Old Town School of Folk Music (1957-) | University of Illinois Archives

The Old Town School of Folk Music focuses on music education and celebrates the folk traditions that are rooted in the diverse cultures of Chicago’s global communities. Established in December 1957 at 333 North Avenue in Lincoln Park, Illinois, the OTSFM was founded as a not-for-profit organization by Win Strake, Gertrude Soltker, Dawn Greening, and Frank Hamilton.

During its early years, the school programmed many innovative music concerts with such world-renowned guest performers as Pete Seeger, Odetta, and Bob Dylan. In addition, the school offered a rich variety of adult education classes on guitar and banjo performance, music theory, and dance. In 1967, the OTSFM moved its operation to 909 W. Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park and started offering music courses for children. Led by musician and educator Ray Tate, the school developed many of its most innovative courses during the 1960s and early 70s as enrollment continued to grow.

By the late 1970s, however, enrollment began to decline and attendance at its concerts decreased as Chicago’s taste in music began to change. By 1981, the OTSFM ran an operating deficit of $59,000.This prompted its administration to make substantial changes to its business model and hire Jim Hirsch as the OTSFM’s executive director. Under Hirsch, the administration adopted a corporate business model for the management of the not-for-profit school. The administration also diversified the school’s course offerings to include specialty courses in songwriting, harmonica, and children’s music. By 1985, Hirsch’s reorganization put the OTSFM on solid fiscal footing which enabled the school to renovate its 909 W. Armitage location.

Hirsch’s leadership of OTSFM was followed by musicologist David Roche in 2000 and Bau Graves in 2007. However, during Graves’ administration the school began running operational deficits as enrollments declined. The school’s faculty became increasingly concerned with his management of OTSFM and the potential sale of its Armitage location to cover the school’s nearly $1 million deficit.

In January 2019, the school’s faculty unionized and began negotiations to improve teachers’ salaries and working conditions. This was the school’s first faculty union. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Graves stepped down as OTSFM’s director, and Jim Newcomb – a member of the school’s Board of Directors – became its acting CEO. After many months of tense negotiations, the school’s administration finalized its first contract agreement with its faculty union in June 2022. The OTSFM remains the largest independent music school in the nation, serving 11,475 students with on-site and online instruction.

Tanya Su-Kyung Lee, "Music as Birthright: Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music and Participatory Music Making in the Twenty-First Century," PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2011.

Win Strake, "Biography of a Hunch," in Biography of a Hunch: The History of Chicago's Legendary Old Town School of Folk Music, edited by Lisa Grayson (Chicago: Old Town School of Folk Music, 1993).

Mark Guarino, "Disharmony at the Old Town School," Chicago Reader (November 5, 2020), online at: https://chicagoreader.com/music/disharmony-at-the-old-town-school/