The Arts

Crescendo

By Pippa Jack / Fall 2025
September 18th, 2025
Image of Sebastian Ruth standing on the street with his violin

Last fall, Community Music Works—a nonprofit founded by Sebastian Ruth ’97 that offers music lessons to children from South Providence—found itself with a very short move and a whole lot more space.  A $15-million, 10,000-square-foot new building, featuring practice rooms and a grand performance hall, opened its doors just a block from the group’s original home in a modest Victorian storefront. Ruth is a violinist and violist who first got the kernale of CMW going with a $10,000 Swearer Center grant when he was 22; he won a MacArthur “genius grant” for his work in 2010. He hopes the new space will allow CMW to serve more children. Currently, the program—which serves up to 150 children at a time, establishing long-term relationships between them and local musicians, and boasts a 90-percent retention rate—must restrict applicants to certain neighborhoods and ask them to apply through a lottery system.

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