More than three centuries ago, a luthier in Cremona, Italy, crafted a violin that today connects us to the magic of the past and the promise of the future. The Joachim-Ma Stradivarius, itself a work of art, has introduced audiences to extraordinary artistry. Its namesake, the 19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim, once owned the instrument and likely used it in 1879 to premiere Johannes Brahms’s beloved Violin Concerto. With that performance, Joachim introduced the audience in Leipzig, Germany, to a masterwork, a composer’s gifts, and the incomparably unique sound the Stradivarius offers in a virtuoso’s hands.

Contemporary audiences have also had the good fortune to experience the instrument’s inimitable voice. In 2019, a century and a half after Joachim premiered Brahms’s Violin Concerto, another virtuoso, New England Conservatory (NEC) student Inmo Yang, used the same violin in a captivating recital on the Jordan Hall stage in Boston, Massachusetts. Today, the instrument represents another transformative opportunity. With its sale, NEC will establish the largest named student scholarship fund in its history.

Since its founding in 1867, NEC has stood at the intersection of European tradition and American innovation. Throughout its history, the Conservatory has served as an incubator for musical excellence and a hub of disciplined artistic exploration. It seeks to amplify musicians’ impact on advancing our shared humanity and empowers students to meet today’s changing world head-on. Equipped with the tools and confidence to forge multidimensional lives, NEC’s graduates carry forward and share immeasurable artistic depth and the relevance of the art form.

Excellence at NEC begins with the people whose creativity and vision help grow a community that extends beyond Boston to the wider world. The Conservatory’s faculty includes distinguished musicians and scholars who pursue dynamic careers and thoughtfully mentor new generations of artists. Members include path-breaking composers, erudite pedagogues, celebrated concert soloists, chamber musicians from such revered groups as the Cleveland and Borromeo string quartets, and numerous instrumentalists from the illustrious Boston Symphony Orchestra, among other iconic ensembles.

NEC’s eminent faculty, including violinists Miriam Fried and Donald Weilerstein, pianist Alessio Bax, violist Kim Kashkashian, cellists Paul Katz and Laurence Lesser, and many others, mentor dedicated and aspiring students from more than 40 countries. The Conservatory’s diverse student body includes outstanding undergraduates exploring their musical identity and limitless potential, graduate students honing their craft and refining their artistic voice, and early career professionals already reaching enthusiastic audiences around the world.

NEC’s newly launched Institute for Concert Artists (ICA), which expands on the Conservatory’s prestigious Artist Diploma program, is currently home to such ascendant performers as pianists Yunchan Lim and Evren Ozel and violinist Joshua Brown.

Previous Artist Diploma recipients — including Yang, Geneva Lewis, Maria Ioudenitch, and Alexi Kenney, each of whom played the Joachim-Ma Stradivarius at NEC — have quickly established their places on the global stage.

It was the generosity of another Artist Diploma recipient, violinist Si-Hon Ma, that will make possible the establishment of the largest named scholarship fund in NEC’s history. Ma, who studied at and graduated from NEC in the early 1950s and later worked in the Cleveland Orchestra and as a chamber musician and pedagogue, purchased the Stradivarius in 1967. For more than 40 years, until his death in 2009, Ma treasured the instrument, which Antonio Stradivari made in 1714 during what is considered the legendary craftsman’s “golden period.” Ma’s estate gifted the instrument to his alma mater in 2015.

Indeed, so many of NEC’s talented graduates carry into the world their alma mater’s visionary spirit. Ma’s fellow NEC alumni include Coretta Scott King, Florence Price, Tessa Lark, George Li, Yura Lee, Stefan Jackiw, Anthony Leon, Erica Petrocelli, Minsoo Sohn, Cecil Taylor, Denyce Graves, Phyllis Curtin, Roberto Diaz, Michael Gandolfi, Fred Hersch, Dave Holland, and John Medeski, among many others. NEC alumni lead such important ensembles as A Far Cry, Lake Street Dive, and Castle of Our Skins, and NEC alumni and faculty alike have earned some of society’s most coveted accolades, including Grammy Awards, Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, Avery Fisher Career Grants, and Rome Prizes.

Just as the people who drive NEC’s mission foster excellence, they also foster innovation. Directed by President Andrea Kalyn, whose tenure has twice seen NEC named by the Women’s Edge and Boston Globe as one of the top 100 women-led businesses in Massachusetts, America’s first independent conservatory has always looked to the future.

Alongside its globally acknowledged excellence in the field of classical music, NEC has been a pioneer in the exploration of musical languages through its Jazz Studies and Contemporary Musical Arts programs.

Students in NEC’s Jazz Studies program — which, 50 years ago, became the first accredited program of its kind at a conservatory — work alongside some of the most accomplished musicians in the field, including composer Ken Schaphorst, pianist Jason Moran, saxophonists Anna Webber and Donny McCaslin, vocalist and composer Sara Serpa, drummer Nasheet Waits, and other musical luminaries. Recordings by faculty from and alumni of the Jazz Studies program were recently acknowledged by the New York Times and DownBeat magazine in year-end lists of standout albums.

The Contemporary Musical Arts department, conceived in the mid-1970s by NEC’s then-president Gunther Schuller and launched by pianist Ran Blake as the Third Stream department, embodies Schuller’s vision of fusing musical languages. Today, student composers, performers, and improvisers engage with oral traditions and conceptual ideas from around the world, guided by mentorship from groundbreaking artists.

Alongside the Institute for Concert Artists, NEC’s professional programs — the Professional String Quartet and Professional Piano Trio residencies — help emerging ensembles reach their full potential. The Balourdet Quartet, in residence at NEC from 2020 to 2023 and a 2024 recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, recently signed with Colbert Artists Management. Trio Eris, which began its residency at NEC in 2024, was among the artists who represented the Conservatory at the 2025 Panama Jazz Festival.

At the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year, the faculty at NEC immersed first-year students in a new Integrative Curriculum, a course sequence reimagined as an experiential Venn diagram. This holistic approach helps students explore their identities, understand their roles in a global society, and grow their artistic skills and sensibilities. Through creative thinking, communication, and collaboration, the curriculum prepares students for futures they have yet to imagine.

Those futures may include teaching — giving aspiring musicians the tools they need to make music, to express themselves, and to connect through the art form with others. At NEC, students can choose a concentration in Teaching Artistry and Music Education that prepares them for pedagogical work in a variety of settings, from private teaching to classroom environments.

Teaching is just one common facet of the 21st-century musician’s life, and NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship program is another area in which careers are nurtured. The Teaching Artistry and Entrepreneurial Musicianship concentrations are two of three flagship programs in NEC’s Community Engagement and Professional Studies department, which provides students with the tools they need to discover unique and relevant careers that embrace music as a response to the challenges and opportunities of contemporary society. The department also includes the Community Performances and Partnerships program, which engages more than 15,000 people of varying ages, ethnicities, and economic circumstances through more than 600 events across Boston. In turn, the program provides NEC students with an opportunity to examine what it means to be a musician living in and contributing to a community.

A vital part of Boston’s cultural landscape, NEC has always sought to create access to music and musical education. Concertgoers and learners alike are encouraged to experience performances in the Conservatory’s intimate and acoustically magnificent Jordan Hall and other venues, and to engage their own creative curiosities. NEC Preparatory School, which in 2025 celebrates 75 years, welcomes more than 1,500 students of all ages from across New England each year to explore and find inspiration in music.

From the youngest among us, whom NEC is reaching through an Early Childhood Education Pilot Program in partnership with the City of Boston, to those reconnecting with the art form in their later years, NEC’s Expanded Education offerings enhance and amplify the vibrancy of the region, including during summer, serving the community and preparing young musicians to one day pursue studies at a conservatory.

While located in the heart of Boston, NEC lives in the shared humanity that reaches around the world. Students, faculty, and alumni form what President Kalyn describes as “an ever-growing global community that together seeks first to listen, and then to collaborate — to create beauty, understanding, and impact.”

“NEC is the place where those practices are nurtured,” Kalyn affirms. From the time that Joachim premiered Brahms’s Violin Concerto in Leipzig, NEC has educated and trained outstanding musicians who are driven to excellence by artistic purpose, determined to inspire and to remain inspired by all that has come before and all that is possible tomorrow.

The exquisite Joachim-Ma Stradivarius is a physical symbol of the tradition and innovation that drive NEC. The extraordinary instrument has passed through the hands of virtuosic artists across time and place. Now, as it finds a new home, the violin will nurture transcendent artistry for generations to come.

David Brensilver