After six years as executive director, Robin Andreoli is leaving the Community Music School. She will take a position as director of Development at Earthplace in Westport, a 67-acre wildlife sanctuary that includes hiking trails, a museum, and programs highlighting the natural world for students from preschool to high school.

The venue is different, but development—the organizational term for fundraising—is not new for Andreoli. Before coming to the Community Music School, had her own business as a publicity and fundraising consultant.

“I’ve done development; I was a grant writer in another life,” said Andreoli, who has a master’s degree in business administration.

Working at a nature facility will be a bit of home for Andreoli. She and her husband live on 7.5 acres in Northford, and they love hiking with their dogs on trails throughout the property.

As she looks back on her tenure at the music school, Andreoli is proud of accomplishments in several different areas. She cites bringing order and system to the business operation, developing new programs like the very successful Kate’s Summer Camp, and the community outreach programs with schools in Regional School District 4. The Community Music School, through independent grants, has been able to bring music programs to special needs students in elementary and middle school.

Those students take regular music programs, but the Community Music School’s offerings supplement that instruction. The music programs, Andreoli said, have an effect beyond a tuneful half hour. They also help the students with socialization and life skills.

She recounted the story of a group of special needs elementary schoolers going to a program at High Hopes Therapeutic Riding in Old Lyme, where they participate in special equestrian programs. As they rode on the bus, according to Andreoli, one of the students spontaneously suggested they “sing a song Miss Martha had taught” them. Miss Martha is music school instructor Martha Herrle, who works with the students.

“The teachers were brought to tears,” Andreoli recalled.

Andreoli is also proud of involving the music school with the wider Essex community. The school has participated in the Essex St. Patrick’s Day parade as well as the annual Holiday Stroll. Andreoli has been a member of the Essex Board of Trade and the Centerbrook Vision Committee, which is trying to help the town generate ideas to improve the Centerbrook streetscape—“Make it feel more like a village, like Ivoryton or Essex,” Andreoli explained.

Serving as executive director of the music school was a job of many facets.

“I was a property manager, a fundraiser, a marketer; I dealt with human resources issues; I was responsible for contracting vendors,” Andreoli said.

She herself painted most of the teaching studios, taking several summers to do the job. That made it difficult to keep up the piano lessons she herself took over the summer.

“I just had no time to practice,” she recalled.

Even through difficult times, according to Andreoli, the music school has managed to hold its own, maintaining an enrollment of some 375 to 380 students during the school year. The number of students grows to 500 if summer participants in programs like Kate’s Camp are included.

Though Andreoli will be leaving, she still has ideas for what she would like to see at the music school, principally the expansion of the present entrance into a larger lobby with automatic doors.

“Little fingers get caught in the doors now and it is tough to get them open with a cello on your back,” she said.

Andreoli will miss the Community Music School students and teachers, but she will not miss having to make one early morning decision: “I’m looking forward not to having to call snow days,” she said.

Although she is leaving on March 11, Andreoli will return in April.

“Of course, I’m coming back for the Gala,” she said.

This year the gala, on Saturday, April 16, celebrates one of the great eras of American popular music, When Swing Was King. For more information, visit http://community-music-school.org.