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A master with mallets in his hands

A few years ago, the Nashville Symphony asked band directors and teachers in Metro schools to keep their ears open – not for burgeoning Mozarts, but for any kid who craves music. Since then they’ve connected dozens of students with free lessons and instruments. Gregory Price is one of these kids, a middle schooler who adapts to the world through his keyboard, his drums, and the ringing notes of his new vibraphone.

A Mind Wired for Music

Fifteen-year-old Gregory Price fingers a simple tune on a Yamaha MM6 at his weekly music lesson, as his piano teacher Max Niederle looks on. The purity of Gregory’s enthusiasm is only one of the ways he’s not your average teenager. And then there’s Gregory’s gift: he has perfect pitch. “So he knows instantly what a note is right away without reference to any outside source, which is a great skill to have as a musician,” Niederle explains.

Niederle says Gregory’s also great at recalling and playing back music he hears. Today he’s trying his hand at blues improv, and teacher and student end the lesson with complicated jazz progressions—a piano-clarinet duet of Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll.”

Gregory doesn’t play the piano like a young virtuoso. In many ways, he’s wired to be a musical prodigy, but his eyes and hands won’t quite let him make the music that’s playing in his head. In fact, it’s a miracle he’s alive to play the piano at all, says his mom Jamie Stallings. He was born fifteen weeks premature, weighing one pound twelve ounces, and spent his first three months in an incubator. “Baby clothes were totally out of the question,” says Stallings. “Monstrous on him. Even baby doll clothes didn’t fit.”

Gregory’s still small for his age. He wears a hearing aid and a perpetual smile, and he greets everyone with wide-open innocence. Speaking doesn’t come easily to him. Jamie Stallings believes her son thinks and communicates most fluently in the language of music. “And when he is playing music, it’s almost like any disability that he might be labeled with disappears,” she says.

The Symphony’s Gift

At J.T. Moore Middle School, Gregory may lag behind his peers in English and math. He may miss many of the subtleties of pre-teen social interactions. But in band class, he not only fits right in; he’s the star. He easily hammers out his vibraphone part. And, sometimes, while his classmates struggle with their instruments, he softly plinks out their parts too, as if to offer quiet encouragement.

“In his case, he needs to be labeled ‘students with an advantage,’” says Shane Kimbro, who noticed Gregory’s special ear and memory for music in his first weeks as JT Moore’s band teacher. But he thought Gregory’s little bell kit was too small and quiet for him. He needed something he could hear, something with big targets so he could easily hit the keys.

Enter Mitchell Korn of the Nashville Symphony. He was looking for a student like Gregory. “Who has kind of a special story, who’s an unusual child, who has more obstacles than even other kids, we want to know about it,” declares Korn.

A Joyful Noise

Gregory loves his vibraphone

At Shane Kimbro’s suggestion, the Nashville Symphony gave Gregory his very own vibraphone. Mitchell Korn has made it his mission to supply free instruments and lessons to kids like Gregory, a boy who not only loves, but needs music. “A boy who is joyous with mallets in his hands,” says Korn. “Who when he feels his music inside of him, he is a magical being. And he becomes all powerful.”

In the family music room, Gregory attacks his drum kit with gusto, playing along with a song by his favorite artist. “Dave Matthews!” says Gregory. “I love Dave Matthews’ music.”

He may not be able to explain exactly why he loves Dave Matthews so much. But when the music plays and Gregory joins in, sheer bliss spreads across his face. In this moment, Gregory transcends corporeal limitations, and the things he can’t do don’t matter anymore. To him or to anyone.

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