At 18, Kenneth Palacios is well on his way to a career in the music world. He plays guitar in the Revere High School Rock Ensemble. A writer and photographer, he started a youth-led online music publication called The Offstage, which led to him becoming the youngest contributor to the local music blog Allston Pudding.
And he has ideas about creating a live music marketing venture – ways for artists to connect with fans in real life.
“Not just digital first,” as Palacios explained on a recent afternoon at ZUMIX, the long-running East Boston nonprofit that offers underserved youth an education in music.
Madeleine Steczynski co-founded ZUMIX (then called Music Mobile) with Bob Grove in 1991. Celebrating the program’s 35th anniversary, ZUMIX will host its annual gala – “The Muze” – at City Winery Thursday. This year’s theme: “Party Like It’s 1991.”
The annual gala is so full of teen spirit that the host venue typically sells more Shirley Temples than any alcoholic beverage, Steczynski said.
After its humble beginnings in her Eastie apartment, ZUMIX now occupies a once-vacant, fully renovated neighborhood firehouse – three floors of rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, and an around-the-clock radio station.
In the administrative offices upstairs, the teaching artists and operations managers sit two to a desk, facing each other. The close-knit team serves more than 500 young people who apply each year for their after-school and summer workshops.
Having seen so many young people embrace the program, many of them becoming full-time musicians and music teachers, Steczynski is reluctant to play favorites. Still, she admitted, Palacios “is one of my top dogs.
“He has the drive I saw in the music scene I grew up in,” said Steczynski. While attending Boston College in the early 1980s, she immersed herself in Boston’s thriving punk rock and indie music scene. It was there that she learned never to underestimate the power of a young person with creative energy.
ZUMIX gives those young people access to mixing boards, video cameras, and musical instruments of all kinds. The team members have become expert fundraisers: Pearl Jam funded the launch of the radio station (94.9 ZUMIX Radio), and their major sponsors include the Celtics and Bruins, concert promoter the Bowery Presents, and Paul and Theo Epstein’s Foundation to Be Named Later.
“We have people touching things they’d never be able to afford,” said director of programs Corey DePina. A rapper from Roxbury, he fell into the ZUMIX orbit just after they launched. Now more than 30 years in, he’s been instrumental in spreading the ZUMIX approach on a global scale: He recently helped other organizations build youth-driven music projects in Budapest and his family’s native Cape Verde, where the instructors were initially amazed to learn how hands-on the ZUMIX students are.
“They actually let teenagers do stuff!” as DePina recalled one of the educators marveling.
Nora Janjar is another Revere High student who has become a fixture at the firehouse. She began taking voice lessons at ZUMIX at age 8, when she was obsessed with “American Idol.” On a recent afternoon, she sat in a circle of folding chairs with a half-dozen younger students in the first-floor performance area. One teenager wore a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
Janjar joined her high school’s rock band when she was still in eighth grade. Last year the band presented a year-end concert showcasing the music of the metal band Iron Maiden. This year they’re working on the System of a Down catalog.
Janjar hopes to study forensics in college, but her time at ZUMIX has convinced her that she’ll find ways to keep singing and playing the bass.
“I want music to still be a fun part of my life,” she said.
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.
THE MUZE GALA 2026: CELEBRATING ZUMIX’s 35th ANNIVERSARY
At City Winery Boston, 80 Beverly St., Thursday, Oct. 29, 6 p.m. Tickets: $75-150. zumix.org