West Music Staff Blogs

The Broadway Center is a safe place for teens to go in Iowa City.

James Mims, the director of the Broadway Center, is truly interested in the welfare and future of at-risk kids. Among other activities, he has put together a music lesson program free of charge to those who wish to participate.

The program is growing, and local top-notch musicians are donating their time and talents to teach lessons there. The instruments are donated and students can use them during lessons and come there to practice their instrument on a daily basis.

To raise awareness and reinforce the statement that music saves lives, West Music in Coralville will be hosting the Music on Broadway Gala on August 13th from 6-8PM. Well-known musicians who teach lessons at the Broadway Center will perform at West Music in Coralville and the students of the Broadway Center will assist in ushering and collecting donated instruments.

The public is encouraged to bring instruments to donate.

Bringing music into the lives of those who come from troubled and destructive backgrounds can gives a sense of purpose and helps those involved see that the future can be something different. Taking music lessons and playing instruments, instills a sense of accomplishment, discipline, camaraderie, well-being and confidence to make better choices and change lives.

Lend a hand, lend an instrument, save a life!

Saul Lubaroff has been playing music since he was 8 yrs old. Already adept at piano, viola and clarinet by age 11, he took up the sax in Junior High, and that was it! Saul studied with Dan Yoder at the U of I during high school, and played in college jazz bands before he had his drivers license. Saul is a classically trained saxophonist, but his real love is jazz. Saul formed the Saul Lubaroff Quartet in 1997 and SLQ has played at the Iowa City Jazz Festival 3 times as a side stage group and in October 2008 Saul and his quintet performed at the beautiful Englert Theater. Saul has2 CD's that are available on Amazon.com, cdbaby.com, itunes, and 35 other digital music providers on the Internet.

David Zollo brings the kind of savvy, trans-genre synthesis you might expect from a grizzled road warrior twenty or more years his senior. Precocious from jump street, Zollo has always been ahead of the curve. He began playing the piano at the age of four and, steeped in his writer/journalist daddy's eclectic record collection, the kid with an "old soul" was regaling family house parties with knockout Ray Charles and Huey "Piano" Smith covers by his early teens. Since the early 90s, David performed with his group, High and Lonesome, before going solo, providing keyboards, and producing other artists on his own label, Trailer Records.

Tom Nothnagle is known as host of a popular decade-long running public access program through which he promotes music literacy for all ages and abilities. He is a "guitarist's guitarist," sought after as an instructor and for his sense of humor, virtuosity, and genre-bending facility based in solid classical technique. If you're looking for more information about Tom's show, try the Tom's Guitar Show site. It's packed with good info, including video clips. You'll find info about his teaching methods at the Tom's Guitar Studio site. As a native Iowan Nothnagle has served since 1990 as Artist-in-Residence for the Iowa Arts Council offering cultural and historical music demonstrations including flamenco guitar, fingerstyle banjo, Renaissance, and Baroque mandolin, and antique parlor guitar period pieces for arts festivals, corporate events and benefit concerts, musical scores and accompaniment for ballet, flamenco and modern dance concerts.