Salvation Army program focuses on music education for underprivileged kids | Peoria News - HOI ABC

Eighteen months ago Major Heath Sells started a music program at the Salvation Army in Peoria, as HOI ABC reports. 

Photo: HOI ABC

Over fifty kids from 1st grade to high school have been able to learn how to read music and play instruments, for free.The Academy of Performing Arts at the Salvation Army goes beyond music. Sells said the kids learn valuable lessons in discipline, confidence, and focus. “We just wanted to give children, expose them to an opportunity to learn music. Once they latch on and see the disciplines that they gain through music education it helps them with their reading, it helps them with their math, it helps with their focus. But all of them have that same story that music touches and speaks to their soul,” explained Sells.

Thursday the week-long program commenced with a mini-concert at the Corps Community Center. Thirty-one students, some who had never played an instrument, performed in front of friends and family. They played songs from ‘Jesus Loves Me’ to ‘Baby Shark’ to Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise.’...

Other students played guitar, trumpet, drums, and piano. One student even conducted the final two pieces. The academy, at it’s core, is aimed at those kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford music lessons.  
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Source: HOI ABC