MVAA brings art to the Mon Valley community
In 2015, Mark Smith, a musician in the Mon Valley area for more than 50 years, worked with the late Maestro Joe Campus on The Twin Coaches Orchestra Project. From that collaboration, the Mon Valley Academy for the Arts (MVAA) was born.
“In the beginning, they started the Twin Coaches Jr. Stage Band and then the Summer Concert Series. We started with a modest number of students and instructors, and it’s grown exponentially,” said MVAA Vice President Carla Anderton.
In 2022, the arts organization purchased a building in downtown Brownsville, naming it the Peter J. Daily Cultural Center in honor of one of the founders of MVAA.
With original headquarters in Charleroi and the cultural center in Brownsville, today, the MVAA is home to the Twin Coaches Jr. Stage Band, Reg’t Fife and Drum, the Voicez on Fire show choir and the Sam Bill Legacy Band or Mon Valley’s Marching Unit.
“The Sam Bill Legacy Band is one of our more recently formed bands, and the Take Five brass quintet is the newest ensemble,” Anderton said.
Students can take lessons on the guitar, drums, piano, mandolin, bagpipes, trombone and flute to name a few.
The nonprofit’s mission is to provide arts and cultural programs to area residents and through that, they cultivate vibrant communities and provide artists with much needed opportunities.
As the bands continue to develop and lessons are in high demand, MVAA has recently introduced a new initiative.
The Empower a Rising Star (EARS) program supports student musicians who want to take lessons and may not have the means to afford it.
“We’re asking local businesses or individuals to sponsor a student for 10 free music lessons for $250. It does a number of things; students can learn if they are truly interested in that particular instrument or if they want to go in a different direction. They also get to hone their craft and perhaps join the band at school or look for other opportunities,” Anderton said.
Students are asked to submit a short essay on why they want to participate in the program and as sponsorships come in on a rolling basis, they’ll be paired with an interested musician.
“We hope this will become a permanent program, but it will continue for as long as we have the support and can sustain it,” Anderton said.
They’ve also created opportunities for students who are homeschooled.
“They can come to our building and do lessons on Spanish, financial literacy, health, music appreciation, and we’re going to continue to expand that program. We hope to offer physics and math in the spring,” Anderton said. “We’ve received a lot of interest in that, and it’s meant to compliment the instruction students are receiving at home.”
The staff at MVAA is open to growth, expansion and ideas from the community.
“I often tell people, if you have an idea to use our space or resources or connections, we’re excited to hear about it. For example, we’ll soon have a series of beekeeping seminars. We have some really exciting things coming up,” Anderton said.
Follow MVAA on Facebook or on their website at https://monvalleyacademyforthearts.org/.