October 06, 2020 I Philanthropy
Keep Music Alive Celebrates Kids Music Day
The Fifth Annual Kids Music Day was celebrated on Friday, October 2. Each year, Brookhaven, Pennsylvania-based non-profit Keep Music Alive partners with music schools, music stores and other music organizations around the world to hold special events that benefit and celebrate kids playing music. The non-profit’s stated goal is to highlight the importance of including music in children’s education.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, Kids Music Day included live-streamed performances, free online lessons, virtual instrument petting zoos, online instrument clinics and Kids Music Day sales on select instruments, accessories and lesson programs, rather than a focus on in-person events.
According to Vincent James, co-founder of Keep Music Alive, organizing an event like this was easier now than it was six months ago. “We had our other music holiday in March, Teach Music Week, where we encourage music schools and stores to offer a free lesson to new students, kids and adults, and things were really going south right at the time that was happening,” James said. “Many music schools were struggling just to deal with their existing students, let alone trying to think about offering something to a new student.”
James noted stores have now made adjustments. “Some of them are all virtual, some are doing a hybrid,” he said. “They have different things in place now for protecting people when they are doing stuff onsite and [are] limiting the number of people in the stores. So I think that was really a huge benefit that we’ve had these six months. I don’t really want to call it a benefit, the fact that we’re still doing the six months later, but we were able to take advantage of the lessons learned over the last six months, and it was enabled us to come up with a lot of different ideas [for things] that music schools and stores could do to celebrate virtually this year if they’re not able to do something in person.”
Over a dozen celebrity artists showed their support for music education by lending their name as Kids Music Day Ambassadors. These included Julie Andrews, Jack Black, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, Michael Feinstein, Kenny Loggins, Richie Sambora, Sarah McLachlan, Vanessa Williams, Victor Wooten, Todd Rundgren, Philip Lawrence, Bernie Williams, Damien Escobar and Mandy Harvey.
Kids Music Day is also supported by numerous music industry brands including Alfred Music, Casio EMI, Conn-Selmer, D’Addario Foundation, Hungry for Music, Kala Brand Music, Les Paul Foundation, Music Nomad Equipment Care, Remo Percussion and more.
