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McCartney, Fidelity team up on charity
Music Lives Foundation will support music education initiatives in the wake of budget cuts for music programs.
With a new album out and a US tour underway, legendary former Beatle Paul McCartney is seizing the spotlight today to launch a nonprofit foundation to promote music education in schools.
McCartney partnered with Boston-based Fidelity Investments to launch the Music Lives Foundation, which is aimed at raising awareness and funds for budget-stricken music education programs in schools.
The venture coincides with McCartney's 11-week sold-out tour in support of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, his first album since 2001's Driving Rain.
Fidelity is sponsoring the tour and launched a major advertising campaign in September titled ''This is Paul," featuring footage from McCartney's life. The foundation will have kiosks at every McCartney concerts where fans can contribute to the foundation.
"As a boy growing up in Liverpool, I was surrounded by music," McCartney said in a statement. "That's just the way it was. The problem is that more and more music programs are in danger of being eliminated."
In its announcement, the foundation estimated that 27 million of the 54 American million children who went to school this fall are unlikely to receive adequate musical instruction in their classrooms.
"Budget cuts have been breaking up marching bands and silencing school choruses from Maine to California," the foundation said in its announcement.
Fidelity is putting up nearly $1 million for the foundation, which seeks to raise funds by selling pewter bracelets with "Music Lives" on them. Each person contributing at least $40, the cost of putting a musical instrument into a child's hands, will receive a bracelet. McCartney's and Fidelity's names are engraved on the inside of the bracelets.
Fidelity will also contribute $40 to the foundation for every non-retirement account that is opened at Fidelity through December 31.
The foundation is launching an ad campaign to support the initiative. The new 30-second ad, titled ''Sharing," shows a school orchestra recital at which students must share instruments to play a song.
''Music education is a critical program of study that gets scant attention and fewer and fewer dollars every year," Fidelity vice chairman Robert Reynolds said in a statement. ''The Music Lives Foundation wants to combat this trend."
To donate to the foundation or for more information, visit the Music Lives Web site.
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