LEBANON — This year, the Upper Valley Music Center is celebrating 30 years of growth, from small beginnings to becoming the largest provider of music lessons in the region.

The music center will hold a Birthday Bash from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, March 16, at the Lebanon Opera House. General admission tickets cost $30 and there is a $3 pay-what-you-can option available.

“The region continues to grow and that is a factor in there being more people who want to make music,” said Benjamin Van Vliet, who became executive director of the organization in 2013 after joining the staff a few years prior as a violin and fiddle instructor. “Our job is to keep up with that.”

The numbers tell part of the story: In 2013, 490 adults and children attended programs at the nonprofit, which provided $9,000 in tuition assistance, according to data provided by Van Vliet. In 2020, 1,991 participated in the organization’s programs and tuition assistance climbed to $44,744.

Beyond the numbers, the music center also has become a home for students and teachers of all levels, all ages and all styles of music.

“The whole place is very big on people playing music at whatever level they can play,” said Judy Pond, 83, of Norwich, who started taking fiddle lessons at the Lebanon-based nonprofit organization more than a decade ago, before joining the board in 2018. “It’s just magic if you ask me.”

Louis Cornell, Bob Mark and Marcia Williams founded the Upper Valley Music Center in 1995. The trio, who knew each other from attending instrumental concerts in the Upper Valley, had an initial goal of asking a New York City-based chamber music group to run an informal orchestra for children.

When the musicians declined, Cornell said, the founders decided to try to put something together on their own. They sent out a questionnaire to community members to see if there was interest in forming a music group in the area and, if so, what they’d like such a group to provide. Interest was strong.

“We decided that we were going to play it by ear and see what happened,” said Cornell, 90, a viola player. “We did not wish to compete with any of the existing musical organizations or institutions in the area.”

The trio started small and, in the first few years, focused on coached chamber music sessions, a children’s chorus and a reading orchestra.

The coached chamber music sessions were usually held in people’s homes and the children’s chorus met at area schools. Participants in the reading orchestra spent weeks learning a piece together before performing a small show for friends and family members.

“There were a ton of chamber music players who didn’t know one another in the area,” Cornell, of Union Village, said about the coached chamber music sessions, which were led by a variety of area teachers. “This was a great way to mix them up and get them going together.”

Over time, the number of ensembles grew and the nonprofit began employing instructors to teach lessons.

“We had acted as a kind of agency for the local private music teachers,” Cornell said. If someone called asking about violin lessons, for example, they’d be given a list of area instructors to connect themselves.

Then, a member of the organization suggested they started offering lessons themselves. “That was a very important turning point. After we went through this change we found ourselves in effect a music school without having intended to be that.”

The Suzuki music program — a style of teaching that focuses on listening, repetition, parent involvement and group learning — began in 2002. The program proved successful, especially among parents eager to get their children started at a young age.

For teachers, being affiliated with a music school means that the school does their recruitment, billing and scheduling, Cornell said.

“On a more spiritual level, they really enjoyed the collegiality of having other teachers to talk to,” he said.

One of the instructors who has found community at the music center is Allison Pollard, who took vocal lessons there while a student at Lebanon High School with Jennifer Hansen and returned as a vocal instructor in 2022.

“She became my colleague which was a wonderful combination of strange and serendipitous,” Pollard said.

Pollard leads the children’s choir, which includes students from school districts across the Upper Valley. She also teaches individual vocal lessons: Her youngest student is 7 and her oldest student is 82.

“I get to see the whole spectrum of the voice and it’s so rewarding,” Pollard said.

As the center’s programs grew, so did the need for more space.

The organization’s first centralized location was a storefront on the Lebanon Mall. After outgrowing that space, it moved to 63 Hanover St. in Lebanon, across from the building that is now Listen Community Service’s office space and food pantry. First, they rented the ground floor, then a converted basement and finally the upper floor.

A real turning point came when the organization purchased and moved into the Kendrick-Wood House on the Lebanon Green in 2017.

“Since moving to this home, the organization has expanded fairly dramatically and there’s just been real explosive demand,” Van Vliet said.

There are music lessons for woodwinds, brass, piano and percussion. There’s a community chorus, a cello choir and a new flute choir. Events like the annual Sing & Play Festival, which encourages community members to make music together. There are songwriter circles, fiddle jam sessions and concerts that feature students and faculty, along with visiting musicians.

A MusicTogether program, which involves parents and young children playing and learning about music in a group setting, expanded in the last year to include sessions at Twin Pines Housing Trust’s West Lebanon location. The partnership with Twin Pines is one of dozens that the music center has with nonprofit organizations throughout the Upper Valley, Van Vliet said.

Tina Willey has been regularly attending the hour-long Friday morning programs with her 3-year-old granddaughter.

“It’s a great opportunity for her to interact with music,” Willey said, adding that her granddaughter especially likes playing with drums, tambourines and bells.

Willey also likes the absence of technology. The group sings a cappella and sometimes the instructor plays guitar.

“We run in circles. We act different things out,” Willey said.

Finding ways to connect people through music — which Pollard said, “is a language we all subconsciously speak” — remains a core value as the organization looks to the future, those involved said.

Making music together “fosters understanding of other human beings from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds,” Pollard said. “...There (are) such opportunities for connection and understanding on this subconscious level.”

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.