Community Music Works Celebrates Dynamic Custom Facility on Westminster Street

As the name would suggest, Community MusicWorks (CMW) is a place where community and music come together. “I started the organization in 1997,” says CMW founder and artistic director Sebastian Ruth. “It grew out of my interest in music, knowing I wanted to be a chamber musician, to perform and teach.” The award-winning program that serves Providence youth moved into a gleaming new state-of-the-art facility this fall, designed with both performers and the surrounding community in mind.

From the start, Ruth envisioned a program that intertwined the arts and social justice. He wondered, “How could music education be part of the bigger picture of community development and social justice?” Now, 27 years later, he oversees a thriving music school that serves over 150 students annually, mainly from the West End and South Side of the city. “They’re led by experienced instructors and the ensemble-in-residence, a group of professionals living, working, teaching, and performing out of a storefront who provide free instruction in viola, violin and cello,” says Ruth.

For much of its existence, CMW was run out of community centers and schools, and later out of the Peace Street campus of The Met School. That location, with a central atrium surrounded by classrooms, inspired the design of the new building on the corner of Westminster and Dexter streets. Plans for the new facility have been in the works since 2010, the year Ruth was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant. “We bought the land in 2017 and worked on a capital campaign to build it,” says Ruth.

The building, designed by architectural firm 3SIX0 and built by Pezzuco Construction, is a testament to inclusivity. It is the second building in the state to utilize a structural cross laminated timber technique that reduces the need for carbon-emitting steel and concrete. “The facility is a remarkable building, with 24,000 square feet over three floors; it has teaching and rehearsal studios, practice rooms, a music library, and a performance space,” says Ruth. Designers were purposeful, intentionally developing informal spaces throughout the facility, including a common area for parents, a student lounge, and a cafe that is expected to be open to the public in 2025. “Community-building happens in, but also in between, our formal activities.”

There’s a lot of enthusiasm for classical music, a genre that has experienced a renaissance in recent decades, thanks partially to social media. “We don’t consider ourselves a narrowly and exclusively classical music program, although that is the primary area of expertise of our musicians,” says Ruth. “We like to think of it as people starting a life in music, and the best thing we can do is give people musical fluency, so they’ll be able to travel with it to different genres and different expressions. Some kids get really hooked on it.”

“There’s a fascination about the violin, viola, and cello, even before it’s about the genre or style of music,” he adds. “That’s the first thing, the opportunity to learn the craft of one of these instruments that has its own appeal for young people.” Learn more at CommunityMusicWorks.org.