The Music Together Mission

In a nutshell: Our mission is to make the world a better place by making it more musical. We do this by providing the highest-quality music and movement classes to families everywhere—and by involving parents and caregivers. When a family starts making music together early in their child's life, their relationship to music changes, and they begin to recognize that they are indeed a musical family!

The Music Together Philosophy

Most people think being musical is a question of talent—you either have it or you don't. While that may sound reasonable, it's completely untrue! All children can learn to dance and sing just as naturally as they learn to walk and talk. With this in mind, we formulated four basic principles that guide everything we do.

The Four Principles of Music Together

1. All children are born with the aptitude to learn music.
2. All children can achieve basic music competence—that is, they can learn to sing in tune and dance accurately to a beat.
3. It's crucial that parents and caregivers participate in class and model music-making for their children in class and at home, regardless of their own musical ability.
4. The environment that best fosters young children's musical growth is playful, musically rich, and developmentally appropriate.

History of Music Together

It all began in 1985, when composer Kenneth K. Guilmartin found himself teaching music at his daughter's school in Montclair, New Jersey. As a teacher, he knew the importance of music in early childhood education. As a parent, he was beginning to see how his daughter's learning changed when he became directly involved in it. That year, he founded the Center for Music and Young Children (CMYC) to combine both aspects of his experience in a new and exciting music and movement program. The key elements of this program, he knew, were going to be great music, playful, developmentally appropriate activities, parental involvement, and supportive take-home materials.

In 1986, while attending a seminar with music educator Dr. Edwin Gordon, Ken met Lili M. Levinowitz, then one of Gordon's Ph.D. students at Temple University—and the rest is Music Together history! Ken was so impressed by Lili's innovative research on music development in young children that he hired her to consult on his musical experiments at his daughter's school. Shortly after that, they began to design the Music Together materials and classroom techniques that were first offered to the public in the fall of 1987—and have served as the foundation for the evolution of the curriculum ever since.