MacPhail announces Austin location, programs

Published 10:06 am Thursday, August 27, 2015

There’s a new music center in town.

MacPhail Center for Music announced its programs and a new site in Austin on Wednesday. MacPhail, which first came to Austin last year, will offer private lessons on 10 instruments and voice at its new location at Riverland Community College, as well as an Early Childhood Music Class at the Hormel Historic Home.

In addition to providing classes and lessons to the general public, MacPhail is partnering with the Austin Public Schools, Pacelli Catholic Schools, the Community Learning Center, and Apple Lane Childcare to provide music enrichment programs throughout the school day for students of all ages.

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At Riverland, MacPhail will have studios to offer individual music lessons on 10 instruments and voice for children and adults, beginner to advanced.

Instruments available include clarinet, flute, oboe, percussion, piano, trombone, trumpet, saxophone, violin, viola, and voice. At all levels, the music lessons are student-centered to develop musical and technical skills personalized to their goals. In addition, MacPhail will also offer Musical Families, a fun, multi-age class for six weeks for 5-year-old children and their families.

The class meets the varied needs of each child and promotes music awareness through enticing integrated arts activities. Musical Families is offered at the Hormel Historic Home.

MacPhail will also work with Austin Public Schools to provide custom clinics and workshops for choir, band and orchestra classes. MacPhail is providing ongoing support for these programs through Online School Partnerships, in which MacPhail teaching-artists are beamed live to classrooms via online video to supplement in-person learning.

For early childhood music, MacPhail is partnering with the Community Learning Center, Woodsen Kindergarten Center and Apple Lane Child Care Center, integrating music learning into existing programs. All programming looks to impact children through the diverse, non-musical benefits of music learning — development of fine motor skills, strengthened pre-math/pre-literacy skills, socialization, impulse control, and more.

To learn more about MacPhail in Austin, visit www.macphail.org/austin.