4 minute read
Celebrating 30 Years of Community Music School
Celebrating 30 Years of Community Music School
By M.J. McAteer
The basement of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville isn’t your typical musty space inhabited by piles of junk just too good to throw away. Instead, it’s home to the “world-wide headquarters” of the Community Music School of the Piedmont (CMSP).
“Worldwide” is a whimsical exaggeration on the part of the school’s executive director and co-founder, Martha Cotter. CMSP actually offers classes no farther flung than Stephens City, but the community part of the school’s title is no joke. The nonprofit, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, owes much of its existence to all the support it has gotten from the Piedmont area.
Perhaps most critical to the school’s success has been the willingness of local churches to provide classroom and lesson space at below-market rates. In addition to Trinity Episcopal, the school operates out of Emmanuel Church in Middleburg, Grace Episcopal in The Plains, the Church of Our Redeemer in Aldie, Grace Episcopal in Berryville and Trinity Lutheran in Stephens City.
“We are so respectful of that relationship,” said Cotter, who founded the school with fellow Middleburg area resident Shannon Davis. Having lower occupancy costs helps keep fees down and has enabled the school to give out $150,000 in scholarships over the years.
Cotter is not a musician herself, though she once dabbled in guitar. She left a banking career to start the CMSP after seeing how the area didn’t offer many opportunities to experience music. “It was entrepreneurial, which is really a fun thing to do,” she said.
These days, her job is mostly to fundraise, and she’s been successful in getting grants and gifts from public and private agencies and foundations, businesses, many of them local, and private donors.
The school’s biggest fundraiser is its annual candlelight concert. Last year, Tom and Nancy Dungan hosted the concert at their Elysian Fields farm in The Plains. Pianist Brian Gantz performed. Next year, the concert will be on Feb. 2 and will feature pianist Tanya Gabrielian.
All of Cotter’s outreach work has resulted in a school that over the decades has grown from two instructors to 20, and from six students to more than 250. The CMSP now is able to offer private and group lessons across a range of instruments, including the harp. It also holds workshops, like last summer’s winds and brass chamber camp.
CMSP instructors are a presence in the area’s private schools, too, with its instructors variously teaching at Hill School in Middleburg, Wakefield School in The Plains and Powhatan School in Boyce.
Children are a particular focus of the school. Its “Music Together” program, for example, teaches tiny tots how to sing in tune and keep a beat, and its free Instrument Petting Zoo program gives youngsters a chance to handle real musical instruments and learn firsthand about all the sounds they can make.
Many instructors come from the graduate program at Shenandoah University’s Music Conservatory, and they are a talented and enthusiastic bunch, Cotter says. They can be prone to moving on, though, so she jokingly tells them, “If you’re going to leave, you need to replace yourself.”
Most of the school’s students are young, too. Sarah Beach, 14, is studying cello and plans to continue with lessons at least through high school. Maybe, one day, she thinks, she might be able to play rofessionally.
In the meantime, her CMSP instructors are “very nice and helpful. I can connect with them,” she said.
Rebecca Whyley is one of the school’s rare adult students. She’s been playing piano since she was a child, and she calls taking lessons “a lifetime thing.” Her piano teacher, Szymon Czerniak, is a doctoral candidate at the Music Conservatory. He has deep ties to Poland and has studied music there, and Whyley said he’s helped her access the emotions of the difficult Chopin pieces she hopes to play in recital.
CMSP is still growing, albeit modestly. It held its first voice camp last summer and a new wind and brass workshop is in the works. Christina Callahan, the school’s registrar, has been focusing on raising the school’s modest profile, partly by amping up its presence on social media.
Despite the “worldwide” moniker, however, “We are not out to create an empire,” Cotter said. “But if we can bring music to our underserved community, that’s a big, big plus.”
