The Rivers School

The Rivers School Conservatory was founded in 1975 when The New England Conservatory of Music closed all of the suburban branches of its preparatory school including its Wellesley school. The displaced families from Wellesley, Weston and Wayland convinced Ethel Bernard, one of the pioneers of the music school movement, to found a music school committed to excellence in music education and performance. Ethel Bernard approached The Rivers School with the idea of founding a music school in the unoccupied former headmaster’s house on the campus of the then all-boys college preparatory school. First called The Music School at Rivers, The Rivers School Conservatory has been one of the nation’s leading community music conservatories ever since. In 1978, the Annual Seminar on Contemporary Music for the Young was established and gained Rivers world-wide renown through a WGBH-TV documentary that was broadcast internationally by PBS. Over the past three and a half decades, the Conservatory has grown to over 750 students, including a dynamic student orchestra program, jazz and chamber ensembles, music theory and composition, its critically acclaimed Marimba Magic Program, choruses, master classes, workshops, and, of course, private lessons on every orchestral and jazz instrument, piano and voice.