Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Music teacher Jeff Midkiff teaches a strings class to students at Fairview Elementary School. The cellos, violins and violas were donated through the VH1 Save the Music Foundation.

Namiyah Reddicks (right) and Niasia Smith, second graders, learn to play the keyboard in Lisa Brooks's music classroom at the Roanoke Academy of Math & Science. The equipment was donated through the VH1 Save the Music grant.

It's nearing 9 a.m. inside a classroom at Fairview Elementary School, and three dozen fourth-graders are deep in concentration.

Twelve of them are holding shiny new violins and violas. Six have cellos propped against them.

Teacher Jeff Midkiff calls out to them, rhythmically: "One, two, and listen to me." They pluck strings together, first one of their four strings, and later, combinations. They finish class plucking while Midkiff, an expert on both violin and fiddle, bows a little melody.

Too soon, class is over.

"Resting position," Midkiff tells the children. "Give yourselves a big hand."

They do, then he explains to them how to carefully put away their instruments. It goes well, save for one woody, breathtaking thump. But everything is fine.

As the children leave class, 9-year-old Kevonta Hayes says that he has never played a violin before.

What's the best part about the class? "That we get to play, and we get to learn," he replies.

Saving music education

This kind of playing and learning is a new thing for four of Roanoke's elementary schools. But it apparently is just the beginning of the school system's association with the VH1 Save the Music Foundation.

Last year, after some lobbying from Cyrus Pace, the schools' fine arts coordinator, the foundation made Roanoke a part of its program.

Since 1997, the Save the Music Foundation has provided new musical instruments to schools in about 100 U.S. cities. Over the next five years, each of Roanoke's 18 elementary schools should be outfitted with new gear from the organization.

Early this month, Fairview received strings, Roanoke Academy of Math and Science and Hurt Park Elementary School received keyboard labs and Lincoln Terrace Elementary School got band instruments. About 700 students are using them, Pace said.

In return, Roanoke must have certified music teachers, provide maintenance and supplies -- and most importantly, keep music education part of its core curriculum, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act, VH1 Save The Music executive director Paul Cothran said.

Kids playing musical instruments might look like pure fun, but Fairview Principal Julie Bush says there is something more at work here.

"Music [education] always helps to open up math skills," she said. "We can always use that."

Getting the grant

The seeds for this partnership were planted more than a year ago, when Pace took a trip to New York City to develop contacts for the city schools.

Pace had been lucky -- he mentioned the grant to John Robertson, a Salem businessman with children who take private guitar lessons from Pace.

Robertson's company, Robertson Marketing Group, had built e-commerce Web sites for Viacom, VH1's parent corporation, and he had maintained contacts there. Robertson approached Save the Music Foundation program manager Rob Davidson and set up a meeting.

To get to New York, Pace needed funding. His friend and guitar student Ed Walker, a Roanoke-based property developer, helped him get to his meeting with Davidson.

By early November 2008, Davidson had made a trip to Roanoke to check out the schools and committed the first of what could ultimately amount to nearly $600,000 in new musical gear. Fairview, RAMS, Hurt Park and Lincoln Terrace each have $30,000 worth of instruments.

At least 130 schools applied to the foundation for funding this year, a decrease from years past, which the foundation attributes to the economy. Of the 130, the foundation selected about 74 eligible schools, foundation director Cothran said.

"What's interesting about Roanoke is that it's important to have the understanding of the importance of music from the top down," Cothran said. "And from the superintendent, school board, all the school administrators are committed to making sure that every child in Roanoke elementary and middle schools has access to music education. So that's why we were really excited to work with Roanoke."

Cothran said the foundation annually surveys the participating schools and consistently hears back that students who were previously struggling have excelled in music classes and have carried that success to other subjects.

Still, the foundation reaches a fragment of the children who need it, he said. The National Association for Music Education estimates that 30 million children are going without exposure to music.

"The 1,700 schools that we're in, we're reaching 1.4 million students," he said. "We're pleased with that accomplishment, but we still have a long way to go."

It took some work from school administrators to make it work in Roanoke, Pace said. In April, the cash-starved school board voted to lay off 58 employees, including 15 teachers. It could have been worse, save for late-arriving cash from the federal stimulus package and Roanoke City Council.

The schools laid off one music teacher, but the system did some personnel shuffling to make sure its music program was ready for the new instruments, Pace said. Midkiff, who teaches Fairview children to play strings, was hired last year as music teacher at Woodrow Wilson Middle School. This school year, he splits his time between the two buildings, Pace said.

The system has two fewer elementary schools now, closed due to declining enrollment and a budget shortfall. Still, Pace said he expects each remaining school will receive between $25,000 and $30,000 worth of equipment.

Just a few weeks into the program, Pace, who has a master's degree in performance from New York's Manhattan School of Music, said he is ecstatic with the four schools' results.

"Dude," he said, smiling, "has music class changed or what?"

The new love

A couple of miles southwest of Fairview, a roomful of second-graders are tapping away at 15 keyboards at Roanoke Academy of Math and Science. Each child wears a headset and can hear sounds pumped to them from a master keyboard hooked up to an Apple hard drive.

While the children play away, teacher Lisa Brooks explains that the children are tapping out a variety of drum sounds she has set up for them. As the music plays, they have the option of making up their own parts, saving them and sending them to Brooks -- who can upload them to iTunes and burn CDs for the children.

"Let me see you guys playing," she tells the class. "Let me see you creating."

It's all part of a curriculum the foundation provided, and on which the teachers get plenty of training. Soon the children will learn note reading and finger positions.

For now it looks like pure fun, with students tapping out drum sounds to hyper-speed classical ("Flight of the Bumblebee"), a waltz ("Blue Danube"), a pop song ("Oye Como Va"), even a goofy little dance called the "Cha-Cha Slide," "which is not in my curriculum," Brooks said.

"Since we just got this, I'm letting them experiment," she said of the second-graders. She teaches K-5 classes. "But with the older kids, I'm already teaching them note reading."

Class ends, and the students prepare to leave. Samira McMillian, 7, says she likes "everything" about this period. Niasia Smith, 7, said playing the keyboard has changed her thinking.

"I used to be [into] art," she said. "But I love music now."