Every year, the Bringing Music to Life Instrument Drive holds a drawing for the few tubas they have to give away.
"We get more requests for tubas than we have tubas, so we do a drawing to see where they will go," says outgoing BMTL Executive Director Steve Blatt.
And every year for the last eight years, Melanie Hawthorne Long entered the drawing. Long teaches at Horizon Middle School in Colorado Springs, a Title I school.
"Every year I get super excited, but I haven't won. I have about 250 kids in band, and I told them to send me all of their good tuba vibes today."
This year, BMTL had three tubas to give away. Long waited patiently. Her school wasn't picked for the first tuba. Or the second. But then, the third name was announced: Horizon Middle School.
With all the enthusiasm of an audience member winning a spot on "The Price is Right," Long danced her way down to the stage to collect her tuba. She shouted, "EIGHT YEARS! I've been trying for a tuba for eight years!"
"I have two eighth-grade band students who want to play the tuba, and I told them, 'The only way I can put both of you on it is if I win this tuba.' I was going to have to tell one of them that they couldn't play it this year, but now I get to tell both of them yes!"
Horizon Middle School was just one of 46 schools receiving over 600 repaired instruments from Bringing Music to Life.
BMTL collects approximately 1,000 donated instruments across the state every year. Some aren't repairable, but about two-thirds usually get refurbished and donated.
Founder Steve Blatt still can't believe how many instruments are donated every year. "After about the third drive, we thought we had plundered every closet of used instruments, but surprisingly, the instruments kept coming in."
Collecting instruments is the easy part. Raising money to pay for the repairs is the hard part. So this year, BMTL has launched an innovative "Adopt and Instrument" fundraising campaign. The idea is to adopt your favorite instrument by donating the average cost to repair that instrument.
Guitars cost approximately $70 to repair, but a saxophone can cost $350, according to board member Sue Coughlin. Coughlin says new saxophones start at $1,500, so repairing gently used ones is the affordable route.
Music teacher Rachel Davis at Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy in Denver took home 49 instruments to her school, where ninety percent of the students qualify for free lunch. She's beefing up her modern band program with 25 acoustic guitars, 4 electric guitars, 10 ukuleles and 10 keyboards, all collected and repaired by Bringing Music to Life.
Some of her "new" instruments will replace ones that lay broken in her band room. She plans to donate those instruments to BMTL. Davis says, "our hope is that BMTL has the funding that we don't have to repair the instruments, and then they can just cycle back through to someone else."
Since its founding, Bringing Music to Life has repaired and donated over 9,000 instruments, benefiting more than 20,000 Colorado students.
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