The Community Music School is overjoyed to be a recipient of the 2003 Coming Up Taller Award!

Community Music School is proud to announce the honor of being a 2003 Coming Up Taller Award recipient. Coming Up Taller is a national initiative that recognizes and supports outstanding out-of-school and after-school arts and humanities programs for young people. It is a project of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, in partnership with three national cultural agencies: the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. With this national recognition comes a $10,000 award. Executive Director Marty Suttle, 8-year-old piano student Falisha Pierre-Louis, and Falisha's mother, Marie Pierre-Louis traveled to Washington D.C. on November 5, 2003 to attend the Coming Up Taller awards ceremony hosted by First Lady Laura Bush in the East Room of the White House. Mrs. Bush spoke of the importance of the arts and humanities in the lives of young people saying that she congratulates this year's Coming Up Taller Award recipients for the exemplary work they are doing in their communities to enrich the lives of young people. Mrs. Bush and the respected chairs of the partner agencies presented each of the 18 organizations with a plaque and their congratulations. Coming Up Taller recipients are chosen through a national nomination process. This year, 378 organizations from 48 states, Puerto Rico, and Mexico submitted nominations for this prestigious award. Sixteen organizations from the United States and two organizations from Mexico were selected as Coming Up Taller Award winners. The Coming Up Taller program began in 1998, and has since awarded 10 organizations annually for their work with under-served youth. In 2003, First Lady Laura Bush chose to raise the number of recipients to 18 citing the high caliber of all of the entries. Community Music School was commended for not only offering music lessons to the low-income youth of Wake County, North Carolina, but for doing so in a one-to-one student-teacher ratio. The student receives these lessons for one dollar per week, for thirty weeks during the traditional school year. This one-on-one interaction with an adult mentor is invaluable in the lives of the students, and Community Music School was rewarded for its dedication to the music education and betterment of the lives of the youth in its community.