The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $2.5 million grant to New England Conservatory, in consortium with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Community Music Center of Boston, and the string education program Project STEP, to launch the new Boston Bridge to Equity and Achievement in Music initiative.
The initiative is designed to fund the musical education of middle- and high-school-age classical musicians from historically underrepresented communities, creating individually tailored programs of study with the participating organizations to set them up for professional success.
Rebecca Bogers, the dean and director of the NEC Preparatory School, serves on the BEAM initiative’s steering committee along with leadership from the other organizations. She said that a new program manager would be hired for the consortium. And working together, she explained, the consortium could have a larger impact and serve more students than each organization could individually.