Our goal is to engage young people from neighborhoods that lack strong programs in music and creative writing as well as to grow a community among musicians, young people, families and neighbors-as-audiences. We envision place-based, decentralized access to original and inspirational music available to all. Last year’s 5PM Porch Concerts began this important work, and we found that many musicians who had previously not known each other made lasting career connections.

What was the spark that ignited us? Late in March 2020, in Covid-shuttered Brooklyn, saxophonist Roy Nathanson took a cue from Italians who sang to the world from their balconies: He marched out onto his own second-story Ditmas Park porch to play “Amazing Grace.” He committed to playing one healing song each day, at precisely 5pm. Roy’s musician neighbors heard the call and joined him on the Flatbush sidewalk to improvise and share the music together. After an impressive 82 consecutive days of 5PM Concerts with an expanding local audience, the musicians turned to creating a learning program for local youth, whose summer camp was cancelled and were unable to do much of anything during the lockdown.

JPMP believes that creating agency and empowering intergenerational constituencies are fundamental to liberating the human spirit. We offer tools for artistic expression that aim to improve self-esteem and mass mental health. We believe that language extends to multi-sensory dynamics, and that artistic endeavors inherently embody both teaching and learning as simultaneous experiences.

Young people and professional musicians suffered significant social and economic impact from Covid-19, and Roy Nathanson's 5PM Porch Concerts helped to heal the struggles that plague so many communities around the world. As we look ahead to brighter days, we seek to use what we learned in 2020 and continue empowering communities in a similar modality through word and song.