Beyond Attendance Data: How to Measure and Advocate for Music Education
Adam Karelin-Anderson. Executive and Artistic Director, Riverside Arts Academy. Principal Conductor, Riverside Youth Orchestra.
Enrollment, attendance, and retention have kept programs alive. Adam makes the case for a third number: what students are actually learning musically. He looks at how Virginia, Texas, and New York built assessments that administrators and funders can read, and how to name measurable indicators inside your own program. You will leave with language for using that data to ask for what your students need.
Adam Karelin-Anderson is the Executive & Artistic Director of the Riverside Arts Academy (RAA), a nonprofit providing music education to more than 600 students across Southern California’s Inland Empire. Through robust partnerships with school districts, universities, and civic institutions, RAA works to ensure that young people have access to rigorous, joyful, and culturally affirming music education.
During his tenure, Karelin-Anderson has scaled RAA’s regional footprint. RAA’s mariachi programs serve over a dozen public schools, and the organization’s ensembles, including the Riverside Youth Orchestra and Mariachi Campana de Riverside, perform throughout the region, reaching tens of thousands of audience members annually.
His work as a composer and conductor has taken him across the world, from Finland, to Bulgaria, to the Aspen Music Festival. His music has been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thornton Symphony Orchestra, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony Fellows, the Hear Now Festival, and others. In 2018, he received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award for his orchestral work, “Constructs.”
Karelin-Anderson holds degrees in Arts Leadership (M.S.) and Composition (B.M.) from the University of Southern California, where he graduated as the valedictorian.
Karelin-Anderson is an avid puckhead and cruciverbalist. He lives in Riverside with his husband, Holden, and their cat, Mila.