Artmax Academy

ArtMax Academy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting music, the arts, and the diverse languages of the world. We focus on the facilitation of education, study, preservation, and performance of all forms of music, dance, and creative endeavors. Additionally, we believe that by understanding and respecting the world’s languages and utilizing multicultural performance venues to facilitate cross-cultural bonds between individuals and ethnic groups we bring the world closer to peace. At ArtMax Academy we believe that every child deserves the opportunity to enrich their quality of life by developing his or her creative skills, and our programming is designed to maximize the artistic creativity of our youth

Our core mission is to make arts education more accessible for youth. In addition to teaching regular classes at our studio, we provide in-school workshops for preschoolers and elementary school students. In these workshops, we bring instruments so that the students can get hands-on experience with a variety of instruments including egg shakers, triangles, small drums for preschoolers, and daf, santoor, etc. for elementary school students.

ArtMax’s founder and Executive Director, Hossein Salehi, MOI, SIP, IFR is an award-winning Santoor player and teacher. He is a recipient of the Master Artist Award from the Oregon Historical Society and a two-time recipient of the Traditional Arts and Apprenticeship Program Award from the Oregon Folklife Network of University of Oregon, and he has been teaching Santoor for over 60 years in Oregon and beyond. Mr. Salehi is one example of the many world-class artists who have taught and continue to teach at ArtMax. Our teachers bring decades of experience to the classes they teach, and each one has had a career that allowed them to travel the world and study with many renowned artists. As such, our students are not only learning the skills required to play instruments, they are also learning how music and dance work within various cultures, and how the arts can unite people around the world. In addition to our resident instructors, we regularly invite qualified, renowned, and reputable instructors/performers to further broaden our student’s artistic experience.

For more than a decade, we have provided affordable arts education to eligible students and have not increased our tuition in our 13 years of operation. We have a robust history of working with youth in many contexts. ArtMax has brought showcases and workshops to middle and elementary schools; shared stages with the likes of Portland Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Chamber Orchestra, and the Salem World Beat Festival, and created programming with Ethos Music Center and Lincoln City Cultural Center. With more instruments, we can further reduce costs to students by providing them with instruments to use during their lessons and to borrow and take home with them to practice without having to pay a rental fee. We aim to remove as many barriers to arts education as possible, and without the cost of purchasing an instrument, our classes become more accessible to low-income students.