Music is Art teams with Starbucks to collect instruments for schools

Your gently used musical instruments can now be dropped off at any one of 18 Starbucks locations in Erie, Niagara, and Chautauqua counties, thanks to a partnership with Music is Art, now through August 17. The instruments will then be placed into public, private, parochial, and charter schools to help supplement music programs that all too often find themselves on the front lines of school budgetary cuts.

“This is the third time MiA has done an instrument drive, but the first time we’ve made it a two-week event in so many locations,” says MiA founder and president Robby Takac. All donations are tax deductible.

Helping to make the drive a success will be a series of concerts at various Starbucks locations. (Pictured above T.J. Zindle, of Last Conservative fame, performing last Saturday.) For a complete list of upcoming coffeehouse shows, visit musicisart.org.

Starbucks district manager Joe Rizzo says, “Starbucks works to have a positive effect on our community, and the instrument drive is a great way to do that.”

Now, if only Starbucks would lift its nation-wide ban on serving as distribution point for alternative weekly newspapers, we’d all be getting somewhere.

—buck quigley