Today, Columbia Music Festival Association educates, discovers, develops, trains, assists, presents, produces, and promotes the community's brightest talents, in art performances and programs which serve as magnets for the region, enhancing the quality of life and providing leisure time activities for visitors to the region.

Free concerts in the parks became a tradition with the Columbia Brass Band. The Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions make Columbia a destination for aspiring singers from throughout the southeastern region.  They compete with the nation's best for contracts with the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York. Contestants, their accompanists, family and friends stay in Columbia before going on to Atlanta and New York.. The Columbia Lyric Opera, established in 1954, and the offspring of the CMFA Opera Study Group of the late 1800's became the forerunner of the Southeastern Regional Opera and today's FBN Opera for Kids, with performances and outreach programs in Columbia and throughout the region.

Musicians and dancers, from Afro-pop to Hip-hop and Afro-fusion Jazz, are given the opportunity to develop their talents at the Columbia Music Festival Association, and to perform in venues as large as the Township Auditorium in concerts that bring audiences from throughout the Midlands. Teachers and students come from throughout the country to attend performances and master classes.

The Columbia Music Festival Association also works with service organizations, health and human service groups and sponsors of other worthwhile events for the good of the community.  CMFA has taken active roles in projects for Richland Memorial Hospital, Children's Hospital, the Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, Columbia Free Medical Clinic, Artists Against AIDS, the AIDS Benefit Foundation, Palmetto Pride and the Governor's School for Math and Science, among others.

The CMFA brings the arts experience into the arena of the non-traditional venue and involves non-traditional arts groups in hands-on arts experiences.

CMFA outreach programs touch countless thousands of school children in the Midlands. Also, as part of an audience development program and outreach CMFA has participated in the Minority Male Community Coalition at Benedict College. CMFA is exploring programs in cooperation with the City of Columbia police department, public housing authority, Richland School District One and Columbia College to make the arts, available to lower income members of the community. The dance project in cooperation with the Gonzales Gardens was just one of the programs to come from this collaboration.

Thanks to Columbia Music Festival Association's commitment to arts development, collaboration and shared resources, smaller organizations are able to begin from nothing more than an idea and develop into brightly burnished stars in the Midlands arts firmament. Secure financial basis provided to CMFA by local government makes this possible.