To our Swallow Hill community,
We are so grateful for every member of our community – from our students and patrons, members and donors and volunteers to those who have worked tirelessly over the years to make Swallow Hill the vibrant community that we all love and cherish. Our teachers, in particular, lie at the heart of who we are and what we do and we hope this message brings to light all we are doing to make sure we all have a home to come back to.
Last week was beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Each day brought news worse than the day before. The week culminated with a set of decisions that had to be made to avoid the total collapse of Swallow Hill. To those ends, we laid off our teachers and all hourly workers, as well as a third of our administrative staff. Furthermore, those few staff members that remain are taking a deep reduction in pay during the closure.
With this small team that remains, we have begun the task of planning for how we reopen our doors and breathe new life into all of our programming – from group classes and private lessons to concerts, community jams and community outreach.
Our goal is to ensure when this crisis is over, Swallow Hill will once again be able to open our doors, bring our teachers back to work, and invite our community to come together as the music community that means so much to so many.
In the days and weeks to come, we will roll out ways to support our teaching community. For the time being, please check out this webpage where you can learn more about how to connect with them and their online lessons.
Our decisions have hit our teachers the hardest and have been the most heartbreaking for us. Our business model is such that, while we are no longer able to pay our teachers during this time that they aren’t working at Swallow Hill, we will be in a position to begin to pay them as soon as they return to work.
We will be reaching out to our members and donor community to help be a part of supporting our organization more broadly, that we in turn can stay strong in the future – We need a home for our artists and teachers to come back to.
What we do know is we have an amazing family, and together we will come back when this crisis is over – and together we will rebuild Swallow Hill.
Please stay healthy and strong.
Paul Lhevine, CEO Swallow Hill Music