Our mission is music that builds community.
Great Bend Center for Music designs and offers research-based programs that help people use music to find common cause, nourish trust, and address community challenges.
Music is a natural resource available to all communities that can aid everything from graduation rates to wellness outcomes for seniors.
These are the research-based, well-documented ways showing music to be a natural resource that builds:
Strong families
Making music builds the connections that nourish a sense of place. Decades of research shows that when you nurture this sense of belonging, mental and physical health, literacy levels, school success and employability improve.
Successful kids
Musical experiences like stopping and starting, slowing down and speeding up, and recognizing repeating patterns provide children with practice directing and modulating their behavior — and better prepares them to enter school and succeed.
A strong economy
Music is the most effective way to build connections in ways that improve the flow of information. Communities with higher levels of these bridging connections are not only more economically resilient, but faster at identifying and acting on new economic opportunities.
Healthier communities
Music speeds most forms of healing, and is an essential element of the gold standard in memory care. Communities with access to therapeutic music have better health and wellness outcomes across the board.
Music is also a natural resource that, in most communities, goes largely untapped. That’s what we want to change.
Music is also a natural resource that, in most communities, goes largely untapped. That’s what we want to change.
We’re here in Mason County, Washington, in part because of Union’s significance as the state’s first artist colony. But it’s more because this is the place our founder, Matthew Melendez, came to understand the unique challenges faced by those in rural communities, and how the arts might help.
Our mission is music that builds community.
Great Bend Center for Music pioneers research-backed, participatory music programs that show how music can spark unity, fuel trust, and help communities tackle their toughest challenges. In Mason County—and beyond—we’re asking: what if music could change everything for cities, towns, and rural regions across North America?
Music is a natural resource that can aid everything from graduation rates to wellness outcomes for seniors.
Our work is to tap that natural resource for our own community in Mason County while helping others do the same. These are the research-based, well-documented ways that music can be used to build:
Strong families
Making music builds the connections that nourish a sense of place. Decades of research shows that when you nurture this sense of belonging, mental and physical health, literacy levels, school success and employability improve.
Successful kids
Musical experiences like stopping and starting, slowing down and speeding up, and recognizing repeating patterns provide children with practice directing and modulating their behavior — and better prepares them to enter school and succeed.
A strong economy
Music is the most effective way to build connections in ways that improve the flow of information. Communities with higher levels of these bridging connections are not only more economically resilient, but faster at identifying and acting on new economic opportunities.
Healthier communities
Music speeds most forms of healing, and is an essential element of the gold standard in memory care. Communities with access to therapeutic music have better health and wellness outcomes across the board.
What if Music Could Change Everything?
Great Bend isn’t just serving our neighbors—we’re asking a bold question and proving the answer. We’re turning Mason County into a living lab of community transformation through music. And we’re doing it in ways that ensure that the tools, programs, curricula, evidence, and real-world examples we develop here are accessible for other communities to put to use.
Current Great Bend Programs that are Leading the Way
The fabric of community is made from the threads of human connection—but in rural areas, those threads are often harder to weave. Unlike the built-in density of cities and suburbs, rural life requires intention to foster the relationships that hold a community together. At Great Bend, we believe music can be that thread. Through shared experiences, joyful learning, and research-based practice, we’re proving that even in the most overlooked places, music can create the connections that change everything. What if a small town could show the nation how to rebuild community from the inside out?
Sound Scholars™
An intensive, research-based, multilingual early-learning initiative—praised by the Washington State OSPI, El Sistema USA and others—that uses music to build kindergarten readiness and shrink equity gaps for families without access to high quality early learning. To date, Sound Scholars™ has served thousands of familes in 47 states and at least 10 additional countries.
HighKey Kids™
These classes are designed to engaging school-aged children in sequential-skills based musical training in ways that also nurture social bonds and build prosocial learning skills.
Community Ensembles & Events
From the Great Bend Chorale to Beer Choir, our local events and performances not only enrich Mason County and our participants—they bring neighbors together in the ways that make communities more resilient and more economically robust.
A national model
From our Mason County headquarters and forthcoming community music campus, we’re building programs, tools, research, and stories that other communities can replicate—making music a more accessible tool for community development for all. This is how music can change everything.
Learn about our vision
Our vision is to establish the first institute for applied research on community music in North America.
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