OUR MISSION

Our Joyful Noise Baltimore serves the essential human need for beauty and connection with art through free live musical performances of the highest professional quality presented in underserved and often forgotten places in our Baltimore community.

Currently, we are serving a shelter for veterans, a women's prison, a cancer treatment residence, and for families living with autism in the Baltimore community. And in COVID times, we have started a series of live, online concerts for patients and hospital personnel.

Our vision is of a world where all people- regardless of economic situation, disability challenge or circumstance- have easy access to the life affirming splendor of live music.

The visionary pianist Moisès Fernández-Via perfectly captures the spirit of our vision when he writes:

“Music dignifies the process of recovery, honors the depths of experience, infuses beauty and carries the message of palpable hope, strength, compassion and celebration.”

From Maria Lambros, Founding Executive Director

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF MUSIC...

While a cancer patient at Mass General Hospital in 2015, I happened upon a beautiful concert presented by a professional chamber music ensemble in the hospital lobby. To hear a live concert from the other side- as a listener and patient and not as a musician- was to deeply experience how beauty and grace can be found, and felt, even in the face of difficulty, despair, and challenge. That powerful encounter became the catalyst for starting Our Joyful Noise Baltimore, in the city that I love and call home. Welcome to our exciting musical adventure!

"It's not about fixing, helping or even 'making a difference.' It's all about kinship and connection." -Father Gregory Boyle

"This will be our response to challenge... to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” -Leonard Bernstein

PHOTO: CAROL SHULMAN