Thank you to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation for a generous donation of instruments to the WHEELS music program! These instruments will help us give our hardworking students the high quality music education they deserve.

WHEELS music students have been busy with performances and auditions. Last week, WHEELS music students provided music for our first annual WHEELS Spelling Bee. This week, WHEELS music students will perform at our third annual College Application March. Speaking of college, we are very proud of one of our percussion students for auditioning at Berklee College of Music last Saturday!

We're so proud of all the middle school band students who performed at our middle school awards ceremony last week, and of all the students who received awards for their hard work!

Last Monday WHEELS guitar students took a guitar lesson with Adam Lomeo. They learned about chord voicings and scales for comping and improvising over a blues tune. Thank you, Adam, for sharing your expertise with our students!

Thank you to Luke Folger for sharing his beautiful electronic music with our students on Wednesday. WHEELS music students are feeling inspired to compose and improvise their own music!

Yesterday WHEELS music students were fortunate enough to have their first lessons of the 2013-2014 school year with teachers from Manhattan School of Music (MSM)! Thank you to the MSM Outreach Program for making these lessons possible.

Today MSM and the D'Addario Foundation generously arranged to have two of the world's greatest young guitarists perform at WHEELS. WHEELS students experienced amazing performances by Celil Refik Kaya and Junhong Kuang, followed by interesting Q&A sessions with the artists. Thank you to the performers and everyone involved for providing this opportunity for WHEELS students!

It has been a busy week for WHEELS music students. The WHEELS Performance Ensemble performed at the WHEELS High School National Honor Society induction ceremony. Congratulations to the inductees and the performers!

Yesterday one of our talented drummers made a professional quality studio recording to submit to colleges, music conservatories, and scholarship programs. This amazing opportunity was made possible by teachers Brian Letiecq and Gabe Cummins, who generously opened the doors of their recording studio at The Beacon School and offered us their services. Thank you to them and their students for all their help! And thank you to pianist Christian Nourijanian, drummer Dustin Kaufman, saxophonist Mike McGarril, and bassist Desmond White for coaching and recording with our student.