Kaufman Music Center launches the Musical Storefronts series, bringing live music back to the Upper West Side with more than 100 pop-up concerts in a safe, socially-distanced setting. The series quickly attracts local, national and international news outlets, and an audience of more than 20K.
Learn more about Musical Storefronts
The entire Kaufman Music Center community and celebrity guests come together for a 12-hour online music marathon supporting KMC’s programs.
Watch our Day of Musical Action
Kaufman Music Center adapts to the COVID-19 pandemic by successfully moving classes online and streaming performances from Merkin Hall.
Kate Sheeran takes the helm, replacing Lydia Kontos as Executive Director.
Special Music School celebrates its 20th anniversary, and SMS High School graduates its first senior class, with 100% graduation and college acceptance rates.
Kaufman Music Center partners with acclaimed composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid to create Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program that addresses the gender gap in the field of classical music by inspiring young self-identifying female, non-binary and gender nonconforming individuals to compose.
Kaufman Music Center holds its first Concerto Competition showcasing students from Lucy Moses School and Special Music School.
Special Music School High School performs its first opera: Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas
The acclaimed series What Makes It Great? hosted by Rob Kapilow moves from Lincoln Center to Merkin Hall; performances quickly sell out.
Special Music School High School opens in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Education Complex.
Kaufman Music Center forms a partnership with Opus 118 Harlem School of Music to help ensure that its valuable work can continue for years to come.
Kaufman Music Center launches the Ecstatic Music Festival, presenting “audacious combinations and post-genre hybrids” (The New Yorker) that have been celebrated as “a who's who of the music scene” (WQXR) and “a hotbed for visionary artistic hybridity” (The New Yorker).
Families attend the first Broadway Playhouse performances, which introduce children to classic musicals.
Special Music School graduates its first 8th grade class.
Face the Music, Kaufman Music Center’s teen new music program, is launched.
Kaufman Music Center is honored at the Music Educators National Conference FAME dinner and by Manhattan Media with a “Westy Award” for its service to the Upper West Side community as an arts and culture institution.
Kaufman Music Center collaborates with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to present the nine-concert mega-festival celebrating 52 of New York’s great living composers, “A Great Day in New York.”
In the first year that Special Music School is eligible to participate in city-wide testing, its 4th graders score number one in all of New York City in both reading and math.
The Special Music School of America (P.S. 859) opens the first school of its kind in this country and welcomes its first kindergarten class.
To expand its educational mission, Kaufman Music Center partners with the New York City Board of Education to replicate the highly successful special music schools of the former Soviet Union, which enable musically gifted students to receive intensive, specialized music training along with a rigorous academic program within the course of a normal school day.
The Hebrew Arts School restructures: in recognition of major gifts, the corporate name is changed to the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, Inc., and the Hebrew Arts School becomes the Lucy Moses School for Music and Dance.
Supporters make major gifts towards institutional stability and the establishment of an endowment.
Lucy Moses School launches the unique and successful Summer Musical Theater Workshop.
Hebrew Arts School founder Dr. Tzipora Jochsberger z”l retires and is succeeded by Lydia Kontos, the first Director of Merkin Concert Hall.
Kaufman Music Center launches Tuesday Matinees, a beloved classical series geared towards NYC seniors that’s going strong in its 38th season.
Merkin Concert Hall is named following a significant gift from Hermann and Ursula Merkin.
Jewish emigrés from Russia are welcomed as Hebrew Arts School faculty members.
Abraham Goodman House opens, giving a permanent home to the Hebrew Arts School and what would be known as Merkin Concert Hall. At this time there is no comparable hall of that size. Clearly filling a need, the concert hall sees an almost overnight success.
The Hebrew Arts School forms a string quartet to be Ensemble-In-Residence. The new group soon wins the prestigious Young Concert Artists competition and goes on the become the Mendelssohn String Quartet.
The Hebrew Arts School adds a program for adults.
Kaufman Music Center opens its doors as the Hebrew Arts School for Music and Dance, founded by Dr. Tzipora Jochsberger z”l.
