| About RIPO&MS
Mission:
The RI Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School’s mission is to enrich and transform Rhode Island and our region through great live symphonic performances and music education.
Founded in 1944, RIPO&MS is the oldest performing arts organization in Rhode Island. The merger of the Orchestra and Music School in 2001 resulted in the most comprehensive education programs of any professional orchestra. RIPO&MS is the only professional orchestra in the country to officially designate music education and performance as equal priorities.
Executive Director David Beauchesne says of the organization, “The orchestra and music school are two sides of the same coin - We are a musical community, the orchestra’s role is to inspire, and the school’s role is to empower.”
RIPO&MS’s Link Up education program, youth ensembles, 1,500 Music School students and vast community engagement programs reach nearly 25,000 youth throughout the region. In total, RIPO&MS has served as many as 175,000 audience members and students in a single year. In addition to the RI Philharmonic Orchestra’s Classical, Pops, Education concerts and in-school performances, the RI Philharmonic Music School offers music education programs and performance opportunities to people of all ages, incomes, and ability levels. By prioritizing artistry and education equally, and furthering values of quality, access, diversity and collaboration through initiatives like Victoria’s Dream Project, RIPO&MS is redefining what it means to be an arts organization in the 21st Century.
RIPO&MS’ annual operations budget is $6.7 million and growing and is funded in part through the General Operating Support Program of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Foundation. The organization is a member of both the National Guild for Community Arts Education and the League of American Orchestras.
RIPO&MS in 2022
2022 could not be a more exciting time to join the RIPO&MS senior leadership and education team. As is the case for most presenting and educational institutions, 2020 and 2021 presented extraordinary difficulties and provided extraordinary opportunities for listening, learning, evaluating and adapting. The result is a renewed and urgent
commitment to the role music and music education can and should play in inspiring students and audiences and in helping to meet the multiple challenges that people in our communities face.
We know so much more than we knew two years ago about the challenges that confront those we serve. We better understand the ways our organization has been helpful and the ways in which we might have got in the way. How we are responding to this knowledge will be looked back upon as an inflection point for RIPO&MS. The incoming Senior Director of Education will join a rejuvenated senior leadership team charged with helping to create and implement a new five year strategic plan; prefaced by branding research and grounded in an ongoing DEI task force initiative.
The most exciting reason to join the team at this time as Senior Director of Education is the recent news that the Papitto Opportunity Connection has committed to a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant to support the organization’s efforts to address BIPOC opportunity and achievement gaps in public schools and continued insularity and homogeneity in classical music. With the Papitto Foundation as partner, RIPO&MS intends to scale up and disseminate tools over a four year period for K-12 reform that will help eliminate opportunity gaps in K-12 music education, change lives, create a more diverse pipeline for classical music and further equity and diversity in the field and in society.
The Senior Director of Education will play a leading role in shaping the organization’s direction over the next five years and therefore has the opportunity to have a lasting impact on an organization, a city, a state, the field and on future generations. The current Senior Director of Education said of this opportunity:
“Working and collaborating with an incredible board of directors, education staff and faculty, all passionately devoted to furthering our mission, provides an exciting opportunity to lead our education programs to the next level. The possibilities for creating a deeper impact in Rhode Island and the surrounding region are vast.”
About the Education Department and Programs
During the influential 17 year tenure of the outgoing Senior Director of Education, the department has grown exponentially in regards to both programming and capacity. With an established, strong, and dedicated education team of seven, the department oversees the organization's anchor Music School and Community Partnership programs including:
- Private lessons, ensembles, and classes for all ages and abilities at Music School facilities in East Providence and Westerly, Rhode Island
- Youth ensembles - youth orchestras (including side-by-side performances with the RI Philharmonic Orchestra), large wind ensembles, chamber music, big band, jazz and
rock combos
- Link Up is a music literacy curriculum for students in grades 3-5. Developed by The Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall, RIPO&MS significantly adapted Link Up for the 103
area schools and over 12,000 students and teachers it serves through this program.
- Victoria Dream Project (VDP) is a comprehensive after school program created by RIPO&MS in partnership with Pawtucket’s Agnes Little Elementary School that provides string-instrument instruction to elementary school students. Thanks to the Papitto Opportunity Connection partnership, this program is expanding to a second
site in the fall
- Music Therapy and Wellness programs
- Other partnership programs include: The Autism Project, Parks and Rec, Boys and Girls Club, Arts Talk, In-School Ensemble Performances
About the role
The Senior Director of Education reports to the Executive Director, is peer to Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the RI Philharmonic Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, and works with department heads in marketing, development, finance, and operations to propel the mission. Responsible for education initiatives across the entire organization, this role manages a dynamic team of seven administrators and oversees programs that employ over 80 teaching artists.
The person who moves into this position will arrive at a time when focus is needed around two major initiatives. First, there is an opportunity following two years of Pandemic-related disruption to work with the education team and faculty to reflect the evolving needs of teaching artists and students by likewise evolving the infrastructure and culture that supports them with leadership, clear commitments and expectations, unified values and goals and a sense of belonging. Second, the new Senior Director of Education’s voice will be inextricably linked in partnership with the Executive Director around messaging, planning, and executing Papitto Opportunity Connection-related DEI initiatives to bring about meaningful, sustainable and systemic changes to the way historically marginalized individuals and communities experience symphonic music, access music education and benefit from that experience and access, in Rhode Island and beyond.
The Senior Director of Education works from the organization's Carter Center in East Providence. Working from home once settled in is permitted and encouraged so long as it is managed in a way that does not impede performance. Meetings, events, concerts during weekend, and evening hours are required in support of programs and performance.
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