In preparation for the Jeffco Parent Arts Advisory Coalition meeting on May 20th, we put together this video to impress on the Jeffco Board of Directors that the public school music programs are extremely important.  Our student is Alexie Uecker, a private cello student at Golden Music and in the public school music program at Mountain Phoenix.   He describes how music has been important to him this year and his teacher, Justino Perez talks about his students and the impact the music lessons have on them. See it here:

We can clean it for you which is included in the maintenance plan if it's on our rent-to-own program.  A bath might be what it needs.  Here's the directions for that.

1. Find a bath big enough to comfortably take your horn and line it with an old sheet or towels. (This prevents damage to horn and bath.
2. Fill the bath with lukewarm water.
3. Remove all slides, mouthpiece and any other moving parts from the horn.
4. Submerge the horn completely in water and press down all valves to open them (just a couple of times, you don't need to keep them down.)
5. Leave the horn for an hour to around three hours (only if it is an instrument that hasn't been bathed in a very long time, or if the valves are stuck down.)
6. Get a snake to clean the horn. While the horn is soaking, use a pull-through (snake) to clean out all your slides in a separate sink. If the pull-through is too wide to get round the bends in the slide, don't force it. It will get stuck and just cause damage. Use a mouthpiece brush to clean out your mouthpiece just now as well - no point in blowing all your mouthpiece gunk down into your nice clean horn!
7. Finish cleaning. When bath-time is almost up, put your pull-through through your lead-pipe (from mouthpiece end to tuning slide) and then use either the end of your pull-through or a similar smaller brush to clean out all the valve-slides.
8. Remove your horn carefully from the bath and tip all the water sitting inside of it out. You should be able to hear any water sloshing around inside but if you are having trouble getting it out try depressing all the valves and tipping the horn round 360 degrees towards the bell - any water should come out of the bell!
9. Dry the horn. After making sure you have gotten rid of any water sitting in the valves, lay your horn on some towels or another clean sheet to dry. Remove any surface water with a clean cloth or towel and then leave the horn, preferably in a room with some circulating air for a few hours to dry out.
10. Wait a few hours then tip your horn out again to remove any water that has settled.
11. Pour some low-viscosity valve oil down the slides into the valves, and oil all the bearings and rotors.
12. Re-grease all slides and replace them.

In April 2014, I met with John Epps, Denver County Schools Arts Coordinator. We discussed his challenges in the Denver Schools with the Arts. We visited his offices where they have all the costumes for the County as well,as all the props (see pictures). Golden Music donated 10 violins to John valued at over $7,000 as well as accessories. When I saw the shelf for the music supplies, I was shocked! There was two cakes of rosin and three old worn our shoulder rests! He came by a few days later and we filled them up with stuff we had. Denver Public Schools has 83,000 students at 185 schools: 85 elementaries, 18 K-8, 4 K-12, 26 Middle Schools, 14 6-12^th grade schools and 35 High Schools. It’s not a small district. Seventy-two percent of it’s students are on Free and Reduced Lunch, so it’s not a rich district. There are 15,000 employees.  They feed 20,000 breakfasts per day, 46,000 lunches, and 5,200 snacks. So that is 60,874 free lunches per day… sounds more like a food service rather than a school! Anyway, the music programs are on the upswing with the county putting resources toward them.