Let's Look at What the Research Says...
Source: Dr. Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University, for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

That young people who participate in the arts for at least three hours on three days each week for one full year of more are:

• 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement

• 3 times more likely to be elected to class office

• 4 times more likely to participate in a math or science fair

• 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance

• 4 times more likely to win an awarded for writing an essay or poem

In addition, young arts participants as compared with their peers are likely to:

• Read for pleasure nearly twice as often

• Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently

• Perform community services nearly twice as often

Communities that support youth-based arts organizations do more than preserve and develop their youth of the future.  They engage the creative energies of youth in in positive ways that enrich community life and culture today.

-Shirley Brice Heath, Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Professor of English and Linguistics, Stanford University.

In ancient times culture was to the stars and technology was the wheel.  Today, technology is to the stars and culture is the wheel.

-Karl Voster

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

-Yehudi Menuhin, master violinist and conductor

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

-J. S. Bach

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike.  In fact, you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

-Ursula K. Le Guin, author