The Harmony Project Story
by Margaret Martin, DrPH, MPH, Harmony Project Founder
A posse of hard-core LA gang members walked through a Farmer’s Market on a Sunday morning: tattoos, shaved heads, over-sized clothing and attitude. A tiny kid was playing Brahms on a tiny violin. The gang members stopped to listen. After 5 or 6 minutes, without saying anything to one another, I watched those gang members pull out their own money and lay it gently in the little kid’s case. I was earning a doctorate in Public Health at UCLA at the time, focused on what it takes to make a healthy community. That day, those gang members handed me a powerful lesson. They taught me that they would rather be doing what that little kid was doing, but they never had the chance. They led me to research linking early-sustained music learning to improvements in math, language, cognition, brain development and behavior – the basis for Harmony Project.
I couldn’t help those gang members, but they changed my life. In 2001, after I completed my doctoral degree, I founded Harmony Project with 36 high need students, a $9,000 check from the Rotary Club of Hollywood, and a small group of dedicated teachers and board members. The money quickly ran out, but our passion for our kids and our vision endured. The teachers agreed to teach their students for free while we struggled to raise funds to continue the program.
Fifteen years later, we’re still here. We have built more than a dozen youth orchestras and bands and an institution in Los Angeles that is inspiring similar programs in communities throughout the country. In 2009, we received the President’s Coming Up Taller Award, the nation’s highest honor for an arts-based youth program. In 2011 we received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal.
Harmony Project’s success is the result of the hard work and commitment of our students, families, teachers, staff, our boards, and our terrific community partners and sponsors all pulling together. Together we celebrate and help realize the tremendous creative talent and potential of young people the rest of the city might never otherwise hear from or appreciate. By learning to play increasingly challenging music over multiple years with students from diverse cultural backgrounds and beliefs, Harmony Project students develop character, discipline, a collaborative mind-set and the habits of mind they need to succeed in life.
I couldn’t help those gang members, but they changed my life. In 2001, after I completed my doctoral degree, I founded Harmony Project with 36 high need students, a $9,000 check from the Rotary Club of Hollywood, and a small group of dedicated teachers and board members. The money quickly ran out, but our passion for our kids and our vision endured. The teachers agreed to teach their students for free while we struggled to raise funds to continue the program.
Fifteen years later, we’re still here. We have built more than a dozen youth orchestras and bands and an institution in Los Angeles that is inspiring similar programs in communities throughout the country. In 2009, we received the President’s Coming Up Taller Award, the nation’s highest honor for an arts-based youth program. In 2011 we received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal.
Harmony Project’s success is the result of the hard work and commitment of our students, families, teachers, staff, our boards, and our terrific community partners and sponsors all pulling together. Together we celebrate and help realize the tremendous creative talent and potential of young people the rest of the city might never otherwise hear from or appreciate. By learning to play increasingly challenging music over multiple years with students from diverse cultural backgrounds and beliefs, Harmony Project students develop character, discipline, a collaborative mind-set and the habits of mind they need to succeed in life.