IUP Community Music School

About the IUP Community Music School

The mission of the IUP Community Music School is to provide IUP and the greater Indiana community and region with private and group music instruction on the IUP campus at a variety of price points and levels of teacher expertise.

The school seeks to support and enhance public and private school music education and performance, both locally and regionally.

Furthermore, the school provides IUP music students with hands-on experience teaching music lessons at the pre-professional level.

The IUP Community Music School is a program of the IUP Music Department and is affiliated with the IUP String Project, an established comprehensive string education program directed by Linda Jennings.

From the Director

The 2025–26 academic year begins Year 13 for the IUP Community Music School. Throughout this now decade-plus period of time, the program has been consistent in both its growth, as well as providing a quality musical experience to students from ages five all the way to age 90!

In addition, it gives the cream-of-the-crop IUP music students—undergraduate and graduate—who are recommended to teach by their professors, the opportunity to begin gaining experience through private lesson teaching, but while still having the resource of their primary instrument professor close at hand to provide solutions and guidance to what they may encounter in their teaching.

It’s truly a win-win—high-quality and dedicated students from the renowned IUP Music Department gaining teaching experience, and a community with access to very reasonably priced private lessons.

But in addition to the private lessons, community members have access to three terrific ensembles in the Crimson Youth Choir (Kye-Won Doyle, director), Indiana Community Choir (Erin Knepper, director), and the IUP University Band (Jason Worzbyt, director).

These three highly experienced directors are absolutely top-notch and do a masterful job of creating an environment where students of all ages and ability levels can not only learn, excel, and get better at music together, but also simply have a lot of fun making music in a group.

However, like anything else, the Arts do not come free, and the IUP Community Music School is no exception. There are operating costs that have to be met every year in order to keep the doors open.

Because the IUPCMS is supported 100 percent by grants and gifts—it’s how we keep costs as low as possible for our rural area—it is a challenge every year to ensure there are enough funds to keep this critically important program open to the community. If you’re interested in helping to keep it a vibrant program for our community, whether as an individual or as a business, be sure to look at the information on our Support page.

I can’t emphasize this enough—your gift is a critical part of keeping the program available to future students and generations.

Social media… what a conundrum! It can be so powerful or terribly destructive, and on so many different platforms. While there are lots of choices, for now we’re sticking with just Facebook, so be sure to check out and “Like” the IUP Community Music School Facebook page, not only for some of the articles, but also for the fun, interesting, and meaningful stories on music we run across.

Last, as we wrap up the summer semester of Year 12 and look forward to the fall, it turns out that the start of the IUPCMS Year 13 will be when I retire from IUP and pass the torch on to the next director. I would imagine you’ll be seeing information from that person once they’re hired and begin getting their feet wet!

It truly has been a privilege to direct the program for the past 11 of its 12 years. There have literally been hundreds of students who participated in lessons and ensembles. Although creating music majors has never been one of the goals, quite a number of high school students have also gone on to study music in college.

As Kelly Pollock wrote about the Arts, “The true purpose of arts education is not necessarily to create more professional dancers or artists. [It’s] to create more complete human beings who are critical thinkers, who have curious minds, and who can lead productive lives.”

That is the place where the IUPCMS has lived for its entire existence. Becoming a proficient enough musician simply brings another level of enjoyment to life and allows a multitude of options to increase one’s quality of life and living. Whether playing an instrument or singing on your own and/or in various groups, music is a wonderful way to relax, meet new friends, and grow in a community. It has been heart-warming to see so many in the Indiana community enrich their lives through music.

So whether you’re young and just starting in music or older after having been away from it for a while, the IUPCMS is the perfect and affordable place to find your way in the amazing world of music.

As always, if you have feedback, please feel free to email it to community-music@iup.edu. The IUP Music Department and the new IUPCMS director will look forward to meeting the musical needs of the music teachers and community members in the Indiana region this year, and hopefully for many years to come.

Best wishes for a fabulous musical year!

Jeff Wacker, Arts-in-Education Services Coordinator
IUP Community Music School
Lively Arts | ArtsPath
community-music@iup.edu

Lessons

Private lessons of 30, 45, and 60-minutes are available in:

• Brass
  (trumpet, trombone, horn, euphonium, tuba)
• Electric Bass
• Guitar (as available, other fretted instruments such as ukulele, banjo, and mandolin)
  
• Percussion
• Piano and Organ
• Voice
• Woodwinds
  (flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, bassoon)

Ensembles

Evening and after-school ensembles include:

• Indiana Community Choir
  (age 14–adult)
• University Band
  (age 15–adult)
• Crimson Youth Choir
  (Primary and secondary students; offering the Voce select choir for older students, and the Crimson Children's Choir for younger students
• Percussion Ensemble
  (age 14–adult)

Support the IUP Community Music School

The IUP Community Music School (IUPCMS) has access to first-class facilities with Cogswell Hall and a wonderful partnership with the IUP Music Department as they provide qualified and talented instructors. It’s a great match!

What we don’t have and are always looking for—typically as grants and gifts—is hard dollars for operating support. The IUPCMS receives zero dollars as a yearly budget from the university, so the reality is that if the program did not receive external underwriting support from grants and gifts, the amount we would have to charge would simply be too expensive for anyone in our region to participate and the school would close.

Over the years, we have been awarded various grants that provided the majority of the cost, as well as periodic donations from companies and generous individuals in the community. The IUPCMS would not exist without their generosity, and we are always very grateful for their support. It has kept the IUPCMS doors open and allowed the school to grow and thrive.

In order to help individuals interested in supporting the IUPCMS, we have two ways to make a tax-deductible donation—check and credit/debit card—and you can specify whether you’d like to directly support a specific IUPCMS ensemble or simply provide general operating support (the greatest need). Whether giving by either check or credit/debit card, you will receive a letter from the Foundation for IUP acknowledging your tax-deductible gift.

Methods of Payment

1. Payment by Check

• Make out to: Foundation for IUP, put “Account 4796” in the Memo line
• Mail to: Sutton Hall, Suite 419, 1011 South Drive, Indiana, PA 15705

2. Payment by Credit/Debit Card

• To support either an ensemble or general operating by credit/debit card, click on the following button to go directly to the Online Gift Form page for the Foundation for IUP:

Give to the IUPCMS

 Giving a Gift

1. Giving to A Specific Ensemble
   • The three ensemble options to give to are Crimson Youth Choir, Indiana Community Choir, and IUP University Band.
   • If paying by check, ADD to “Account 4796” in the memo line the name of the ensemble you wish to support (e.g., “Account 4796 / Indiana Community Choir”).
   • If paying by credit/debit card, indicate the desired ensemble in the Additional Comments field at the bottom of the online form.
2. Giving to General Operating
   • If paying by check, only put “Account 4796” in the Memo line.
   • If paying by credit/debit card, either leave the Additional Comments field at the bottom of the form blank, or you can put “General Operating” in it.

Giving Levels

The following are the various levels of giving:

• Virtuoso - $100.00 and above
• Maestro - $75.00–$99.99
• Conductor - $50.00–$74.99
• Patron - $25.00–$49.99
• Muse - up to $24.99

Our Valued Donors

Our donor list begins in 2020.

Businesses

If you are a business or corporation that would like to provide ongoing and regular support, please contact University Advancement. They have a number of personnel who will be glad to assist you in setting up your gift.

Grants

Over the years, the IUP Community Music School has been supported through a variety of grants. For the 2024–25 academic year, grant support was received from the following:

• Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

The IUP Community Music School is being supported in part by a Creative Sector Flex Fund grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency, through its Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program stream partner for our region, The United Way of Clarion County. The PCA is funded by the citizens of Pennsylvania through an annual legislative appropriation and is additionally supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

With only one rate increase in 10 years, we are committed to keeping our costs as low and affordable as possible for those in our rural area. And while we are currently able to offer scholarships to some high school age students to participate in ensembles, we would very much like to see a growing scholarship fund that also assists deserving students with private lessons.

But to be able to do so, the school must be able to consistently meet its operating expenses, which will require continued support from those individuals and businesses that want to see music continue to flourish in our region.

As always, we thank you for your support, and we look forward to generations of students making music a part of their lives.

Jeff Wacker, director
IUP Community Music School