Play It Forward

There is no sadder site than an abandoned instrument, languishing unplayed in a dark closet. If your child begged you to play the trumpet, convinced you he’d just die if he didn’t get the chance to master improvisational jazz, and then abandoned the instrument after a semester in the brass section, then you are not the first parent to be snowed by the impassioned plea of a tween.

But please, parents, don’t make the instruments suffer your sins.

The Baton Rouge Symphony has instituted a brand new program called Play It Forward so that these abandoned instruments can be placed in the hands of budding musicians who will breathe new life into them. Anyone with an unused instrument to donate can drop it off at the Symphony’s executive offices at 7330 Highland Road or Zeagler’s Music Store at 7003 Florida Boulevard. The preferable deadline for donation is October 1, though later donations will certainly not be turned away. Monetary donations are gratefully accepted in lieu of musical instruments.

The donated instruments will be passed on to public school band programs identified in advance. This year, the two recipient programs are Scotlandville Middle Pre-Engineering Academy and Belaire High School. Each of these schools is building its music program from the ground up—the most dire need at both schools are for woodwind, brass, or percussion instruments.

“So far, we have close to twelve instruments, said Jessica Ottaviano, the Symphony’s director of education, “I would certainly like to see those numbers go up. Paul [Lauve, the band director at Scotlandville Middle], has [six classes] of thirty students each that would need instruments. Our band director at Belaire has something like one hundred students that don’t have instruments.”

The symphony intends to continue the project on an annual basis.