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Happy Birthday!

CMC Inc. Turns 60

Over a series of winter nights sixty years ago, a group of volunteers met to establish a non-profit organization called the Community Music Center Inc. of Portland, which was officially incorporated in February, 1960. The PP&R program was already burgeoning at its site off Woodstock street (now the Woodstock Community Center), and so the conversation immediately turned to how the group could support the City in expanding the program to meet the public’s needs, as well as supporting the wages of the instructors and staff.

Those present at the first meeting were some of the pillars of music education and philanthropy in our community. From the meeting minutes: “Acting Chairman: Mrs. Henry L. Corbett, Jr. Directors: Mr. Robert Phillips, Mrs. Fred M. Buchwalter, Mrs. John Gray, Mr. Richard Babson, Mr. Isadore Tinkelman, Dr. Lena Kenin, Mr. Robert Crowley, Mr. W. P. Hagestad.” The group met at the home of Mr. & Mrs. John & Betty Gray.

Since that time, hundreds of volunteers and thousands of individual donors have supported the existence and growth of the Community Music Center. In the last 15 years alone the non-profit has provided the City with over $1 million in the form of need-based scholarships for students, other program subsidies, and financial assistance in renovating the Francis Street Firehouse for the relocation in 1969 and the remodel in the late 1990s.

Thanks to the help of so many generous donations, today CMC Inc. still supports the program, its students, teachers, and staff, and works to expand the CMC model to underserved areas of the city. The book “Community Music Center: The First 60 Years- A Musical History” documents and details a lot about the early days as well as the intervening decades. You can order your copy (on sale for the anniversary!) online at communitymusiccenter.org.