Established in 1948, the Music Performance Fund (“MPTF”) has been vital to “making music a part of every child’s life experience.” Below are some of the ways MPTF touches the lives of kids here in the LA area, as told by music organizations in their own words.
“Each February, with the generous support of the MPTF, the Los Angeles Jazz Society (LAJS), through its famed Jazz in Schools Program, brings the exciting world of jazz to thousands of elementary school students throughout the city and county of Los Angeles. Our exceptional jazz musicians – all members of Musician’s Local 47 – take these students on a historical trip through jazz, from its origins in New Orleans and its growth and evolutions in the past 135 years to the contemporary jazz heard around the world today. Thanks in large part to the funding from the MPTF, the LAJS presented live, interactive concerts to 52 elementary schools in 2026, creating future audiences and inspiring the young musicians of tomorrow.”
Rita Zwern, Treasurer, Director of Jazz in Schools
“The MPTF helped has helped Saturday Night Bath play live Blues for 80,000 at-risk youth in Los Angeles for 40 years. How wonderful is that?”
Howie Rich, Executive Director of Saturday Night Bath
“Oakwood Brass – Outreach Project (OBOP), a nonprofit music education organization based in Pasadena, provides musical opportunities for the community-at-large including schools and senior centers. Using a classic brass quintet sound, the group performs programs featuring a wide range of genres including classical, popular, and jazz. Using concerts, educational programming, and teaching artists, OBOPs mission is to enhance the community with music and to support public school band programs. Equitable access to the arts is a central value for our organization.
Our organization relies on the generosity and support of donors and organizations such as the Music Performance Trust Fund; all of our school programming is provided at no cost to the schools or their students. This year marks a new milestone – MPTF has been supporting our program for a decade, starting in 2016. A particular shout out and thank you to Local 47’s Diane Lauerman, who has been working with us since the beginning.
With the support of MPTF and other supporting grant organizations, OBOP provides three separate styles of concerts to public schools. Our Instrument Introduction for 4th/5th graders focuses on students as they choose instruments for study in the coming year. It features a 50-minute concert with classical, jazz, contemporary, and media music. This concert focuses on teaching students basic music concepts such the correlation between instrument shape and sound, and how brass musicians create sound.
Our 50 Minute In-School concerts for 6th grade middle school students, on the other hand, is an inspirational concert that focuses on showstopper instrumental virtuoso features such as La Virgen de la Macarena (trumpet solo) and St. James Infirmary (trombone solo). We use these pieces to showcase the strengths and sounds of brass, giving students listening examples to highlight the differences between the various instruments.
Finally, our Music Industry concert for high school music students uses music selections as a vehicle to foster an open dialogue and discussion with students about the music industry including career opportunities beyond that of the performing artist such as arts administration, grantwriting, composing/arranging, and recording.”
Darren Dvoracek, Artistic Director, and founding member, of Oakwood Brass – Outreach Project