Ages 6 and up · 30 or 45 min
Piano
Eight practice rooms with uprights, plus the Steinway grand in the Loom Room for recitals.
Lowell Street
Music lessons for anyone in the city, priced by what your household can pay.
- Lessons from
- $6 a half hour
- Ages
- 4 to 94
- Spring term
- Starts Monday, Jan 11
What you can learn
Eleven instruments, one old shoe factory
Every lesson is one to one, thirty or forty-five minutes, once a week, in a room with a door that shuts.
Ages 8 and up · acoustic or electric
Guitar
Chords in the first lesson, songs you actually know by the fourth. Classical guitar on request.
Ages 5 and up · instrument loaned
Cello, violin and viola
Start on a quarter-size cello from our library. Swap it for a bigger one as you grow, free.
Teens · Tuesdays and Thursdays
Keyboard and songwriting
For teenagers who want to make their own music. Laptops and headphones in Room 3.
Ages 4 and 5 · with a grown-up
Little Ears
Forty minutes of singing, drums and xylophones on Saturday mornings. No practice at home required.
Grown-up and child · one lesson
Learn it together
A grandparent and grandchild, or a parent and kid, share one forty-five minute lesson at one price.
Room 5, Tuesday, 4:30 PM
Jaylen is in his second year of piano. He picked the Bach himself.
Sliding scale
You choose your rate. We don't ask for proof.
Lessons cost between $6 and $38 a half hour, depending on what your household earns. Look at the table, pick your row, and that's your price for the term.
About two in three of our students pay one of the two lowest rates. Concert ticket sales, local businesses and about four hundred monthly donors cover the difference for every one of them.
- No tax forms, pay stubs or interviews
- Brothers and sisters get the second lesson half price
- Pay weekly, monthly or by term
- If things change halfway through, change your rate
From the director
Hardly any of our students will play for a living. They'll play at a cousin's wedding, and we want them ready for it.
Sokunthea ChhimExecutive director, and a student here in 1998Concerts
Free, and mostly on Friday nights
Oct16
Loom Room recital: strings and piano
6:30 PM · The Loom Room, 3rd floor
Eleven students, about an hour, cookies after. Families sit wherever they like.
Oct24
Pinpeat and the Mill City Strings
3:00 PM · Boarding House Park stage
Our Cambodian classical ensemble shares an afternoon with the youth string orchestra.
Nov13
Late Starters showcase
6:30 PM · The Loom Room, 3rd floor
Adult students, most of them playing in public for the first time. Be kind and clap loudly.
Dec12
Winter concert
2:00 PM · St. Anne's parish hall, Merrimack St
Every ensemble, sixty-odd players, and a sing-along at the end. Free, with hot cider.
Nothing in that category this month.
Overheard in the stairwell
What families tell us
We pay $6. I thought there had to be a catch. Three years in, there isn't one.
I started guitar at seventy-one because my granddaughter dared me.
Ms. Pelletier never once made me feel slow.
The cello lives in our apartment now. My son sleeps next to it.
My mother played the roneat in Battambang. Now my daughter does, on Lowell Street.
It's the only hour of my week nobody can interrupt.