Baton Passed

Music Haven, one of the busiest community-focused arts groups in town, has a new director: Mandi Isaacs Jackson.

Jackson replaces the organization’s founding director, Tina Lee Hadari. They’re pictured at center in the photo at left. (Click here for a previous story about Hadari’s decision to move on.)

“Mandi’s expertise and deep-seated commitment to community and social and economic justice make her the perfect match for this pivotal role,” Music Haven board President Wendy Marans wrote in an email message Friday announcing the passing of the baton.

Marans described Jackson this way: ​“She has worked in the city for more than a decade, most recently helping to establish New Haven Works, a nonprofit connecting local residents to good jobs in the region. The breadth of Mandi’s experience ranges from community organizing to teaching African-American studies as a professor at Wesleyan University, to working with children, young writers and musicians. In addition to Mandi’s extensive experience, she brings her own lifelong love of music and learning to the position — she has studied jazz and improvisation as an alto saxophonist and has performed in various choral groups.”

Working out of a converted former garage behind St. Luke’s Church on Whalley Avenue, Music Haven provides tuition-free after-school classical-music lessons (instruments included) to kids from New Haven’s Newhallville, Dixwell, Dwight, and Hill neighborhoods. It has a robust schedule of student recitals as well as faculty ​“Haven String Quartet” public performances in unorthodox public settings as well as from the back of a truck. (Click here, here, and here for stories by Lucy Gellman about some of those events.) Its annual budget has grown from an original $45,900 to $461,381. Music Haven is also responsible for the rockingest acoustic-string version of Jimi Hendrix’s ​“Purple Haze” ever heard on New Haven’s streets, during the Arts & Ideas Festival. (Click on the video to watch.)

It’s been an eventful week for the Jackson household. Jackson’s husband, Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, announced he’s stepping down from his job to take a new position with the Malloy administration.