Music Arts School was a community music school in

Highland Park, Illinois Highland Park is a suburban city located in the southeastern part of Lake County, Illinois, United States, about north of downtown Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 30,176. Highland Park is one of several municipalities located o ...

from 1952 to 2007. It offered private lessons on

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

Drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...

s, world

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

, and

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...

. It also had a curriculum of group classes including programs for both adults and young children. Music Arts School began as a private music school in 1952. Pianist Mortimer Scheff founded the school and continued to head it until retiring in 2005. From 2001 to 2007, the school functioned as a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

. In September 2007, Music Arts School merged with the

Music Institute of Chicago The Music Institute of Chicago, known informally as MIC (formerly the Music Center of the North Shore), is a nonprofit community music school in Illinois with campuses in Chicago, Downers Grove, Evanston, Lake Forest, Lincolnshire, and Winnetka. ...

. Now known as the Highland Park Campus of MIC, the school continues to serve the North Shore of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

with individual music lessons and group music classes. In the years since becoming a non-profit organization, the school has grown upon its base of individual instruction by creating a curriculum of group music classes. Current subjects include

Suzuki method The Suzuki method is a music curriculum and teaching philosophy dating from the mid-20th century, created by Japanese violinist and pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki (1898–1998). The method aims to create an environment for learning music which para ...

, Adult Group Guitar, Musikgarten (

early childhood music education Music education for young children is an educational program introducing children in a playful manner to singing, speech, music, motion and organology. It is a subarea of music education. Benefits There are many benefits that music provides f ...

), and Musicianship (music theory and history).

External links

Music Institute of Chicago website
{{coord, 42, 11, 19.1, N, 87, 47, 57.7, W, type:edu_region:US-IL, display=title Defunct schools in Illinois Highland Park, Illinois Education in Lake County, Illinois