About

What is Music Around Us Project?

Founded by Yuri in 2016, MAUP brings concerts and interactive presentations organized by students to share the joy of music. In addition to the regular visits to the Fountains at RiverVue assisted living facility to play for the senior citizens, MAUP began to reach out to the younger children in the community in 2019 by visiting our district’s elementary school.

Music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

Yuri had always dreamed of making people happy with music since she was little. In the Juilliard Music Advancement Program, she was given an assignment called “Artist as Citizen”, which called for the students to bring music to their communities through performances or presentations in public, with the purpose of spreading the joy and importance of classical music in their own creative ways. Without any experiences in organizing events, Yuri decided to tackle the assignment by contacting an assisted living facility where she and her elementary school ESL class visited to sing holiday songs a few years back. With help from her old ESL teacher who had organized the elementary students’ visit, she was able to get in touch with the director of the facility and had her first concert for the senior citizens on December 4th of 2016.

Yuri learned so much from the whole process of organizing and performing—picking the date and time with the director; studying oldies music and arranging songs that the seniors are most likely familiar with; asking friends to participate and making arrangements to best fit their instruments; and drawing the program cover—that gave her the opportunity to bring smiles to the seniors’ faces. After her first concert at the assisted living facility, a senior citizen came up to her, introducing himself as Arthur and encouraging her to continue this project. She decided that this was a way to fulfill her dream of making people happy with music. With the name inspired by a memorable quote from the movie August Rush, Music Around Us Project was born.