More About Us

A little history: Music Together® was developed and piloted right here in Essex County (at the Montclair Cooperative School) and first offered to the public in Princeton, NJ, over 30 years ago. Our curriculum, recordings, and publications have won awards and are recognized as the "gold standard" of early childhood music education around the world.

In a Music Together class, we spend about 45 minutes with families (grownups & their children)—playing our shakers, bouncing on laps, marching & drumming, and so much more—all while the children are doing the marvelous work of teaching themselves through developmentally-appropriate play. The adults make music the grownup way while the children play the child way—and everyone has a ton of fun. High-energy movers and quiet observers are all equally involved in their own way as we make music. We respect individual temperaments and learning styles. Music Together classes provide a true family music experience, with the whole family singing, dancing, learning, and playing together.

Here's our program in a nutshell: Music Together is a play-based, developmentally-appropriate music curriculum for families with children from birth through age seven. We're based on hard science, but we're ALL about having fun! In addition to our Mixed-Age classes, we also offer Babies Only classes (specially designed for infants from birth through eight months) and Rhythm Kids® classes (for children from 4 to 8). In Babies classes, we give rich musical experiences for infants' developing brains as well as invaluable information for parents/caregivers about music and child development. In Rhythm Kids®, older children learn drumming patterns for songs from around the world, in addition to improvisation, conducting, ensemble singing, and more.

Additional details:

  • All children are born with the raw materials to be musical, and our classes give them everything they need to blossom into the music makers they were born to become! Based on cutting edge research on early childhood music development and educational practices, our classes are developmentally-appropriate and filled with the playful exploration and experimentation children need to learn and grow. Just as important, the adults have fun, too!
  • All of our instructors are lifelong musicians and have undergone rigorous training in early childhood music development, developmentally-appropriate teaching practices, and music education philosophy and techniques in order to be certified to teach Music Together.
  • Our classes are meticulously designed to support the healthy development of every child's inborn music aptitude. We offer multiple access points for a variety of learning styles, to scaffold and reinforce the development of music behaviors as they emerge, and to educate parents/adults about children's music development. And, in the midst of all this learning and best practices, we have a ton of fun!
  • As part of each family's tuition, you get a rich collection of music (both digital and on CD), a fully-illustrated songbook, and a parent guide about how to support music development in young children.
  • Aside from Babies-Only and Rhythm Kids®, our classes are mixed-ages—in alignment with the large body of research that shows this is the optimal learning environment for young children. This also allows children of different ages in a single family to learn and play together.