Music for all...for Life!

Piano Time

It was summer, and we were standing in the middle of a formerly pink-ish church sanctuary surrounded by tatters and heaps of torn-up carpet, rolls of wallpaper, scattered 2x4s, and boxes of tools. There was a large scaffold in one corner and paint splotched all over the ceiling and walls. P and I looked at each other: What have we done?!

This was the beginning of the process of converting a church to the arts, with hammers, screwdrivers, paint brushes, the help of many friends and volunteers, and a vision for a new musical community. “Music for all…for life!” was our tag line, invented by P. It showed up on all of the fledgling promo stuff. People got it immediately. It was about access to musical instruction, activities, instruments, musical experience, connection to music - and it still is. Anyone, any age, any ability, any background, money or not. This was long before the current attention to DEIA - diversity, equity, inclusion, access – things people are talking about in a big way these days.

We didn’t have the language then, but we had an idea and a vision to open the doors to possibility for anyone who wanted to walk through. Our key word was “access.” Because everyone has the capacity to be musical – for a lifetime. Because every child should have the opportunity to access creative exploration and self-expression.  Because music has the capacity to catalyze personal and social change.

Music as an agent for social change and personal transformation was not an idea unique to us. El Sistema, the socio-musical program that originated in Venezuela and is all over the world now, has shown us that when given the musical opportunity, lives change dramatically. (I had a short teaching stint with El Sistema in Venezuela; more on that down the road.) And the 400 schools in the National Guild of Community Arts Education carry a similar message. The arts are for everybody: “We believe in the power of the arts to transform lives. Our work helps realize that transformation every day.” (nationalguild.org)

Over the summer, the little church took on a new purpose. It had been sitting empty for months before we showed up with our toolboxes, helpers, and a single piano. The building was transformed from a neglected shell into a fledgling community music school with performance space, four studios, and an office. The neighbors were curious, some were downright wary. The guy next door threatened to chain himself to the front entrance if we opened the school. A neighbor across the street came over to explain to us in detail how children will be run down in the street because of the increase in traffic if we opened the school. The coffee shop down the street stood ready to sell lattes to parents, please hurry up and open that school! P and I were standing by to sign up everyone in town. How we would do this with a guy chained to the front door was – a good question.

The day we opened there were thirteen intrepid students. In a month we had fifty, and by the end of the year, a hundred. Our little spinet that didn’t stay in tune was joined by a Steinway grand that was bumped carelessly off a Mayflower moving truck and clattered onto our little stage by three gorilla men who treated it like a piece of furniture. People stopped by to give us instruments. A flute, a trumpet, a couple of violins. A bunch of plastic recorders that I think are still in a box somewhere. The inside of the newly painted former church started to sing.

The Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts opened without the next-door neighbor chained to the door. No children were run over by the cars speeding past at 20 mph. The phone rang, more students signed up and I started to breathe easier. One day, I ran into one of my former professors at the grocery store.

There were the usual pleasantries, and then he said, “When are you going to get a real job?” Smirk on his face. Our newly birthed community music school that was raising money, teaching kids, inspiring adults – was not a real job because it is not academia (where the only real jobs are, apparently). Ironically, he’s the guy that helped to inspire the whole idea. He talked in class about using school buildings to teach adults at night, teach kids lessons after school, hold rehearsals for community ensembles outside of school hours. “What a waste! All that space lying idle after school hours, we could be using it to teach music! What a travesty! Communities need music!”

Two and a half decades, another building, a merger, and a pandemic later, the walls still sing and children of former students are now students themselves. Seems like the realest of jobs to me. Every day, there is something to remind me that people need and want music in their lives. The 5^th grader starting violin who burst into a giant smile, reaching her hand out to touch the instrument so gently.  She wants to be in a mariachi band someday and I have no doubt that she will be. Our LifeSong Chorus singing Edelweiss, how can you not weep? The little boy taking piano lessons. His dad won’t let him practice (!!) when he stays at his house, but mom tries to make up for it on the off weeks. He runs down the stairs to the studio, yelling “It’s piano time!” Yes, it is. It IS piano time.