The achievement gap for inner city schools in the United States continues to persist, with impacts being felt not only in core subjects but also in the music classroom (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Noguera, 2008; Hung et al., 2020). Licensed music teachers are seeking solutions for their students. Meanwhile, teaching artists in the community are seeking employment and job stability. The solution may be to strategically pair underserved school music programs with teaching artists to provide an engaging and more equitable education for beginning instrumentalists. In our descriptive case study, we outline how a partnership between teaching artists, licensed music teachers, and the community program that acted as their matchmaker impacted student engagement in an elementary instrumental music program at four metropolitan schools. Our data consisted of semi-structured interviews with three teaching artists and one licensed music teachers that was then analyzed using in vivo coding and multiple rounds of thematic analysis to find the recurring ideas (i.e., themes) among participants in the data (Riger & Sigurvinsdottir, 2015). The results illuminated a common theme: the collegiality of the partnerships had multiple benefits for the teaching artist, the licensed music teacher, and most of all, the students. This is in conflict with several previous studies that suggested the presence of teaching artists caused tension in the collaborative relationship of the two groups because of the competition for job positions (Rabkin et al., 2011; Booth, 2009). Additionally, the participants offered valuable insight into the implementation of teaching artist collaborative programs to benefit curriculum, instruction, and student experience. This study has important implications to advance inclusive music education through strategic teacher selection and culturally responsive pedagogy in underserved communities, along with impacting the lives and careers of teaching artists seeking to make their mark on a better world.