, often experiencing instruments up close for the very first time. Volunteers find joy in sharing knowledge through welcoming guests, guiding audiences, and shaping meaningful museum experiences.
At the Museum of Making Music, we are reminded every day that music and music making is not just something we appreciate from afar; it’s something we learn from, grow with, and share. No matter your age or stage of life, music making has something to offer, from endless discovery to who we can still become.
I know this from personal experience. For many years, I believed I wasn’t worthy of the immense beauty and power that music offers. But what I’ve discovered in my own lifelong classroom is that music is limitless and without judgment. It is welcoming and always right in front of us, within reach. In the end, music doesn’t ask if we are worthy, it simply invites us in.
