$1M gift will help Norfolk academy teach music

NORFOLK

One out of three students at the Academy of Music are low-income youths who pay little or nothing to study violin or piano or cello.

Now the academy is on the receiving end of largesse.

John Dixon, the nonprofit's executive director, told supporters Sunday that the academy had been awarded $1 million from The Batten Endowment Challenge.

"This is transformational for our organization," Dixon said last week. "Now we have a stream of funds to help us."

The gift will stabilize the group and enable growth, he said.

The money stays with the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, which created an endowment with the sum called The Batten Fund for the Academy of Music.

The academy may spend the interest earned each year on the invested funds. The group will get its first check, for about $45,000, in February, Dixon said.

The group will use some of the money to devise a more sophisticated fundraising strategy, he said. To that end, the program will provide a fundraising consultant for the group.

In addition, the program gives the academy up to five years to raise $500,000, with each donated dollar matched by The Batten Educational Achievement Fund, also administered by the community foundation, said Leigh Davis, director of programs and donor services. Those funds also will go into the endowment.

"So if I can raise $500,000, we will have an endowment of $2 million," Dixon said. "For a small organization, that's big news."

The debt-free group has a $450,000 annual budget, and much of that goes to teachers' salaries, he said.

The Batten Endowment Challenge was set up by Frank Batten and his wife, Jane, Davis said. Frank Batten died in September 2009 at age 82; he was the former chairman of Landmark Communications, now known as Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, which publishes The Virginian-Pilot.

Other recipients of the challenge since the first awards in 2008 include the Young Audiences of Virginia, Horizons Hampton Roads, The Portsmouth Museums Foundation for the Children's Museum of Virginia and Park Place School in Norfolk.

The 20-year-old academy offers instruction for about 1,000 local youngsters each year. Many of the teachers are Virginia Symphony Orchestra players, Dixon said.

Every third- through sixth-grader at Park View Elementary School in Portsmouth gets violin lessons through the academy with the charitable Beazley Foundation. This year, that's about 400 students.

"Here is what happens the first day of class," wrote one of that school's violin teachers, Jena Chenkin, in an e-mail to Dixon. "'Is this my violin? Really?' Keep in mind that they are only clutching the case. It isn't even open yet."

In the ensuing weeks, Chenkin wrote, "the third graders come to class every time just buzzing with excitement."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com