School Programs

When school art and music programs are not fully funded, someone needs to jump in an meet the need. In mid February 2009, Mr. Sergio Rodriguez, the orchestra conductor at Grady High School in midtown Atlanta, put out the call. He was looking for help coaching students enrolled in his orchestras. When it comes to cultivating advanced players, private lessons make all the difference in the world, and very few of Mr. Rodriguez's students were taking lessons.

The Music Center responded and quickly worked out plans with the school's music department and music boosters. Beginning in March 2009, Music Center faculty began attending orchestra rehearsals during the school day to coach individuals and sectionals.

Just about every day of the week since then, one or more of the Center's faculty is on the campus of Grady High School, teaching students during the orchestra's regularly scheduled morning and afternoon rehearsals. Currently, Natia Estatia (MM, Manhattan School of Music and MA in Education, Teacher's College at Columbia University), Elizabeth Oladele (BM, UGA), and Val Taylor (BA, Harvard University) serve the Grady students and the program with their passion and expertise. Most remarkable of all, instruction is being offered free of any charge to the students or the school.  

So, where's the money coming from to pay instructors for free lessons? The Center pieces together funding for generous outreach through multiple income streams. First, there are donations to the Community Music Education Fund; gifts small and large add up and allow us to serve the community through outreach. Second, the Grady Orchestra Boosters have contributed through various fund raising projects.  Third, when you make a purchase through our on-line store, we use a portion of the proceeds to pay instructors for time spent teaching in community outreach projects.

Watch for more news in the spring of 2010 for ways you can support Music Center outreach to Grady and other schools.

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.