Local musician dreams of sharing the gift of music through instrument library

POCATELLO — Sophie Marshall started off enjoying the cello when she was 3. For 12 decades, her mother would ferry her weekly to and from Salt Lake City.

“There just was not a instructor in Pocatello at the time,” Marshall instructed EastIdahoNews.com.

That absence was “part of the reason” Marshall commenced supplying non-public cello lessons in Pocatello just after earning a musical performance diploma from Utah Point out University. She was also motivated by longtime pal and now bandmate Jacie Internet sites and her husband, Joe.

The Web pages run a system called “Strings for Little ones,” which offers violins and totally free classes for qualifying students in Idaho Falls. They also manage and maintenance instruments for area songs students, Marshall reported.

“That’s definitely, really cool, and I believe their generosity form of encouraged me to check out doing some thing like that with cellos right here, in Pocatello,” she included.

Linked | Acquiring to Know Jacie Web-sites of Web pages Audio Faculty & Violin Shop

For quite a few years, Marshall, impressed by the Sites, has been amassing secondhand cellos. She consistently visits on-line marketplaces, songs shops and pawn outlets to make what she calls a “cello library.”

Rental from the library is involved in tuition for her non-public, 1-on-just one tunes classes.

But her dream is much larger sized.

Eventually, Marshall said, she would like to establish a library of various instruments substantial adequate for anybody — student or not — to check out an instrument and take a look at their like for it. It’s “something our neighborhood could truly use,” she additional.

This Christmas, Marshall examined a artistic way to elevate resources to preserve and maybe broaden her library. She sold raffle tickets for the likelihood to get 1 of her cellos.

Just this week, she stated, she offered the last of the raffle tickets and chosen a winner, who will shortly get their new instrument. She marketed 220 tickets, a total she figured she would need to have to promote to make an operating funds for the beginnings of her library.

But she lifted even extra than targeted as persons would frequently give her much more than the $10 necessary for a single ticket while requesting just one. She also received donations from people today who did not want a ticket but just desired to help her dream.

Individuals donations, she instructed EastIdahoNews.com, lately introduced her to tears.

“It’s been genuinely excellent to see how generous individuals have been,” she mentioned. “I’ve had so lots of men and women hand me income and say, ‘I do not will need any raffle tickets, just donate what you can to a university student who might require it.’”

In addition to her instrument library aspirations, Marshall has taken a terrific offer of pleasure in sharing her teaching studio with other local new music lecturers in will need of this kind of room.

“It’s been a exciting thing to get a type of collective started out with other audio teachers in town mainly because we all have a enthusiasm, and somehow we have not all connected in Pocatello but,” she mentioned.

Marshall gives lessons at her studio, the Pocatello Cello Collective, employing the two classical and folksy, bluegrass “fiddle tune” audio in her lessons.

She inspired anybody intrigued in using cello lessons, donating or checking the library’s development to comply with her on Instagram here.