About Me
The Music Resource Center is a non-profit music education program for kids. We provide rehearsal spaces, instruments, lessons, concerts, and recording sessions, all for free, in the hopes that they will create a productive and personally fulfilling avenue of expression for area youth while simultaneously providing an alternative to potentially risky behavior.
The MRC was conceived in 1992 by John Hornsby, Ivan Orr, and other area musicians, and the idea began to take flight in 1995 when we opened our first facility, housed in the Dave Matthews Band's former practice space next to the Trax nightclub. It was a pronounced success, with streams of students attending each day. Local musicians donated instruments, equipment, and time to volunteer and mentor the students. Soon enough, we released the first of several compilation CDs, a collaborative effort between teenage songwriters, performers, and audio engineers entitled "Urban Phlavors."
In early 2004, the Dave Matthews Band gave us a home for the second time, donating the funds necessary to renovate the former Mount Zion Baptist Church on Main Street. We constructed an amazing set of studios in the church basement, leaving the upstairs sanctuary intact in order to use it as an in-house performance venue. We continue to help our kids compose, rehearse, record, engineer, and produce a wide variety of music while simultaneously offering instrument lessons, technical tutorials, music industry guidance, and performance opportunities.
Membership is limited to 7th through 12th grade students who are currently enrolled in local area schools. Our members primarily reside in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle county neighborhoods, but there are no geographic stipulations for membership and we do see a few students each year from surrounding counties. Approximately 60% of our participants are free- or reduced lunch eligible. All of the music hosted on our Myspace page was written and recorded by our members.
We continue to rely on the generous contributions of area musicians, who regularly share their teaching skills, expertise, equipment, or even simply time and energy during everyday operations to help raise the next generation of musicians. We hope to use Myspace as a way to reach out to potentially interested members of Charlottesville's rich and diverse music scene. Anyone interested in helping should call us at 434.979.5478 or visit www.musicresourcecenter.org to find out more.
