BELLEFONTAINE NEIGHBORS • Two men with big arms and sweat-stained shirts wheeled the piano into the living room of Yvette Martin’s home on Norchester Drive.

She had cleared a space along the far wall, where a console table used to sit.

The piano was barely recognizable, its appearance greatly enhanced from just a few weeks earlier. The 65-year-old piano had fallen on hard times. Its future did not look promising.

But on this warm Saturday in February, it emerged from under moving blankets looking like new.

And the piano’s sound?

“Mellow and warm,” said Royce, Martin’s 16-year-old son, as he played Scott Joplin’s “Elite Syncopations.”

His mother sat on the couch, shaking her head.

“From nothing to this,” Yvette Martin said of her son’s playing, which started just under two years ago. “I can’t even explain it. It’s such an amazing story to me.”

The piano that had seemed headed for the landfill 18 months ago was now in the hands of a promising young musician who wanted to advance what his teachers have called through-the-roof talent. But buying a piano was out of reach for the Martins.

“I really want to play,” Royce told his mom time and again.

“OK, Royce, but we don’t have that kind of money for that. We just don’t have that money. If God wants you to have it, it will happen for you.”

In need of attention

The Janssen console piano, built in 1950, sat in the Granite City home of Suzanne and Michael Halbrook for about 12 years. It was given to them by a friend who knew that Michael was music director at his church and thought it could be of value to him.

The Halbrooks didn’t want to turn away a free piano, but as soon as they got it they realized it was in need of some attention.

“The keys didn’t work that great; it wasn’t tuned the best,” Suzanne Halbrook said. “It did its job when it had to, but it was not the best.”

Less than a year ago, the Halbrooks got a digital piano, leaving the fate of the old Janssen uncertain, especially with their musically inclined sons, 10 and 8, more interested in the flute and violin.

Michael Halbrook used to work at Rodgers Townsend, an advertising agency in downtown St. Louis. He knew that agency co-founder Tom Townsend had started a program pairing unwanted pianos with those who would like one but for whom the cost was out of reach.

The Halbrook piano made its way into the Pianos for People program in October 2014. It was in such poor shape that it was relegated to a back room often referred to as the morgue.

‘I could do that’

The desire to play piano erupted in Royce Martin.

In March 2014, the teen was watching music videos with his sister. John Legend was at the piano playing his hit “All of Me.”

“I could do that,” Royce told his sister, Rachelle.

Rachelle, now 17, had an electric keyboard she requested for Christmas, “but I didn’t connect at all,” she said. Royce began pecking. It wasn’t providing the sound that Legend made in the piano-centric ballad that has become a wedding staple.

But it didn’t stop Royce from trying.

Royce attends Grand Center Arts Academy, a charter school in midtown St. Louis that draws youths with interest in visual and performing arts. The sophomore lives during the week with relatives in the city, allowing him to attend the school.

At the academy, across the street from Powell Hall, home to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Royce was playing percussion instruments in band but asked if he could start playing piano. Soon, he was coming into school on Mondays playing songs he had memorized from the radio over the weekend.

He watched YouTube videos focusing on the hand movements of piano players. He began writing his own music.

“When he practices, it is for hours at a time,” said Damen Martin, Royce’s orchestra teacher and no relation to the teen. “Any time I walk down the hall and I hear the piano and it’s substantially good, I say: ‘It’s either Royce or a teacher.’ He is one of the few students here who has a real gift. Prodigy status.”

Change in priorities

The nonprofit Pianos for People, on Cherokee Street, was formed in December 2012 to honor another young talent.

Two years earlier, Alex Townsend, a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, was killed in a car crash. He was 21. His father, Tom Townsend, who had built one of the area’s largest advertising agencies, saw what can happen when a teen who never quite fit in was allowed to express himself in imaginative ways.

“Alex was like a lot of young, creative kids who have years in middle school and high school where they are the round peg in the square hole,” Townsend said. “Not being an athlete and not being a straight-A student, his world was creating things.”

Alex, who was studying graphic design, played piano and drums. His father co-founded Pianos for People with Patricia Eastman, Alex’s piano teacher when he was a boy.

Creating a program like Pianos for People was something Townsend, a blues and jazz pianist, had long wanted to do, “but my advertising career had me very, very busy.”

When Alex died, priorities changed. Townsend took time away from the advertising agency to teach at Savannah College. He started an annual arts and music festival in Savannah in honor of his son. Saturday marked the sixth year.

Townsend looked more deeply at a way to match unwanted pianos with those who could not afford them.

“You don’t follow an event like that without some change in your life,” said Townsend, who left the agency in June 2014. “I said, ‘I’m going to do that piano thing I’ve always wanted to do’ and started looking for others who might have interest.”

2,000 working parts

A charity centered around used pianos is rife with potential problems. For starters, it involves a massive instrument, difficult to move.

Townsend needed someone familiar with pianos to help with pickup and delivery.

He called Jackson Pianos in the Central West End. Owner Joe Jackson said he was happy to help with the heavy lifting but stressed that the donated pianos would need some work.

“A piano is huge and incredibly complex, with more than 2,000 working parts,” Jackson said. Piano repairs can cost several hundred dollars. Giving a free piano to a family with limited means without refurbishing it first is “just passing trash along,” he said. “It’s a recipe for failure.”

Jackson said he would assist with repairs, as well. Jackson Pianos does the work at a reduced cost as its contribution to Pianos for People.

At his shop, Jackson maintains a kind of hierarchy, based on the condition of pianos. Those in bad shape tend to fall to the bottom of the donation list.

“We keep some instruments around like organ donors and harvest pieces from them,” he said. These pianos are kept in a cluttered, windowless room in the back of the shop, a place Jackson refers to as the morgue.

The old Janssen donated by the Halbrooks landed there. It was saved from being picked apart but sat neglected for more than a year as Jackson focused on other donated pianos that needed less attention.

This month, Jackson turned the light on in the morgue.

It was time for the old Janssen to shine.

He installed a new base bridge. The hammers were reshaped, the action recalibrated and the pitch of the harp corrected. And after a good cleaning and a tuning, it was ready for its budding prodigy.

Free lessons

Pianos for People has now donated about 150 pianos. Delivery has slowed in the past year to about two a month from one a week, so the nonprofit could shift some of its expenses toward offering free piano lessons.

Since the fall of 2014, classes have been offered to all ages in a renovated storefront on Cherokee. Like the piano donation program, eligibility for lessons is based on household income.

With an annual budget of $130,000, Townsend said Pianos for People could not keep up the renovation and delivery pace while starting a piano lessons program. As a result, the nonprofit has put a temporary hold on accepting pianos.

The classes offered to about 80 people of all ages are a natural progression of the nonprofit’s mission, Townsend said. If kids have a piano but no access to lessons, the instrument likely will become little more than another piece of furniture.

A piano from the program landing in the hands of someone like Royce is just what Townsend intended.

“A lot of what this is about is getting music as an option in front of young people before they find themselves without something that feels good to believe in.”

‘A beautiful journey’

Royce says he can’t stop thinking about music. It keeps him awake at night, and it has recently been a challenge to concentrate on his schooling. But there is so much music to learn, and to create, he said in his defense.

He loves classical, especially Beethoven, and has recently been listening to Benny Goodman and jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. He also admires the construction of classic rock songs. To make his point, he begins playing “Hotel California” by the Eagles on a piano in the lobby of his school, his floppy hair trying to find the rhythm.

“My mom wishes I’d play more gospel, but gospel and classical don’t mix,” he says with a slight smile. He is proud of how far he has come and can’t wait to see where more practice takes him.

“I wish I had more time. If I can learn this much in two years, imagine where I’ll be in five years,” Royce said. After a beat, he begins to play an original composition.

“It’s called ‘A Beautiful Journey.’”

Royce’s mom can’t believe his passion.

“All he wants to do is play. He tells me: ‘Mom, I’m going to be the next Beethoven.’ I tell him: ‘If you have the mindset, you will be.’”

It was Damen Martin, Royce’s orchestra teacher, who found out about Pianos for People and encouraged Royce and his mother to apply. He has seen the talent unfold. Now, with a piano in his home, Royce has created anticipation in those watching him blossom.

“This piano is going to change his life.”

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