New Music Center In South Central Brings State-Of-The-Art Equipment To Affordable Housing Complex

The music education system in Los Angeles is in the spotlight, with The Last Repair Shop winning big at the most recent Academy Awards.

Still, there are gaps in music education, which is what the Young Musicians Foundation's new facility in a Historical South Central affordable housing complex hopes to address.

The YMF Center for Music and Creative Technologies, located in the Florence Mills Apartments, will offer a slate of classes for people of all ages, from music production to video editing and more, all of which are free and open to the public. There'll also be music lessons, of course: keyboards, guitar, violin, ukulele, percussion, and most orchestral instruments.

Plus, students can hone their skills by playing in various groups, from a folkloric ensemble to one that's "turning into almost like an R&B kind of thing," said Walter Zooi, executive director of YMF.

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"All of our stuff is student-led. So it's where the students want to go and the kind of stuff that the students want to play," Zooi said.

Tapping into L.A.'s famous Jazz Age

The new facility is on the corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Central Avenue, one of the hotspots for jazz in Los Angeles and the entire West Coast during the 1930s and '40s. Jazz royalty like Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus played in clubs on Central regularly, and Dexter Gordon, Etta James and Don Cherry attended Thomas Jefferson High School, right across the street from the new center. (You can read more about that history on LAist.)

The name of the apartment complex where YMF's center makes its home also calls back to that era. Florence Mills was a popular cabaret and Broadway singer in the 1920s, not to mention a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and a well-known advocate for civil rights before she died of tuberculosis at the age of 31 in 1927. The site was home to a popular theater bearing her name, which was demolished in 2013.

"It's just a real honor to be part of that tradition," Zooi said. "It's just the universe telling us that we must be on the right track to have found a home like that and to be able to help nurture music and creativity that's already there in that wonderful community."

Building a "state of the art" facility

YMF, which works with underserved LAUSD schools in Boyle Heights, downtown and South L.A., partnered with the Hollywood Community Housing Corporation and Echo Park-based Stayner Architects to build out the facility.

"We have a state of the art multimedia lab that's probably analogous to most four-year colleges in terms of the music production equipment and software, but also the video production equipment," Zooi said.

The center will also include rehearsal and concert spaces, as well as classrooms, studios and broadcast-quality cameras. YMF started a few pilot classes earlier this year, and a full slate of programming is expected to start this summer.

And since L.A. has opportunities for all sorts of creative careers, YMF has created pathways for any students who want to go professional with music, recording, video, or podcast production.

"We have a workforce development track to really give folks a leg up, as it were, to the creative economy," Zooi said. "And we also have a media arts advisory council of local professionals in film, video and content production, recording, as well as in video gaming."

And if you thought you were too old to learn music, Zooi stresses that it's never too late: They're offering a range of programming open to the public for kids to adults, and YMF is even planning classes where adults and kids can learn side by side.

"That sort of intergenerational learning is just a really interesting space to explore, and we see a lot of opportunity there," Zooi said.

YMF will kick things off with a ceremony from noon to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 6. It'll feature food vendors, class demonstrations, activities for families, and of course, musical performances.