The Boulder-based nonprofit Parlando School for Musical Arts has offered music lessons at the Dairy Arts Center since 2002. Founder and executive director Travis LaBerge grew up on a Vermont farm, where his family had little money. Learning to play piano changed his life and inspired him to make music lessons accessible to as many students as possible.
“Access to music should be equitable, and it’s a multigenerational experience,” LaBerge said.
Parlando serves more than 550 children during the school year, offers intergenerational programming for seniors and provides tuition assistance for children who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford lessons. By the time Parlando marks its 25th anniversary in 2027, the organization expects to have provided more than $1 million in tuition assistance for music lessons. But staff found that reducing the price wasn’t enough to reach many families. Getting to the Dairy was another barrier.
“In starting to work with lower-income populations, we kept telling people, ‘We have this tuition assistance program. All you have to do is come to the Dairy Center and take these music lessons at a significantly reduced price.’ But hardly anyone was taking us up on it,” LaBerge said.
“We found that for a lot of working families, a reduced lesson price does not actually solve access,” LaBerge wrote in an email. “For working families, transportation is often as big of a barrier to access as finances.”
To remove that barrier, LaBerge started exploring how to bring music classes to students where they live.
Parlando formed a partnership with Boulder Housing Partners, the city’s public housing authority. BHP manages 42 residential communities across Boulder and serves more than 5,000 residents, including low-income, immigrant and single-parent households. That total includes people with Housing Choice Vouchers who live outside BHP communities.
In April 2026, Parlando began offering sliding-scale music lessons at three BHP communities: Manhattan, at Arapahoe Avenue and Foothills Parkway; Tantra Lake, on South Boulder Road west of U.S. 36; and Palo Park, off Broadway north of Iris Avenue.
Parlando offers on-site lessons one day a week at each location. The organization placed a piano at each site, and violin lessons are also available at Manhattan. In September, the program expanded to offer cello lessons at BHP’s Rally Flats community.
The lessons last 30 to 45 minutes. Parlando’s full price for a half-hour lesson is $44, but families in the BHP program pay on a sliding scale.
“We ask families to pay at least $5 a lesson if they can,” LaBerge said.
“The scholarships are a huge, huge help for our families,” said Anita Speirs, BHP events coordinator and BHP Foundation board member. “Our families are low-income. Each family looks different, but in general, money is pretty tight. To know that they don’t have to pay $90 an hour for a lesson … is a huge help.”
Participation in the program has already surpassed LaBerge’s expectations.
“Our goal was to be at 50% capacity by the end of May,” LaBerge said. “After three or four weeks, we were at 75% capacity.”
“Once we promoted the opportunity broadly, our residents began coming from a variety of BHP communities as well as from outside BHP properties,” Speirs wrote in an email. “That diversity of participation has been really encouraging because it shows us that the need and interest extend well beyond any one community.”
In addition to lessons, students receive access codes to the practice spaces, allowing them to use the Parlando-owned pianos. Many students can walk to the facilities from their homes.
“It’s not just that they have access to the lessons, but they also have access to the instruments,” LaBerge said. Students taking violin or cello lessons can take home loaner instruments.
“We really try to make it as easy as possible,” Speirs said. “All the resident has to have is the desire to learn, the intention to take good care of the instrument and the desire to show up.”
Parlando faculty lead free singalongs and jam sessions and perform concerts in BHP community spaces.
In September, Parlando launched a community choir at Hilltop Senior Living in South Boulder. The choir is open to Hilltop residents, BHP residents and other community members of high school age or older who are interested in singing together.
One BHP resident, who asked not to be named, said private music lessons for her two daughters would not have been feasible without the partnership.
“Their work has been fundamental in helping [my daughters] maintain discipline and channel their attention in a positive way toward new horizons,” the resident said.
Over the next three years, LaBerge hopes to expand the program to eight to 10 facilities, with classes offered multiple days a week.
For LaBerge, providing accessible music lessons is a full-circle moment.
“In 1984 in Cambridge, Vermont, a 30-minute lesson cost $5, and I would walk there with my books, my lesson book and a $5 bill to pay,” LaBerge said. “I get choked up because, 42 years later, these $5 lessons are for a completely new generation of people.”
