The beginning of the school year marks the end of our annual cycle. This year, we not only met our year-end deadline, we beat it! Thanks to the unparalleled success of this year’s instrument drive, we filled most of the needs of all qualifying music programs. Of the instruments donated last March and repaired in the interim, 594 were in the hands of Colorado children when 41 band directors and orchestra conductors picked up their batons for the first downbeat of the new school year. And for the first time, instrument donations outpaced instrument applications. That means extra brass, strings and woodwinds are waiting in the wings – ready to be repaired and awarded as part of the 2022 instrument drive.