In September 2008, the Music Center kicked off a new collaboration with the Kingfisher Academy, an independent school in nearby East Atlanta.  With the onset of the school year, small groups of Kingfisher students began visiting the Center for weekly music classes and lessons during the school day.  The onset of these classes marked the culmination of the Center’s work in the summer of 2008 with Kingfisher Director Debbie Gathmann to design and implement a music curriculum for the school.  Although the school has a history of offering students musical training and experiences in the form of hand drumming and folk singing, Debbie and other Kingfisher faculty felt the students should be exposed to a richer or broader experiential and a more rigorous academic curriculum, and for older students, in particular, they wanted instrumental instruction.

Throughout the 2008-2009 school year, a group of junior high school students came to the Center for an hour and a half on Monday afternoons to sing, to take introductory courses in music theory and composition, and to learn to play piano, guitar, or drums in small groups lessons with Colin Baylor, Blake Wuestefeld, and Keith Leslie, respectively.  A second, younger group of students, consisiting of a class of mixed 4-6 year olds, came on Tuesday mornings to sing, play music, and learn the fundamentals of reading music with our early childhood specialists.  Finally, in the spring the upper school's elementary students began coming to the Center and working with Natia Esartia on an exciting curriculum that creatively introduced basic and advanced musical concepts and skills through SoundWalks around Inman Park and Little 5, instrument building workshops, recording and listening exercises, and the composition and performance of original musical dramas and accompanied stories.

AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM.The second element of the Center's collaborative relationship with the Kingfisher Academy kicked in by February 2009, when the school began bringing students to the Center by bus for lessons and CMP classes for an alternate after school program.  Once they arrive, students study with Center faculty for CMP classes and private lessons on any instrument of their choice.  Kingfisher parents simply meet their children at the Center rather than their school at the end of the day, usually sometime around 5 or 5:30.  Parents are particularly grateful to the school for covering one leg of the trip to the Center for them.