Hidden Gems: Meet Nicole Ortiz of Lives United: Music, Arts, and Community

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Ortiz.

Hi Nicole , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My story begins with music. Youth choir, then church choir, middle school band, and eventually jazz band and honor ensembles all through high school. By the time I got to college, studying music wasn’t really a decision, it was just where the road had been leading all along. I earned my woodwind performance degree in 2020, which, as anyone in the arts knows, was about the hardest possible year to step into that world.

Gigs and teaching dried up, and I hit a real moment of artist despair. But out of that reckoning came a question I couldn’t shake. What are the systems that are supposed to support artists, and why weren’t they working? That question pulled me toward arts administration. I had already been doing this work in pieces at a local music retailer, managing the lesson studio, working with teachers, and overseeing family accounts and instrument rentals.

I was accepted to the arts administration graduate program at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music in 2022 and something clicked. Through the Brady Internship program with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, I worked in the Community Engagement department where I saw firsthand how a large institution builds and repairs relationships with communities that have historically been left out. My mentor at UC-CCM, Anne Cushing-Reid, the former Assistant Dean of Preparatory & Community and Director of Learning for the CSO, later pointed me towards Lives United. A grassroots micro-organization making music and arts programming genuinely accessible, where every program from the Concert Series to the Piano Lesson Program is completely free.

That mission hits close to home. I grew up in a family that couldn’t afford lessons or an instrument of my own. I always played on a school instrument or leaned on fundraisers just to participate. And it wasn’t only about cost. Transportation kept plenty of opportunities out of reach too, simply because I had no way to get there.

Today, I’m in my third year as Program Director at Lives United, and I also serve as Summer and Special Programs Manager at UC-CCM. Last November, I accepted a fellowship with the Sphinx Organization and am in Cohort 8 of Sphinx LEAD, a 2-year leadership program designed to evolve the industry landscape by empowering the next generation of executive arts leaders. Sphinx LEAD transforms lives through empowerment, networking, collective learning, and addressing the systemic obstacles within BIPOC communities. And I haven’t left the music itself behind, I still keep an active clarinet studio and perform when I can.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As a first-generation Latina college student, I navigated significant challenges, including homelessness and food insecurity, during my undergraduate education. On top of that, I carried a lot of insecurity. A constant, nagging doubt of whether I was even meant to be in those spaces.

I compared myself to classmates who weren’t navigating the same things I was, and I felt like I had to work twice as hard just to understand half of what was going on. I felt like I was constantly behind, and honestly, I was. A lot of my peers had already taken private lessons, been through theory classes, or had someone in their corner who understood what college expected of them. I didn’t have much of a support system to lean on in undergrad.

Graduate school was different. My passion for the work carried me in a way that undergrad hadn’t, but it came with its own set of challenges. Like learning how to navigate academia, and adjusting to job cultures that felt almost corporate compared to anything I’d experienced before.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Lives United: Music, Arts, and Community?
What we’re known for, above all, is that our programming is completely free, and not in a watered-down way. We still pay our Concert Series artists and our instructors real rates; the accessibility is on the participant side, not something we’ve achieved by cutting corners elsewhere.

Lives United started in 2018 as a partnership with the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, originally just to provide free piano lessons to a few congregation members of the Church of Our Saviour (La Iglesia de Nuestro Salvador). It’s grown a lot since then. This past year we served nearly 50 students across two sites, the Church of Our Saviour and Taft Elementary School.

What makes the model work is that it benefits more than one group at a time. CCM students get real teaching experience with kids from a wide range of socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds while earning their pedagogy certificate, and our graduate arts administration students get hands-on experience in artistic planning, grant writing, marketing, and program operations. So the organization is training the next generation of teachers and arts administrators at the same time it’s serving the community.

Because so much of our programing is centered at the Church of Our Saviour, we’re also able to open that space up for student recitals and events. Several CCM students have completed DMA projects or candidacy recitals in the Sanctuary at no cost to them. We’ve been especially proud to support commissions and presentation of new works, especially by LGBTQIA+ composers, women, and composers of color, helping expand whose music gets a place in the canon.

And the space isn’t just for students. It’s open to the whole community. Anyone in the neighborhood is welcome to use it.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Honestly, just keep showing up. Keep working with us, keep coming through the doors. Our work is currently grant-funded and supported by individual giving, so donations are always deeply appreciated and directly make the free-access model possible.

But it’s not just about funding. Come to our concerts. Check out our livestreams. Take a lesson. Reserve the space for your own celebrations. Come see everything else happening at the Church of Our Saviour beyond our programming. We share the space with an incredible group of people doing tireless work in the food pantry and in immigrant ministries. There’s a whole community here worth knowing.

And we genuinely love partnerships. Showing up for others is core to who we are, so if you’re running events or programs of your own, let us know. We want to connect, collaborate, and show up for you too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://livesunitedvidasunidas.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livesunitedvidasunidas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/livesunited
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@livesunited

Image Credits
Zac Audette, Nicole Ortiz