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Flooding can't drown out the music
Kiki Barley and Maya Black
Keith Hodan/Tribune-Review
Eight young musicians helped Carnegie celebrate an early chapter in its renewal Sunday afternoon with an afternoon recital in the flood-ravaged borough.
The Pittsburgh Music Academy usually holds monthly performances at its building on Third Street. But floodwaters wrecked the school, so yesterday parents sat in pews while the children took turns soloing in front of the imposing, carved-wood altar of St. John Lutheran Church.
The emergency change in locale did not intimidate Maya Black, 5, of Oakdale, who coolly paced through her violin variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Coaxing her through the rough patches with patient piano accompaniment was teacher Kiki Barley, 53, of Squirrel Hill.
"I knew I would do my best," Black said afterward, grinning.
Her mother, Rachel, still gripping a camcorder, praised Barley.
"Kiki's great," she said. "With her, it's the kids first, making sure they continue to grow."
Barley said the academy is going through its own post-deluge rough patch.
Five of the 13 scheduled performers didn't show up for the monthly recital yesterday. Last week, 15 of Barley's 60 piano students skipped their Suzuki method lessons, now being held at Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church in Green Tree.
If parents can't find their children's new lesson space or if it's too inconvenient, the school stands to lose tuition.
Communication is the biggest challenge now, Barley said. School phones are out, so teachers have been using cell phones to make sure lessons are still on schedule for the 300 students.
"I'm just really fearful for when that bill comes," Barley said.
The school lost a piano, eight guitars, two violins, six flutes, two clarinets and a library of sheet music in the flood, she said. Most of the office furniture from the first floor was ruined, along with all but one of the computers.
But Barley is determined to keep the Carnegie business and its 22 instructors going. And she has help.
The husband of a friend from Barley's church choir volunteered his expertise salvaging business records from the soaked hard drives, work Barley said saved her business $5,000.
Carnegie Mellon University donated old computers to replace those the school lost. Others have pitched in, Barley said.
Earlier, Barley guessed it would take $15,000 or more to get the academy running again.
She said she and the four other owners still have not applied for disaster relief. Without any inventory to speak of, she said, her business didn't suffer losses as severe as others' and she isn't hopeful about getting grant money to rebuild.
But teaching music is not a lucrative field, Barley said, and a loss need not be huge to be disastrous. She and her colleagues were dumbfounded when the loan officer at a local bank green-lighted their application to start the school in the first place, Barley said.
"We're not business people. We're musicians," she said.
