Miami Dolphins linebacker and former University of Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Jaelan Phillips is famous for playing football. But he also has a lifelong passion for music, and an equally strong desire to help young people.
“Music has always been a powerful force in my life,” says Phillips. So is his urge to help, whether through charitable work with the Dolphins or his own efforts. “I’ve done work with homeless people, with juvenile detention centers,” he says. “I’ve always felt like you can make the most profound impact working with kids.”
Now, Phillips is bringing his celebrity, love of music, and belief in giving back to a partnership with the Frost School of Music’s Donna E. Shalala MusicReach program. The 25-year-old athlete’s Jaelan Phillips Foundation is sponsoring a new music production and audio engineering mentorship for MusicReach, which provides free music education to elementary, middle, and high school students through after-school programs, summer camps, and lessons, all taught by Frost School student mentors.
The Phillips Foundation is underwriting a scholarship for Frost School engineering major Jack Reilly to mentor two juniors from Arthur and Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts in audio engineering, beat-making, and production – opening a potentially life-changing door to a musical career.
The idea for the scholarship grew partly from Phillips’ visits to juvenile detention centers in Broward County. “About three-fourths of the kids wanted to do music,” Phillips says. “But they didn’t know how to put the pieces together to have a career. I feel like many kids in underserved communities see athletes, rappers, or pop stars, and they think that is the only way they can make it. I want to educate them on the music business, and show them they could have something attainable and give them hope.”
Music is in Phillips’s blood. His maternal grandfather is an acclaimed Juilliard-trained pianist, conductor, and dean of the Lynn Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton. His mother was a cellist, and his father was a trumpeter, and they met in a university orchestra. Growing up in Redlands, California, Phillips and his sister took piano lessons, and later, he taught himself guitar and basic production and engineering skills.
By high school, his love and talent for football made Phillips the top prospect in the country when the UCLA Bruins recruited him in 2017. But the following year, a series of injuries on the field, capped by a severely broken wrist after being hit by a car, forced him to stop. It was a difficult moment. “Football was my identity,” Phillips says. “I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do outside of football. Music saved my life and gave me a lot of purpose and passion during that time."
He turned to producing and recording on his own and studied music at Los Angeles City College. In 2019, he returned to football at the University of Miami, drawn in part by the opportunity to study at the Frost School. Though the demands of playing for the Hurricanes forced him to opt for a Bachelor of General Studies degree, he has continued making music in his home studio during breaks from football.
Last summer, while recovering from a torn ACL in California, Phillips formed his foundation. He and two friends created a program to teach audio engineering, songwriting, and production at a Boys and Girls Club in Santa Monica. That fall, his mother, who runs the Jaelan Phillips Foundation, contacted Dean Shelton G. Berg, who told her about MusicReach. “I knew I wanted to be connected to the Frost School,” Phillips says, adding that MusicReach “was exactly what I wanted to do with the Foundation, going into high schools and teaching kids music and engineering. It was perfect.”
MusicReach director of outreach Joseph Burleson praised Phillips’ generosity. “It’s great that Jaelen kept his love for music alive and chose to channel that to the Frost School and MusicReach,” Burleson says. “MusicReach is predicated on the idea of giving back to the community. So it’s wonderful that Jaelen is choosing to use his success in football to give back to the program.”
Burleson says they hope the Phillips scholarship will be the seed for a new engineering and production program for MusicReach. That would expand on the contemporary program MusicReach launched last summer, which added songwriting and popular music to the program’s more traditional skills and genres. These new additions to MusicReach take advantage of the talented potential mentors in the Frost School’s innovative and popular M.A.D.E. program for contemporary musicians, as well as its successful music production and engineering programs.
“We’re happy to take one of the most exciting departments at the Frost School and offer it to the community,” Burleson says. “No one else can offer that to a public school to the degree we can or with the facilities we have.”
Reilly will work with the two Mays juniors on Sundays for ten weeks, teaching them beat-making, recording techniques, sound design, and other skills. The two young mentees will create an original track and record and produce a song by MusicReach contemporary students – the kind of real-world learning integral to the Frost School. They’ll also learn how to navigate the music industry, another priority for Phillips.
The football star says he’ll join Reilly and the two mentees for a session this spring. For the young mentees, it’ll undoubtedly be a thrill. For Phillips, it’ll be a moment that brings together his love for music, mentoring, and community.
“I’m really glad I can help, and I’m excited to see the fruition of this effort,” Phillips says.
“Since I came to the U, I’ve received an outpouring of love and admiration. People respect and appreciate not only what I do on the field but what I do in the community. I want to continue that legacy. South Florida, Miami, and the University of Miami are extremely important to me because they gave me a second opportunity in life, and I want to be able to provide that for the kids as well.”
