'Last Repair Shop' for LAUSD musicians gets $1-million gift, plus a visit from Yo-Yo Ma

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In a downtown Los Angeles warehouse Sunday night, a fewer blocks northbound of the 10 Freeway, an improbable quartet performed for the archetypal and astir apt lone clip successful beforehand of a rapt audience.

At the piano, Amanda Nova, a Fairfax High School postgraduate and freshman astatine the USC Thornton School of Music. On alto sax, Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School pupil Ismerai Calcaneo. On violin, Palms Middle School seventh-grader Porche Brinker. And connected cello, the astir elder subordinate of the group: Yo-Yo Ma.

All 4 performers played connected instruments owned and maintained by the Los Angeles Unified School District. (Yo-Yo Ma’s Stradivarius had the nighttime off.) As the world-renowned cellist took to the improvised stage, Ma spun his borrowed instrumentality around, revealing a portion of bluish portion connected which the school-issued instrument’s fig was written successful achromatic marker.

The ensemble came unneurotic astatine a fundraiser astatine the installation wherever astir a twelve LAUSD employees support and repair the schoolhouse district’s 130,000 instruments. The repair shop, its unit and the students who played with Yo-Yo Ma connected Sunday were featured successful the documentary abbreviated “The Last Repair Shop.” Co-directed by Ben Proudfoot and composer Kris Bowers (and co-distributed by L.A. Times Studios and Searchlight), the movie won an Academy Award for documentary abbreviated past year.

Before their Oscar win, the film’s creators saw the shop’s fiscal needs and launched a superior run with a extremity of raising $15 million, said Proudfoot, the main enforcement of Los Feliz-based Breakwater Studios.

“Many of the folks that enactment successful the store present volition discontinue successful the adjacent fewer years,” Proudfoot said successful an interrogation Sunday night. “So wherever volition the adjacent procreation of repair technicians travel from? Who volition bid them? And however bash we marque definite that this store remains present for generations and generations to come?”

Proudfoot said 82% of LAUSD’s much than 440,000 students unrecorded beneath the poorness line. “For a household to wage $25 a period to rent a violin oregon instrumentality work for a $2,000 tuba, it’s not going to hap for astir students, right?” helium said.

“That’s wherefore we are doing immoderate we tin to support this store and to rally the assemblage to enactment it truthful that L.A. tin support this beautiful, fantastic happening that beauteous overmuch each different metropolis successful America has chopped oregon privatized. Like truthful galore things successful our world, philharmonic instruments [in different schoolhouse districts] person been enactment down a paywall for kids.”

Woodwind repairman Duane Michaels heads to his workstation astatine the LAUSD instrumentality repair shop.

At the affectional halfway of “The Last Repair Shop” are the stories of the dedicated technicians and the students who payment from the escaped instruments. The message: Music acquisition has the powerfulness to alteration lives.

Proudfoot said the fundraising run has received astir 1,330 gifts from individuals successful 30 states truthful far, galore of which were tiny donations of $10 to $25. Together, those donations adhd up to much than $700,000.

At Sunday’s event, the run organizers — who see philanthropist Jerry Kohl and Juilliard President Damian Woetzel — celebrated a $1-million donation from the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, founded by the seasoned TV shaper down “Dharma & Greg,” “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory.” A caller motion that reads “The Lorre Family Strings Department” volition bent supra 1 conception of the shop.

Proudfoot said that naming opportunities for the brass, woodwind and soft shop, arsenic good arsenic different parts of the warehouse, are disposable to aboriginal donors.

Weary-looking brass instruments are among the tens of thousands successful the LAUSD's instrumentality repair shop.

Proudfoot’s co-director, Bowers, was incapable to be the lawsuit due to the fact that of the caller commencement of his 2nd child. In an email to The Times, helium cited his idiosyncratic transportation to “The Last Repair Shop.”

“I was 1 of the galore students who depended connected these instruments,” Bowers wrote. “I’ll ne'er hide the feeling erstwhile a repaired instrumentality was placed backmost successful my hands — it was arsenic if a blocked pathway to creativity abruptly opened. I would not beryllium the instrumentalist oregon composer I americium without those instruments — and without this shop.”

Sunday night, 18-year-old Calcaneo reflected connected the repair shop’s work. She said entree to a well-tuned and maintained instrumentality tin motivate students to support playing euphony — and it tin alteration a life.

“I consciousness similar erstwhile your instrumentality stops working, [students] commencement losing that anticipation and they mightiness spell to different way different than music,” Calcaneo said. “And not lone that, they mightiness consciousness similar their schoolhouse oregon the strategy is not supporting them successful their passion.”

Ahead of their show with Ma, Calcaneo, Brinker and Nova exhibited a chill confidence.

Pianist Amanda Nova takes a selfie with Yo-Yo Ma connected Sunday.

“When I archetypal got told I was playing with Yo-Yo Ma, I was like, wow, that’s not real. That feels similar a lie,” Nova said. “And present I’m present with 1 of the astir renowned musicians successful the world.”

Brinker, the seventh-grade violinist, said she had watched videos of Ma playing cello online.

“Now that I’ve played with professionals before, I’m a small little scared,” she said.

“I’m not nervous,” Calcaneo said, adding later: “We rehearsed connected our ain and it sounded truly good. I tin lone ideate however bully it volition dependable with Yo-Yo Ma!”

Ma performs with Porche Brinker, center, and Ismerai Calcaneo connected Sunday.

The quartet’s show of “Ode to Joy” did so dependable good. Brinker kicked it disconnected with a tender solo rendition of the opening bars of Beethoven’s theme. Ma watched her intently, smiled broadly and responded with his ain elegant mentation of the aforesaid theme.

Ma besides offered a benediction to the repair shop, playing the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 successful G Major connected the aforesaid borrowed cello. He and Woetzel, a erstwhile main dancer with the New York City Ballet, besides led the assemblage successful an interactive show of George Balanchine’s ballet “Serenade,” acceptable to Tchaikovsky’s 1880 Serenade for Strings successful C, Op. 48.

In betwixt performances, Ma and Woetzel chatted astir wherefore they judge euphony acquisition is simply a nationalist bully and a quality right. Offering entree to escaped philharmonic instruments is essential, Ma said.

“There are fewer things successful beingness that are non-transactional,” Ma said. “The young radical that are getting these instruments, they volition astir apt spot the satellite successful the twelvemonth 2100. We whitethorn not spot that world, but we tin assistance marque it imaginable that satellite is really a bully world.”

These performances and conversations took spot against a backdrop of damaged horns, well-worn instrumentality cases, tools and faded photos of precocious schoolhouse bands performing astatine the Rose Bowl Parade. In a mounted solid container amid the decades of accumulated philharmonic ephemera, the documentary film’s Oscar statue was besides connected display.

And what’s adjacent for the LAUSD cello Yo-Yo Ma played?

“It’s going backmost to schoolhouse of course,” repair store supervisor Steve Bagmanyan said.

Thanks to the enactment of Bagmanyan and the remainder of the repair store staff, it soon volition beryllium backmost successful the hands of a cello pupil astatine Florence Nightingale Middle School.