Musician does so much more than toot his own horn.

Hornist persuaded his musical colleagues to offer classes online, then donated funds

BOERNE — They say music has charms to soothe a savage breast.

Turns out, it’s also a great way to raise money in the fight against the coronavirus.

That’s what retired band director and French hornist Marc Lumley discovered when he decided to use his talent and musical connections to help out during the pandemic.

It started out as a small idea: Persuade a hornist or two he knew here and in other cities to offer online master classes for a small fee, with the tuition going to a COVID-19-related food program at his church.

What blossomed still stuns Lumley: A host of elite orchestra musicians from around the world took part in the Zoom classes, as well as a three-week online horn camp he organized.

And at the end of June, they and an untold number of musicians across the globe played their instruments during two brief online concerts that sought to raise money to fight COVID.

All told, Lumley raised $10,000 from the musical endeavors, which he donated to the University Health System Foundation’s COVID Response Fund, which primarily helps the health system’s patients and their families.

“I still can’t believe it,” said Lumley, a soft-spoken man who has played the horn since he was 12. “People tell me I’ve taken lemons and made lemonade.”

Lumley and his wife, Monica, a high school math teacher, live outside of Boerne and attend Cornerstone Church. The week after the stay-at-home orders took effect, he woke up and did his usual morning prayers.

“I was just sick and tired of not doing anything personally,” said Lumley, who worked as the band director at Bradley Middle School and other schools. “I asked the Lord, ‘What should I do?’”

The answer came: Use music to “play hope back into the world.”

Lumley reached out to a friend who is a horn player with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Would he be willing to donate his talent to teaching lowcost Zoom master classes?

“Honestly, I expected him to nicely say no, but he didn’t hesitate to say yes,” Lumley said.

The biweekly hour-and-a-half group classes cost $15 and drew student musicians young and old who learned about the classes via Facebook and other outlets.

In the beginning, Lumley gave a series of smaller donations to Cornerstone’s food program and some to University Health System, where one of his former student’s parents work.

Word spread. Soon, musicians were calling to ask if they could teach the classes. From April to June, 120 students took the classes, from hornists who play in orchestras from Philadelphia to Minnesota to San Francisco.

The classes also gave the musicians, locked out of their symphony halls and classrooms because of the virus, a creative outlet, Lumley said.

“These are the class of musicians who could charge up to $300 for one hour of instruction,” Monica Lumley added.

“And that doesn’t count airfare and hotel costs,” her husband said.

But he wasn’t done. Lumley organized the horn camp, allday master classes in June that involved almost 40 master hornists, for a requested donation of $145. Seventy-five students signed up, including one from England. Teachers hailed from Norway, Luxembourg, Spain and Australia.

He wasn’t done. Lumley next envisioned an online concert where musicians around the world would play the final two and a half minutes of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “arguably some of the most triumphant, inspirational music ever written,” he said.

Lumley tapped on his cellphone and suddenly his living room was filled with a symphony of rousing horns, the kind of music that makes you want to jump up and storm the ramparts in victory — a perfect virusdefeating anthem.

Lumley put the word out about the concert on various Facebook pages, including that of the Air Force Musicians Association, which he belongs to as a former Air Force horn player.

To do the concert, he used Facebook Live and something called IVASI — it stands for Interactive Video Audition Systems, International — which is an educational tool that allows students remotely to play along with an orchestral excerpt on the computer screen.

The two brief concerts would take place at different times, depending on an artist’s time zone — once in the morning, once in the evening. The idea was that artists, on June 26 and in their respective cities and countries, would play along when they saw their onscreen cue.

“I said I will take horns, banjos, clarinets, kazoos, I didn’t care, as long as it sounded good,” said Lumley, who has a gentle, avuncular humor. “There was a donate button, and I said you can donate $1 or $1 million, but $1 million is better.”

There’s no way to know how many watched the two concerts or how many musicians played along, but the Facebook Live page showed 36,000 viewers.

His “right-hand woman” in all this, he said, was Carrie Strickland, who teaches horn to high school students in San Antonio and handled all the marketing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Early on, Lumley decided to direct all the donations to UHS, after a philanthropist friend in Austin told him that focusing on a single beneficiary tends to have a greater effect.

In the end, there was enough money to set aside a small portion for his participating master musicians, as an honorarium, and still donate the full $10,000.

“By the time I split that up between them, it was about enough for each of them to buy a good bottle of wine,” he said, chortling.

Leni Kirkman, senior vice president of strategic communications and patient relations at University Health System and interim president of the foundation, said the COVID Response Fund was formed in March with a $65,000 donation from Frost Bank.

More donations followed. The fund has helped patients and families at a time when many nonprofits are cutting back services. The fund, for example, has purchased iPads to allow hospital patients to communicate with their family and friends, since most visitors are not allowed. It also has paid for hotel rooms for out-of-town families visiting their relatives receiving treatment.

Kirkman said Lumley’s donation will further that goal.

“He found a way to be useful in a time when musicians can’t play in the same symphony hall or even practice collectively in the same room,” she said. “But he still had that passion, which aligns perfectly with our Healing Arts program, which brings artists from the visual and performing arts to demonstrate for our staff and patients. I can’t wait to meet Marc in person.”

Some bright day in the future, when the virus abates, she plans to invite Lumley to come play his horn for University Hospital’s pediatric patients to lift their spirits.

He continues to give private lessons and serves as the principal horn of the Symphony of the Hills in Kerrville. And he is coprincipal horn for the Mozart Festival Texas.

And he still isn’t done raising funds to help in the pandemic.

He now has hundreds of hours of footage of “some of the greatest horn players on the planet,” which possibly can be turned into a teaching tool for students and a professional development pathway for band directors, especially with the reopening of schools in question.

He needs to check with a copyright lawyer.

One thing’s for sure: He’s going to keep playing the same tune until this dastardly virus is gone.

“Our motto from the beginning was to get everything we could out of what we had, and totally ignore what we don’t have,” he said.

Photos by Kin Man Hui / Staff photographer Marc Lumley raised $10,000 from his musical endeavors, which he donated to the University Health System Foundation’s COVID Response Fund.

Lumley, a retired band director, was able to get a host of elite orchestra musicians from around the world to take part in the Zoom classes, as well as an online horn camp he organized.