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Partnerships
UCLA MUSIC PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM

by Nancy Kapitanoff

When jazz great Dexter Gordon was a student at Los Angeles’s Jefferson High School, and Charles Mingus and Buddy Collette were at Jordan High School learning to play their instruments, they were all supported by strong music education programs in their schools.

"Jefferson High School, in the heart of the Central Avenue community, and Jordan High School in Watts offered extensive music programs, with classes in theory as well as performance. Samuel Browne’s program at Jeff was especially noteworthy for giving students the opportunity not only to learn to play jazz but also to arrange and compose."

from the book Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles
Left to right: Ricky Alder, Washington Prep, and Nathan Endsley, UCLA
 

Left to Right: Amir Drasquez, Washington Prep, and Aaron Bitzer, UCLA
Music education in Los Angeles inner city schools has been cut back to a remnant of what it was in the decades before and after World War II. So in 1994, in an effort to repair the breach, the UCLA Department of Music created its Music Partnership Program. Initially the program partnered with George Washington Preparatory High School in South Central Los Angeles. UCLA music students were sent there to give one-on-one music lessons to budding musicians who could not afford private lessons and to serve as their mentors, encouraging them in their academic studies. The goal was to prepare these students musically, academically, and personally for the challenges of college.

To participate in the Partnership Program, Washington Prep students must maintain a 3.0 grade point average. Since its

   inception, every participatingstudent has graduated from high school and all but one have gone on to college. Three are now members of UCLA’s sophomore class.

Music department chair Jon Robertson founded the Partnership Program using departmental funds to start a small pilot program. Its positive results enabled it to grow and to attract funding from a wide range of sources, including the Herb Alpert Foundation, the Boone Foundation, Richard and Mary Carpenter, James and Karen Cramer, Mo and Evelyn Ostin, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., UCLA Design For Sharing, and Werner and Mimi Wolfen. Today the program includes partnerships with Bursch Elementary School in Compton, Bret Harte Middle School in South Central Los Angeles, the Boys and Girls Club of Hollywood, and Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles.