Music Discovery Center

Making Music a Bigger Part of Life in Kitsap!

Music Discovery Center (MDC) is a nonprofit organization that brings music opportunities to youth and young adults through education, performance, and mentorship.  We are inspired by Quincy Jones, the great American record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and composer who discovered music as a young boy growing up in Bremerton. Today, it’s widely known that music is essential for social and emotional well-being and is a critical tool for establishing equity and access. Our aim for Kitsap County and the Olympic Peninsula is to create needed music experiences and bring music to people who wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity. 

MDC fulfills its mission to the community through a number of programs and projects that are established to meet its key long range goals:

• We are developing the wildly successful Quincy Square Jazz Festival to become the largest annual music festival on the west side of Puget Sound.
• We are pioneering the Discover Music Summer Camp for incoming 6th graders as part of our goal to build the most comprehensive Mentoring & Teaching network in Kitsap County.
• We are developing a MDC Studio Home on Quincy Square in Bremerton, where we will host a recording studio, open mic and live music jam sessions, and provide youth with opportunities in audio production and digital music creation.

Music Discovery Center in Action: 

Education Programs

5th Grade Music Infusion is a comprehensive effort designed to counter the elimination of 5th grade organized instrumental music from all public school districts in Kitsap County due to grade realignment, emphasis on STEM, and reductions in arts funding.  Combined with the negative impact that COVID-19 had on music classes, MDC is acting to rectify this unfortunate situation.

Our Discover Music Summer Camp, held every August at Olympic College, introduces 100 Kitsap county youth - many from underserved portions of our community - to band and orchestra instruments of their choosing at the optimum time in their childhood. Voice lessons are offered, too. Accredited instructors work with children to achieve an important jump start before middle school. This ensures that more children choose to participate in music and continue through high school. MDC offers subsidies and reduced lunch programs for qualified students. Instruments are provided free of charge, and qualifying students are permanently gifted instruments from the MDC’s Music In A Box program.

More Than Music is a sound engineering curriculum offered to at-risk youth at East Bremerton’s BoomHouse Studios.  MDC provides annual scholarship support so young musicians can create, advertise, sell and distribute their own music tracks while gaining confidence and building marketable skills.

Performance Programs

Quincy Square Jazz Festival is MDC’s flagship re-introduction of what was once the most widely attended high school stage band festival in the Northwest, held annually at Olympic College from 1960 through 1975. 

After 50 years on the shelf, MDC is partnering with OC to present this fully-adjudicated regional festival that offers middle- and high-school jazz programs an opportunity to compete on stage in front of a live audience at Downton Bremerton’s historic Roxy Theater. The festival honors the incredible legacy of Quincy Jones, who discovered music while growing up in Bremerton’s segregated Sinclair Park housing project and went on to change the face of popular music around the globe.

Make Music Day is an annual, one-day live music event for amateur, semi-professional and professional performers, open to the public at no cost. Many of the groups selected are composed of teens just getting their start in front of a live audience. Make Music Day happens in towns and cities around the world every June 21st, and MDC is proud to produce Kitsap County’s version at Quincy Square in downtown Bremerton.

Mentorship

Music In A Box instrument redistribution program is a continuous drive to collect, refurbish and gift musical instruments to underserved children who are starting band and orchestra in Kitsap County’s public schools. Over 50 students have received instruments and were told “This is yours for life.”

Touch ‘N Try is a travelling, hands on experience with a dozen common musical instruments that encourages people of all ages to pick up an instrument and make sound. Indicative of the word “Discovery” in our name, the Touch ‘N Try tent sets up in schools, public housing projects, community resource fairs and nonprofit annual festivals, producing moments of wonder wherever it goes. Musical instruments can be gifted on the spot based on family eligibility.