• Do you seal and stripe parking lots? Ours could use some love.
• Invite friends to Holiday Sparkles & Spirits.
• Volunteer to teach! We always need teachers!
• Help us with replacing instrument cases on Indiegogo at “Cases4kidz”
• Follow us on Instagram at @joyofmusicschool
• Do you do harpsichords? Ours needs some expert maintenance.
• Be Like Susan Brackney…
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The Joy of Music School provides free lessons, instruments, music and materials to hundreds of Knoxville-area children who otherwise would do without. For more on the Joy of Music School, including how to volunteer, please visit www.joyofmusicschool.org
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Do you like this newsletter as much as I do? To me, it has a unique combination of qualities one doesn’t commonly find together, like a mythical food that’s very tasty and yet very good for you. Imagine a sweet, gooey, delicious Cinnabon roll that somehow lowers your cholesterol and gives you six-pack abs. That’s how I see this quarterly. It’s full of stories that are fun and
interesting, while still informative and inspiring. I regard each issue with joy and read it with pride.
I’d be happy to take the credit for the quality of Music Notes, but that honor belongs to its editor. Sure, I write some articles, pull photos together, proofread, and am always free with opinions, but I’d never be able to produce such consistent quality on my own, year after year. That takes someone with a writer’s skill, dedication to his craft, experience, professionalism, and a love for the mission of the School. Fortunately for all of us, that person joined our board of directors 10 years ago, and jumped into editing this newsletter soon thereafter. This behind-the-scenes baker is Pete Finch, who donates all his time and wisdom. Pete’s other job for decades has been a professional writer and editor for major publications including SmartMoney, Business Week, Golf Digest, and Golf World magazines. He also is a multipublished author, and recently has been writing pieces for the New York Times. So, his position as editor of this newsletter is the equivalent of having Julia Child as your team’s sous chef on the Food Network’s “Chopped.” The result is something magical and delicious, and despite his resistance, it’s high time I reveal our secret ingredient.
Pete, I am deeply grateful.
Francis Graffeo
Executive Director
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CMA Grants Associate Falon Keith
and Frank Graffeo.
“I have never had a more in-depth conversation with a foundation representative,” says Executive Director Frank Graffeo, referring to a fruitful meeting in his office with Tiffany Kerns, Director of Community Outreach for the Country Music Association (CMA) Foundation last fall. “They don’t simply write checks. They direct their funding, time, and energy into specific areas of the School and focus on how, and how much, their support helps.”
The grant we got from the CMA Foundation—a generous $20,000—is designed to help us do a handful of important things, like getting better at measuring the positive effects of our program on the lives of the kids we serve. These include the relationship between kids’ study here and their attendance rates in Knox County Schools. The Foundation money is also helping us get a program for our alumni off the ground. It’s clear the CMA Foundation wants to help us set goals, meet them, and provide the extra resources required to achieve them. That’s a foundation providing foundational support.
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“Excuse me, what did you say?” asked a wide-eyed Jane Tolhurst. She had approached our executive director to begin what she assumed would be a long and potentially expensive hunt for a piano to place in the lobby of Maryville’s non-profit Blount Memorial Hospital.
“I said, ‘Would you like a piano?’ ” responded Frank Graffeo. “I have one I need to store for an indefinite length of time.”
The answer was a resounding “Yes!” and now a piano belonging to the Joy of Music School has a happy home at Blount Memorial, where volunteer pianists regularly play to lighten the mood of patients and visitors.
The idea for the piano at the hospital dates to last summer, when Blount Memorial board member Carolyn Forster thought it up. She and Connie Huffman, assistant administrator and director of the Blount Memorial Hospital Foundation, approached Jane Tolhurst, who has been involved for many years with musical programming, planning and fundraising in the community. When Jane later found herself talking with Frank, the idea got legs.
Donors often give us pianos, some of which we lend to families of our students when it’s practical. But this one, previously on loan to the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, was a grand piano. School policy dictates we can only use grand pianos in our building or in a public setting.
A generous donor from the Blount community stepped forward to start a fund to pay for the piano’s needs during its stay, so just like that, there was money to pay for the moving expenses, a lock for the keyboard, a cover to keep the piano dust-free, and stanchions with black velvet roping to keep the piano even safer. There was even enough money left over to have the piano tuned twice a year.
Everyone who walks by now sees a sign explaining that the lovely piano was lent by the Joy of Music School to help further community appreciation and enjoyment of music.
It’s our great pleasure to help out!
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The Joy of Music School provides free lessons, instruments, music and materials to hundreds of Knoxville-area children who otherwise would do without. For more on the Joy of Music School, including how to volunteer, please visit www.joyofmusicschool.org
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Kenny Webb
Kenny Webb has a hobby that we think is the greatest. That’s because our students are the grateful beneficiaries of it.
The retired electrician buys damaged violins, fixes them up, and donates them to the Joy of Music School. So far he’s brought us 10, with more on the way.
“I find a lot of them on eBay,” explains Kenny, who lives in Rutledge County. “Occasionally I’ll find one in a pawn shop or antique store.”
Most go for about $50 to $100, and they’re in non-working condition.
Kenny takes them to his in-home shop and replaces their missing or broken tuners, sound posts, bridges, tailpieces and more. He figures they’re worth $250 to $400 when he’s done.
He plays the violin himself, at church and in a bluegrass/gospel outfit called the Over the Hill Gang. His love of music is why he wants to support our students. Says Kenny: “It’s been a thrill to me, just knowing I’m helping these children get to play the violin.”
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Southern culture has a lot going for it, including a heaping helping of music, and more than a skosh of generosity. We recently got grants from a trio of foundations with a distinctly Southern tone: the Country Music Association Foundation ($20,000), the Youth Endowment Fund of East Tennessee Foundation ($15,000) and the Bonnaroo Works Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee ($10,000).
This is our first gift from the CMA Foundation. Guided by the generosity of the country music community, the foundation’s focuses include improving and sustaining music education programs. The Youth Endowment Fund grant represents the largest gift from that fund in our history, although its parent, the East Tennessee Foundation, has supported our work over many years. Bonnaroo has generously enhanced our service to children and teens since 2012. Though our proper Southern manners might not allow for it, we just want to jump up and hug their necks. All of ‘em. Thank you!
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The Joy of Music School provides free lessons, instruments, music and materials to hundreds of Knoxville-area children who otherwise would do without. For more on the Joy of Music School, including how to volunteer, please visit www.joyofmusicschool.org
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Morton and Becky Massey
The Joy of Music School would not exist without the many hundreds of people who “give back” to their community. Among them is a couple who live out those words by helping the School in a unique and significant way—once a year, every year.
Morton and Becky Massey donate their time and work alongside our staff at our annual Holiday Sparkles & Spirits (see “Save the Date” on page 1), helping to run the auction check-in and check-out with calm, friendly expertise. And they follow up each year with detailed spreadsheet reports that make tallying all the auction data a breeze.
They started offering their unpaid work on local charity auctions in 2002 to replace a 22-year hobby of coaching girls softball together. They now work on roughly 60 events a year, helped by a rotating group of about five volunteers.
Says Becky, a state senator representing District 6: “Besides the joy of knowing we are helping nonprofits raise more money and make their events more effective, we learn so much about so many great organizations.” We are proud to count ourselves among them.
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Care to guess the most unusual donation we’ve received so far in 2017? A hint: Music includes rests, right? Well, we got a gift related to resting. Permanent resting.
Yes, two beautiful cemetery plots at Sherwood Gardens, in Alcoa, Tenn., are ours.
Our thoughtful donors find many ways to support the School’s work with deserving kids. In addition to every kind of musical instrument imaginable, we’ve gotten furniture, rugs, lighting fixtures, CD collections, dishes, a vacuum, even a minivan.
But cemetery plots are a first! A kind donor found herself owning adjacent plots, but since she has plans for her own eternal repose elsewhere, she gave them to the Joy of Music School. If you are in the market for some nice “forever” property for you and that special someone, might we interest you? Please contact Frank Graffeo at 865-525-6806 for more information.
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The Joy of Music School provides free lessons, instruments, music and materials to hundreds of Knoxville-area children who otherwise would do without. For more on the Joy of Music School, including how to volunteer, please visit www.joyofmusicschool.org
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Joy of Music School 