Joy of Music School

Music Notes – Newsletter


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One (Big) Bill We Don’t Have to Pay Anymore

We are taking care of kids. But we also must take care of our financial house. If our funds are not in order, then nothing else will be. So, we have good news for those of you who have ever been involved in the School’s fiscal world (and over 21 years that’s a lot of people): We’ve paid off the mortgage!

Since 2003 the School has carried a combined note on the building and its improvements. And now it’s all paid for, as of September. We are grateful to all of you donors, supporters, fundraisers, committee members, treasurers, chairs of finance, auditors, bankers, and board members. It’s a big deal a long time in coming.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Having this burden lifted doesn’t mean we are on Easy Street. It’s great being able to use funds formerly destined for interest to now pay for even more music, instruments and other needs. But we have ongoing areas that are deserving of, and will always need, support. So, yes, we are happy to be out of debt. But we still owe it to the kids. Let’s keep taking care of business.


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A Tee-rific Time Was Had By All

Tiger Woods winning the Masters was the biggest golf moment of 2019, you say? Ok, perhaps. But our annual Swing for Joy golf fundraiser was a close second!

We had a wonderful turnout under sunny skies at the Gettysvue Polo, Golf & Country Club on Monday, Oct. 14. There were 68 golfers total, competing for trophies and prizes such as gift certificates and golf equipment.

Best of all, the day of golf and celebration event raised more than $12,000 for the Joy of Music School.

Swing for Joy is the brainchild of Cindi Alpert, our soon-to-be former board president (see page 3). She nearly made a hole-in-one that day but settled for a “Closest to the Hole” prize when her ball stopped about three inches from the cup.

“We had a lot of new golfers this year,” says Cindi. “People who were new to the event and new to the Joy of Music School.”

Part of the credit for that belongs to Cindi herself. She’s the owner of two radio stations, 106.1 The River and 104.9 Q-Country. They sponsored Swing for Joy and gave the event some very helpful promotional airtime leading up to the big day.

Special thanks to our other Swing for Joy sponsors, including presenting sponsor Pipe Wrench Plumbing, Heating & Cooling, Archer’s BBQ (caterer of our delicious lunch), AMS Corp., Tennessee Insurance Services, Knoxville Pediatric Associates and Baker Donelson. Hole-in-one prizes were offered by Duncan Automotive and Ted Russell Ford.
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How JoMS Is Fighting Drug Abuse

Starting next year, the Joy of Music School will be part of an important new program combatting opioid abuse in our region.

The School got involved—and got $50,000 in funding for the program—through its membership in the Knoxville Area Mentoring Initiative. KAMI, as it’s known, is a creation of the Knoxville Leadership Foundation and includes the YMCA of East Tennessee, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of East Tennessee, the Joy of Music School, and Girls on the Run of Greater Knoxville.

The money will go toward educating our staff and music mentors about the opioid crisis, plus training them to help families who may need assistance. The training will be ongoing, says Dan Myers, vice president of advancement for the Knoxville Leadership Foundation.

It’s all part of a program called Operation Prevention, which is a joint effort of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Discovery Education, a unit of Discovery Communications.

The funding is a federal grant from the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Securing that grant was a huge, highly competitive undertaking, notes Dan. “Anytime you can get a federal grant,” he adds, “it’s very exciting.”


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Feeling Upbeat About OneBeat

We hosted five very special visitors this fall. They’re members of OneBeat, a group of super-accomplished international musicians, and they stopped by our School to perform for our students and families.

OneBeat is part of a U.S. State Department project, created in collaboration with Sound Nation and Bang On a Can — a pair of new-music organizations in New York City. Every year they field applications from all over the world. They pick 25 musicians to create a show combining traditional music and their own compositions.

Earlier this year the OneBeat ensemble performed at Big Ears, the Knoxville music festival. It was there they heard about our School and began hatching a visit to see for themselves.

The five who visited the Joy of Music School in October were from Colombia, Brazil, Tunisia, and two from India.

“It was really cool,” says Julie Carter, our director of music education. “It was like a show-and-tell. They said where they were from and explained what instrument they were playing.”

The OneBeat musicians were a delight. They were engaging and charismatic, and the audience loved them.

It seemed like the OneBeat musicians were having a blast traveling around the U.S. and performing, Julie says. And she could tell the visit to our School was a highlight. “They all had their cell phones out and were taking videos of the School. They were really impressed.”

So were we! We’re so glad OneBeat came to visit us and hope they’ll come back again soon.


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Meet the Multitalented Mary Jane

JoMS student Mary Jane is just a kid, but she already has a lot of arts experience!

She performs as a Hawaiian and Tahitian dancer with her mother, Tilini, and her two brothers.

She’s an actor, too. Mary Jane has taken classes at Knoxville Children’s Theatre, and this year you can see her as Belinda Cratchit in “A Christmas Carol” at the Clarence Brown Theatre. (She did a monologue and sang “Climb Every Mountain” for her audition.)

Mary Jane also shoots short digital videos with her older brothers. Her dad, Ben, says they specialize in “jump scares” — that is, moments that make viewers jump out of their seats with fright.

She’s taking the general music class at our School, plays violin, and wants to learn piano.

Did we mention that Mary Jane is only 6? Amazing! She’s got a wonderful set of talents and an excellent attitude, and we can’t wait to see where they lead her.


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Broadcasting Live from JoMS

The Joy of Music School has radio in its DNA. Our late founder, James Dick, is a Knoxville broadcasting legend, who started WIVK and spun that into Dick Broadcasting, owner of multiple stations. So when we had a live radio show broadcasting from the School recently, we felt his presence to be sure.

The Swain Event, a sports talk show on WNML The Sports Animal, set up shop here early one morning in October. The host, Jayson Swain, is a bona fide Vol football hero. His guests, JoMS Executive Director Frank Graffeo, and JoMS administrative volunteer Jaye Rochell (who also played Vol ball), were on air to promote the Tall Paul 30th Anniversary concert (see above), which raised funds for the School.

Frank peppered his interview with a few footballrelated stories. (He was childhood friends with the Mike Ditka family, sold concessions at Texas Stadium in high school, and lived near three Dallas Cowboys as a kid, for example.) But mainly he kept the JoMS thread going, making parallels between music mentoring and sports coaching. Jaye talked about his days as a wide receiver under Coach Butch Jones, and also about his work volunteering at JoMS. School friend and supporter Andy Jeffers of Sports & Entertainment Media made the whole interview possible, drawing on his extensive media contacts, his love for the School, and his friendship with Tall Paul.

These extraordinary individuals joined together to help spread the word via radio about the School, and got us some valuable air time. That’s something to cheer about. And James Dick would sure be proud.


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Tall Paul’s Big Night Benefits our School

Knoxville has a special place in singer-songwriter Tall Paul Bobal’s heart. A live recording he made here three decades ago, at a now-defunct bar called The Library, gave his career a huge lift. Widely copied on cassette tape, it was shared among music fans at the University of Tennessee and other colleges.

“After that, I could put myself anywhere on the East Coast and draw a good crowd for a show,” he recalls.

When Tall Paul recently decided to celebrate the 30th anniversary of that live show, there was no question it would be a big night. And to top it off, he generously donated the proceeds to the Joy of Music School!

The show was held in early October at Wild Wing Cafe in Farragut. It kicked off at 8 p.m. and didn’t wind down till 2:30 in the morning. The place was packed with adoring fans and fellow musicians. “Instead of playing the show all by myself, I invited all the musicians I’d played with over the years,” Tall Paul says. “I was so honored — I think there were 14 who made it, coming in from South Carolina, Florida, all over the place.”

Tall Paul says making the show a benefit for the Joy of Music School was a natural. He loved all the musical opportunities he got as a school kid growing up in Virginia — opportunities many kids lack today because of arts program budget cuts. “I mean, if you don’t get it at school, where are you going to get it?” he says.

Tall Paul was introduced to JoMS by his pal Andy Jeffers, a longtime supporter of the School. Andy runs a Knoxville-based TV production company called Sports & Entertainment Media, which shot video of Tall Paul’s 30th anniversary show.

Tall Paul isn’t exactly sure what will become of that video, but there’s a chance at least part of it will appear on his YouTube channel one of these days.

Thanks, Tall Paul, for making the Joy of Music School part of your big night!


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Farewell Cindi, Welcome Jack

Any jazz or pop musician will tell you that “changes” are chords that make up a song’s harmony and tonality. Well, there are some changes of the standard variety taking place at the Joy of Music School this January, but they’re still intended to keep the music flowing. We will bid a fond farewell to our board president Cindi Alpert as she rotates out of that position after two years.

Cindi, a jazz musician herself, and a radio station owner to boot, started supporting the School in 2012 with an event sponsorship. She then created a charitable promotional CD through her radio station, 106.1 The River, of local musicians playing holiday music. All of the proceeds supported JoMS. She went on to create our Swing for Joy charity golf tournament in 2016, which is thriving.

Cindi joined the board in 2014 and was elected president in 2018. “Cindi’s energy and overflowing charitable heart made this a better organization from the minute we connected with her,” says Executive Director Francis Graffeo. “We are all so grateful.”

Term limits dictate that she now step off of the board for at least a year, but she intends to continue her support. “I’m a lifelong musician and immediately connected with the mission of the School when I learned about their mission,” she says. “I will always be a supporter and collaborator.”

Cindi will be replaced in 2020 by President-Elect Jack Fellers, a retired professor from the University of Tennessee. Jack is already an enthusiastic board leader, having served on several committees, and is a volunteer piano teacher at the School. He has served on the board of directors of the UT School of Music as well. “I’m looking forward to directing my energies toward the continued success of the School and of the kids we teach,” he says.

These changes, like any good set of chords, make the best kind of harmony.

 


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Letter from the Executive Director

Frank Our volunteer teachers give lessons to more than 200 deserving kids. But did you know that our outreach teachers reach almost 1,000 more kids every year? These contracted professionals take music to Boys & Girls Clubs, Urban Family Outreach, and other in-school and afterschool programs in underserved areas. That’s a lot of music for kids who need it most.

Lately we are focusing on growing our outreach. How? We seek funding to support it, and not just in Knox County. We are working to get music to kids in outlying areas. We’ve already started to grow our reach, but more is in the works.

A recent grant from the Country Music Association Foundation will help us expand outreach and measure our impact this year. The Clayton Family Foundation has helped as well. Individuals such as Sharon Lord have stepped up to ensure our outreach is robust, too.

Our five brilliant outreach teachers—Ronda Mostella, Kiran Seth, Will Carter, Anthony Hussey, Rebekah Maxim, and Bethany Hankins—are out there teaching at sites near and far. In coming newsletters we’ll be sharing the impact of our outreach.

Music matters! And not just to the kids who can get to our Knoxville building! Stay tuned.

Yours sincerely,

Francis Graffeo

Executive Director


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‘Bones’ Allen: The Beat Goes On and On

It seems like a long time ago. Phillip Fulmer’s Vols only lost to two teams that year, Auburn (twice) and Notre Dame. Bill Haslam was mayor. I-40 through town was hilly, swervy, and bumpy. And Mike Allen started volunteering at the Joy of Music School.

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The year was 2004. “Bones”—a name given him at work by a boss who had five cooks named Michael, and he was the skinny drummer—heard an ad for the School on the radio and he couldn’t ignore it. He knew his single mom worked hard to provide him with paid lessons. He saw volunteering to teach at the School as a way to help kids like himself, and take the pressure off their hardworking moms.

“There is no teacher more enthusiastic about the Joy of Music School than Mike Allen,” says Julie Carter, our director of music education. “He makes us proud in many ways.” Mike, who now works as a real estate agent, has proven himself beyond teaching countless young percussionists. He has organized fundraisers, recruited teachers, and generally led the charge getting the word out about the School. “Every musician in town needs to tell everybody about the Joy of Music School,” he says. “In the early restaurant days, after working long, hard hours, I had to rush to make it to teach lessons. But those unhappy workdays melted away at the School. It’s in the name. It was and is joy for me. It always makes me happy teaching here.”

The hundreds of hours Mike has spent teaching over the years prove that you can give back to help kids who need it. And it comes back in the form of joy. We’re all grateful to Bones for 15 years of adding joy to the School.


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It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

This is it—the one you’ve been waiting for! It’s our annual Holiday Sparkles & Spirits, a glorious evening of food, drink, gift shopping and heart-warming
performances by Joy of Music School students.

The excitement begins at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 11 in the beautiful Cherokee Country Club ballroom. Tickets for the 14th annual Holiday Sparkles & Spirits are $135
apiece. Proceeds benefit our music programs for kids who wouldn’t be able to afford them otherwise.

Live and silent auctions are the evening’s focal point. Conceived as a way for attendees to support the School while also checking items off their holiday shopping lists, the auctions will include jewelry (“sparkles”) and wine (“spirits”), but they won’t stop there. Among the things you can bid on are glamorous vacation getaways, memorabilia autographed by sports legends, fun nights out in Knoxville, event tickets, collectibles and much more.

Not only is the evening a LOT of fun, it’s our biggest and most important fundraiser of  the year. So gather your friends and head over to the Cherokee club on Dec. 11. We’re counting on your support. And we promise, you’ll be glad you came!

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Back to School 2019!

Our headquarters building has been a busy hub of excitement lately as students and volunteer teachers reconvene with staff members to kick off another school year.

The Joy of Music School continues to grow. We took in about 50 new applications this summer, says Director of Music Education Julie Carter. That’s a sharp increase over typical levels.
Happily we have about 10 new instructors, which is unusually high as well. But we’re always eager for more help. Know anyone who’d like to pitch in by volunteering their time? Please let us know!
A big part of Julie Carter’s job at the beginning of each school year is matching students with instructors. Most of our students are looking to learn the piano. Incoming students can increase their chances of starting lessons at our School if they’re willing to try another instrument instead of the piano. Wind and brass instruments, for example. We have spots open for students there. Or how about the harmonica? We’ve got a volunteer ready to teach it but no student has signed up yet.
Whatever instrument our students want to play, we’re here to make it happen! If you haven’t seen for yourself, we encourage you to come take a tour of our School. Call us at 865-525-6806 and arrange a visit today!


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Joe Jordan: Teacher on the Go

The life of a professional musician is full of surprises, as Joe Jordan can attest. Last year the Joy of Music School instructor was minding his own business when, out of the blue, he got asked to sit in on trumpet with a husband and wife duo performing at Knoxville’s Bijou Theatre. Next thing he knew, Joe was traveling with the couple around the U.S., Canada and even Australia!
Joe has played 49 shows and counting with the couple — a terrific Americana duo whose stage name is The War and Treaty. Joe and his friend Chuck Mullican, a fellow Knoxvillian who plays tenor saxophone, make up the band’s horn section. It has been quite a ride. They’ve played the Montreal Jazz Festival and at Radio City Music Hall. They’ve opened for Jason Isbell and Brandi Carlile, and Al Green.
The War and Treaty’s songwriter, Michael Trotter, “kind of expects us to be ready for anything,” says Joe. “He might come up with a new song and everybody learns it that day before performing it that night. I might have a solo on it. You never know. It’s exciting and really scary.” Joe and his wife, Claire, have three young children and they’ve been lucky enough to come on many of his trips with The War and Treaty.
Happily, most of the heaviest travel was over the summer, so it hasn’t interfered much with his JoMS teaching. This fall he’s teaching a pair of ukulele classes.
The War and Treaty is recording an album this fall and expects to promote it with a tour next spring. Will Joe get to tag along? “I certainly hope so!” he says. “I think they’ve been pleased with my playing.”


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Letter from the Executive Director

When Joy of Music School volunteer instructors are teaching, it could be said they’re giving our students something they already have in them. Talent is a gift that has to be coaxed out, by instructor and student.

Teaching gives kids access to their talent; it releases potential.
For many young people, finding those skills inside themselves is hard. It takes time, energy and self- motivation. And repetition. Those are the fundamental things we teach. Our instructors are not just saying, “Here’s how to play an instrument.” More than anything else, we’re giving students the tools to release their very own inner pianist, cellist, trumpeter, drummer, and singer.
When you think about it that way, you see that our teachers’ role is bigger and more complex than it might appear. They’re mentors in the truest sense of the word, guiding our students down the miraculous and often arduous path to self-discovery. What a wonderful gift to give another person! And lucky for us, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, as our students share their music with the world by performing and maybe becoming teachers themselves one day. Some of them have even come back here to teach! That surely ranks among the most satisfying outcomes of any mentorship. It’s also a measure of the School’s potential, and just like our students, we rely on the time, energy and self- motivation of everyone involved with the Joy of Music School to draw it out.
Thank you, volunteer teachers. Thank you, sponsors, donors, and board members. We couldn’t do it without you.
Francis Graffeo
Executive Director