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