The John Payne Music Center is a non-profit Brookline Mass. music school serving the Boston area and dedicated to providing competent, caring instruction with the clear intention of not only increasing musical ability but also maximizing musical enjoyment.

What We Do
The Teachers at the JPMC (John Payne Music Center) offer private music lessons in saxophone, guitar, piano/keyboards, bass, drums, clarinet, flute, trumpet, recorder, and trombone; twenty student ensembles at various levels and musical styles; and a saxophone choir.

We hire instructors for their talents as patient teachers who enjoy teaching complete beginners, as well as more advanced students, in the family-like atmosphere of the JPMC. We are a small school of about 250 students so we can take time to help students find the teacher or group that makes them happy. You can take just one private lesson or a session with an ensemble group and see how you like it with no obligation to continue or pay for more.

Many schools require students to pay for a full semester of lessons before they've even met the instructor. Here you can try a lesson or ensemble group just once, and can quit at any time on one week's notice, not just at the end of a predefined semester. (See our Contact page to get in touch with us.)

We also get students who are interested playing in public. For more than twenty years our ensembles (student small bands) have been playing  three times per year at  our "Battle of the Student Bands" at Ryles' , one of the Boston area's best known jazz clubs, as well as at local arts festivals and other events. Most of these groups are jazz ensembles, but we also have rock, blues, and Latin ensembles.  The JPMC Student Saxophone Choir plays out about every two or three months along with John Payne's quartet of top professionals.  All of these groups are composed primarily of adults.  (Teenagers and preteens are allowed in if they are at the proper musical level.)