Eric, respected professional photographer and owner of E.L. Smith Graphix, has been photographing performing artists for over 40 years. That also includes JoMS recitals and fundraisers. He has never sent us a bill. Thank you, Eric!

Volunteering at the Joy of Music School is a family affair for Ben Koester, Mary Ruth Whitten and Jenny Lynn Whitten. The girls are sisters and Ben is their cousin, and it’s our great fortune to have all three of them teaching piano lessons to our grateful students. Ben, who is 20 and a junior chemical engineering major at UT, was the first one through our doors back in 2015. He’d been taking private piano lessons for years and his instructor encouraged him to come see us. “I really fell in love with the School,” he recalls. “Music is a gift, and it’s something not everyone can have access to.” Ben’s students this year are Jonathan and Janee. Mary Ruth, 18, decided to volunteer as a teacher during Ben’s freshman year at UT, in part because it was a way for her to see her cousin once a week even though he was in college. “I was a bit nervous at first,” Mary Ruth says of teaching. “I didn’t really know where to start with my two students.” Julie Carter, the School’s Director of Music Education, recommended she start with a book called Piano Adventures. “The first few pages kind of lay it all out and you can just follow along,” says Mary Ruth. Her students are Tico and Tim. Jenny Lynn, 15, started teaching last fall. Like her cousins, she wasn’t certain her years of taking piano lessons would prepare to teach beginners. In fact, it’s going great. “It’s so much fun!” she says. “And it feels really good to give back.” Jenny Lynn works with students Olivia and David. The three cousins are related through their mothers, Mary Koester and Kathy Whitten, who are sisters and live within a few blocks of each other in Alcoa. At the moment they’re our biggest group of related teachers, notes Ed Sublett, the School’s Volunteer and Facilities Manager. He describes the trio as “amazingly sweet,” adding that “they’re all very consistent and come in every time to teach. It’s a really nice family.”

Our relationship with the Berklee City Music Network—an affiliate of Boston’s famous Berklee College of Music — has brought our students so many good things over the years. The latest example: a box of six brand-new Izotopes for our students to use! An Izotope is an eight-track recording device that pairs with, and is controlled by, a smart phone. It has a built-in microphone and a “Soundcheck” feature that sets gain levels automatically. Instead of tweaking various knobs to get the sound right, you basically just turn it on and press record. “It’s stupidly easy to use,” in the words of Volunteer and Facilities Manager Ed Sublett, who quickly got them into the hands of teachers and students.