Chicago - December 22, 2004

Musical Heirs

Urban Gateways Music Bank

Memory is a strange thing.

Like, you can remember the time you begged your parents to buy you a piccolo. You just can’t for the life of you recall why.

Not like you ever practiced the thing. Since the week after you got it, the piccolo spent its life collecting dust.

How about a little early spring cleaning? Give your abandoned instrument a new lease on life by donating it to the Urban Gateways Musical Instrument Bank. Urban Gateways has been working with kids in Chicago schools for more than 40 years, providing them with arts education — on everything from touring performances to artist residencies. Started in 1976, Music Bank takes old instruments, repairs them (thanks to the folks at VanderCook College of Music), and then donates them to students, schools, and community organizations unable to buy or rent instruments for their orchestras or bands.

The Music Bank accepts any kind of instrument (except pianos and organs), but the kids seem to be clamoring for clarinets, string instruments, flutes, and — go figure — drums. So go on. Pass the dream on to the next generation.

Let’s hope they get more use out of it than you did.

Urban Gateways Musical Instrument Bank, 200 West Jackson Boulevard at Wells Street (312-922-0440 ext. 252 or urbangateways.org).

  Music