Joy of Music - Worcester's Community Music School was founded in 1986 as a program of music & movement classes for preschoolers by Wendy Webster Ardizzone, the school's current director. Her purpose was to help young children develop a life-long relationship with music by giving them a joyful and solid musical foundation on which to build in a warm and non-competitive learning environment. This philosophy is still at the heart of the school, which has built an outstanding faculty of 40 musicians, all dedicated to the art of teaching. They are as enthusiastic about getting beginners off to a great start as they are about helping advanced students who plan to become professional musicians prepare for conservatory auditions. A testament to our faculty's work is the number of students who study at JOMP through high school and continue to make music an important part of their lives, no matter what they choose to do professionally. Adults find that Joy of Music's warm and supportive atmosphere makes the school an ideal place to study, whether they are a beginner or already an accomplished musician. In June 2000 JOMP was seriously affected by the fire at First Unitarian Church in Worcester, where it had been a tenant for 16 years. For the next 18 months the school faced the tremendous challenge of continuing operations while spread out in three churches. In December 2000, thanks to generous community support, Joy of Music purchased and renovated its own building, a former nursing home. The completion of our new Joseph & Jordan Shapiro Concert Hall in January 2016 makes it possible for us to welcome larger audiences to our faculty concerts and student recitals. Heartfelt thanks to the foundations and hundreds of individual donors who made the creation of this aesthetically beautiful and acoustically marvelous performance space possible! JOMP alumni majoring in music go on to study at some of the nation's finest music schools, including Eastman, Curtis, Hartt, and the Oberlin, New England, San Francisco and Boston Conservatories of Music, to name a few. Many JOMP alumni not majoring in music continue their music as members of college orchestras, jazz ensembles and choruses across the country.
