The Rochester International Jazz Festival and a local non-profit are helping to bring music back into city schools.

For more than a decade, The Rochester Education Foundation has collected hundreds of musical instruments at the festival and given them to local students. The act of kindness is made possible by those who stop by the McCarthy tent and donate their new or used instruments.

“We'll take any instrument, except for a piano in any condition,” Executive Director Stuart Hencke said. “We’ll make sure it gets refurbished and gets put into the hand of a student. A lot of people have an instrument that's been sitting around.”

Brian Rohrs, of Fairport, dropped off his flute and clarinet. He says he was happy to make use of the sentimental items.

“My wife and I, we actually met in band in junior high school,” Rohrs said. “Two of those instruments are instruments that we had since junior high school. She played the flute, I played the clarinet. We've had these for so many years... We don't play them anymore.”

You can give your instrument a new life any day of the Jazz Festival or drop it off at the Parkleigh on Park Avenue.