Music Columbus offers aspiring artists career training, real-life experiences
Bruce Garfield remembers walking into a local school and being taken aback by its sparsely equipped music room.
"All they had was a set of steel drums," he said. "I walked out with tears in my eyes and said, 'We're having a musical instrument drive.'"
That was six years ago, just after Garfield was named executive director of Music Columbus, a nonprofit that fosters and supports local music talent in the Greater Columbus area.
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Since then, the group's annual Gift of Music Student Instrument Drives have provided $406,000 worth of instruments to Columbus City Schools, charter schools, after-school programs and the Ronald McDonald House, among others.
This year's drive runs from Aug. 24 through Sept. 1. For details, visit giftofmusic.info .
The Gift of Music is one of several programs Music Columbus offers to pave the "pathway to prosperity" — a favorite phrase of Garfield's — to music industry hopefuls.
Garfield gave a rundown of the organization's other programs:
Earn as You Learn Internship Program: "A lot of young people want a career in music but can't find a place to get trained," Garfield said. "We pay them to be mentored by recording studios, radio stations, venues — any business or organization involved in music. It keeps them feeling valued and they're learning a craft."
The Unheard: "Many young, emerging artists would love to get on a real professional stage, but there are few all-ages shows or they have no notoriety or history of selling tickets," Garfield said. The Unheard, a Sunday-afternoon showcase, offers underage musicians a chance to play in front of an audience and earn a paycheck.
Better Together Music Incubator: Artists undergo six months of workshops on singing, songwriting, creating press kits, legal aspects of the industry and more. "By the time it's over, they've got a lot of information and a toolkit to help launch their careers," Garfield said, adding that besides performing, grads have gone into sound engineering, radio-station promotions and other careers.
To learn more about Music Columbus, visit musiccolumbus.com .
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Music Columbus programs include instrument drive, internships and more
