From left, interns Jaylen White and Max Chalmers edit a song with Sam Monaco and Ethan Woodman Fowler, respective president and secretary of the recently founded nonprofit Equal Measures Arts. Nick Ressel / For The Forecaster

Inside Monaco Studios, interns Jaylen White and Max Chalmers work behind a control board studded with dials, pulling their song apart on-screen into overlapping panels of vocals, woodwinds and percussion. When they play a short clip, the sound brightly reverberates in the space, filling up the room’s expansive acoustics.

Alongside them, Ethan Woodman Fowler, one of the studio’s audio engineers and teacher at Portland Arts and Technology High School, offers energetic support. The scene captures the essence of how Monaco Studios operates: a collaborative musical environment where artists of all ages join together to translate their sonic expressions into rich music.

In 2020, Sam Monaco moved from New York City back to his home state of Maine and started the recording studio. Using Monaco’s open-concept design, the studio’s control room fuses with a live performance area, which then connects to a loft with additional recording capacities – all attached to a farmhouse in Falmouth.

From the outset, Monaco said he set the studio’s foundational values on inclusivity, collaboration and accessibility, hoping to provide an encouraging and comfortable environment for each artist who entered the studio to explore their own musical language and sound. As a way to support those goals, the studio offered student discounts of 20% off its standard fees for using the studio for a day ($750); recording a single ($1,500); and recording an extended playlist of three to six songs ($3,000). Quickly, students started flooding the recording space. Monaco said it became clear: there was a big community of young musicians who wanted to access the space, but money often blocked the way.

In November of 2024, Monaco, along with four others from the area’s music community – Victoria Stubbs, Kristopher Kleva, Noah Love and Ethan Woodman Fowler – launched a nonprofit called Equal Measure Arts to support the diverse community of emerging artists through studio access, education and financial assistance.

“We wanted to make this space accessible and affordable for the largest swath of people possible,” explained Monaco.

Using the already established recording studio, the nonprofit will, through an application process, provide needs-based scholarships to rising artists. Its intent is to open the door wide for student and young musicians with limited resources to record music on professional equipment and alongside audio engineers.

Creating Equal Measure Arts orients the studio toward “being an open-door community space,” said Monaco. This intention establishes the recording studio as both a stage for young artists and a space to help connect them with a network of other musicians, he said. The nonprofit has set a goal of raising $50,000, which translates to producing 50 songs for students and marginalized musicians.

Since its founding, the studio has hosted a dozen audio production and engineer interns, recorded over 50 songs, and amassed over 120,000 listens from student-recorded work as measured by Spotify.

Along with its production and recording focus, the studio hosts live events, such as concert and studio session performances. Their concert series, Salon Nights, brings in audience members to hear a variety of live performances, representing both musicians who frequently work in the studio space and those who are based out of state. In his video interview series, “Live At The Loft,” Monaco invites local musicians to speak about their work and showcase their songs.

In addition, Monaco volunteers at the WMPG radio station as DJ and regular host of the “Local Motives” program, a show which “has been nurturing and documenting area music communities with a historic archive representing local music in its many expressions.” On the show, Monaco has interviewed and highlighted student and young musicians who have also recorded and worked in his studio. The public broadcasts and features, he noted, adds an important strand to the studio’s web of support for young and rising artists by amplifying their voices and work through an additional media channel.

The studio partners with a collection of other nonprofits in southern Maine, a focus that will continue to grow with the founding of Equal Measure Arts. In its collaborations, the studio welcomed the Maine Academy of Modern Music’s Rock Chorus to record a Beatles cover; they worked with the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine to produce audio segments for a permanent exhibit celebrating Wabanaki art and traditions; and the studio hosts live shows at Mayo Street Arts.

“The first year will be a bit of experimentation,” Monaco said, in terms of testing the capacity of scholarships and musicians the nonprofit can support, but noted its creation is an exciting new way to help carry the wave of talent within the area’s emerging musicians.

“It is what we love to do – to give this platform for young artists … it is such a passion project for us,” he said.

This story was updated at 10:40 a.m. Jan. 6 to correct the costs for using the studio.