What could be more inviting than getting a video infusion of new music in your email inbox every morning? Well, what abouttwo?

As part of its ongoing centennial celebrations, San Francisco Community Music Center is about to launch “(Re)Imagine,” a multi-week collaboration with Oakland composer, performer and music teacher Cava Menzies. To match the school’s 100 years as a center for low-cost, accessible music education, Menzies plans to send out 100 short music videos — two or three minutes apiece — featuring her original collaborations with students and faculty of the school, and with musical colleagues from around the world.

The plan is for them to roll out, two at a time, for 50 days, beginning Monday, April 4. (You can sign up to receive the videos on the school’swebsite.)

The videos, Menzies told The Chronicle during a recent video interview, are “very raw and real” — an attempt to capture the lives of her and her musical partners as they currently are. Some were created remotely on Zoom, using the software that has become ubiquitous during the pandemic shutdown; others feature Menzies and a student in the same room, working through musical material together.

“One of the students asked me, ‘Do I need to dress up, like, in concert attire?’ And I said, ‘No, absolutely not! Come as you are, as you would dress normally. We’re really trying to get a realistic snapshot of who you are,’ ” she said. “I think that feeds into the musical part of it as well.”

The 100 videos are divided into two strands. Half of them were created in partnership with the students of CMC, often building on music they have crafted themselves. The other half feature Menzies with a range of professional artists, including San Francisco drummer and educator Jaz Sawyer and representatives of the South African music outfit Roots 2000.

The pieces encompass a wide range of instrumentational and stylistic choices — from brass and woodwind ensembles and small string groups to large jazz bands and Latin rhythm sections. Some involve intimate duets and solos.

Like so many other cultural artifacts of the 2020s, “(Re)Imagine” originally took shape during the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown, when Menzies was searching for a way to keep her creative juices flowing and stay connected with her students at the Oakland School for the Arts.

“I was really just lying on the floor most of the time,” she recalled, “and I’d be texting with students, checking in, and they were in the same place. There was a real connection there, because we were having the same experiences. It didn’t matter that I was their teacher and they were my students. We were all navigating this great unknown.”

Menzies began creating and posting short videos, alone and with colleagues from the worlds of jazz and classical music. The more widely the videos spread, the more people wanted to get involved.

“I’d get texts from friends saying, ‘Hey, that’s really cool, I’d like to jump on one of those.’ And if I didn’t post for a day, people would be like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” she said. “It almost became my job.”

Those videos also caught the attention of teachers and administrators at CMC, who were looking ahead to the centennial observances.

“We were all sheltering in place and gleaning inspiration from this amazing internet project,” said Julie Rulyak Steinberg, the school’s executive director. “Cava and her work really spoke to us. She was working with jazz, R&B, soul — all these different genres.

“We’d been looking for collaborative opportunities for students to express themselves through the pandemic and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if they could work with Cava?’ ”

The student videos, Menzies said, were organized under three general headers: community issues, cultural identity and international music. Working with Menzies and Katrina Wreede from the school’s composition faculty, any of the students were prompted to translate their thoughts on these subjects into music for the first time.

“If they want to tackle a particular issue like global warming,” Menzies said, “some of the exercises that we did in the initial meetings were just, ‘How do you describe that musically? So find some adjectives that you would use to describe global warming, then take those words and apply them to musical concepts.’ ”

That process, she said, unlocked musical access for many students.

“很多人吓倒成分,或feel like it needs to sound a particular way, and the whole spirit of this project is that there’s entry points no matter where you are,” she said. “You don’t have to be this super-skilled, technically proficient musician. You’re just using your instrument to explore ideas and making meaning out of the sounds.”

Maria José Reyes Cruz, a 16-year-old student at San Francisco’s Galileo High School who studies voice at CMC, drew on a poem she had written for English class to create a short song, “You Are Not Alone,” with Menzies.

“这是一首诗有时人们如何感觉氧化铝ne — or they don’t even know how they feel — and it seemed to get to people,” she said. “So I wanted to share it.”

She and Menzies worked out a melody for one line of the poem; the video, which is scheduled to be released on Day 10 of the project, shows the two of them in performance.

“I was a bit nervous because it’s a vulnerable poem, and there’s something vulnerable about performance. But in the end, it was inspiring too,”Reyes Cruzsaid.“I mean, it’s music — anyone can do music if they really want to.”

That philosophy of democratic accessibility has been central to the school’s philosophy since its founding in 1921. From its two buildings — a main campus in the Mission District and another in the Richmond — the school offers a wide range of instrumental, vocal and compositional instruction in many genres to young artists and adults alike.

“(Re)Imagine” comes in the midst of a centennial celebration that has already seen the school break ground in February for an expansion of the physical plant in the Mission, on Capp Street.

“This was a decision we made in 2012, well before the pandemic,” Steinberg said. “We’ve been packed into our tiny space for a long time, well beyond our capacity. So this will make it possible to develop more programming that is free and responsive to the community.”

The school has also launched a new tuition-free program and expanded its Black Music Studies programming with a curriculum designed by Maestro Curtis. On April 23, as part of the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, the school plans to present “A Song of Triumph: The History of Black Music,” a multiform work by Curtis that traces Black music from its African roots to the present day.

But first comes “(Re)Imagine,” with its steady rhythmic beat of two musical works a day — weekends very much included — for 50 days.

“We’re framing this as 100 flowers blooming,” Steinberg said. “We’re sending seeds of inspiration across the student body, across the faculty and across all the artists involved.”