Member Highlight: Jolynda Burton, Director of Monteverdi Music School

Jun 13 2024

Tell us a bit about Monteverdi Music School, how long it's been around, how it was started, types of classes offered, and your interests as the Director.

 

Monteverdi Music School is the Montpelier area’s community music school at 46 Barre Street in Montpelier. A member organization of the Center for Arts & Learning, we are a 501(c)(3) that works to bring music to the public and ensure it is accessible to all. We have an accomplished faculty of 23 musicians, currently, and offer classes, private lessons in a wide range of instruments and voice, youth programming including after school and summer camp, plus, practice passes for our studios, and space rentals to other groups, schools, and bands. 

Monteverdi is small but mighty – we’ve been around for 41 years, and we’ve never been stronger! I came aboard as education coordinator in December 2022 and I have the best job in town – I couldn’t be happier spending my days finding ways to strengthen this school, ensuring programs are financially accessible, and working to bring more music to this sweet city that my family and I call home.

 

Tell us about any events the school puts on, including Make Music Day, next Friday.

Well, your readers have probably seen flyers in town or my Front Porch Forum post, but our next big event is Make Music Day, next Friday, June 21st.  First called World Music Day, it’s an international celebration of the joy of music. Every year on the summer solstice, towns all over the world invite people to come out and make music for each other. What greater way to celebrate our City and our connections to each other than to have our own Montpelier Make Music Day? This is our 2nd annual Montpelier Make Music Day, and we have Montpelier Alive to thank for that, as your downtown grant is helping make this event possible. 

On June 21st, we will operate a couple of stages around Montpelier from 5-8pm, and musicians can schedule themselves for 20-minute (or fewer) sets. Musicians of ALL ages and backgrounds are invited to play. Sites will be at City Hall courtyard, at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library lawn, and a more casual site hosted by the good folks at Naive Melody Instruments on State Street next to the movie theater. It’s going to be a great evening to enjoy music and this cool City, so I hope Montpelierites will get out of the house and grab dinner, hear some neighbors playing and singing, and embrace the moment of music in the streets!

 

What's special about being in the downtown and what do you like most about Montpelier?

I'm a pretty social creature and have always loved a city or big town to engage with other people and really feel myself. Montpelier’s downtown has everything I need and it feels like I know everyone. I also have two kids that are at that age when they’re quickly earning their independence – 8 and 10.  I lived in NYC, DC, and Philly before they were born, but didn’t want to do the city kid thing. Montpelier is just perfect. I’ll always smile at the first time my 10 year old and his bff hit the town by themselves with a little cash. That kind of independence is so important, and Montpelier makes it easy and so special for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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