Thanks to CL photogs Tracy May and Amy Kate Anderson — plus the the work of the festival's in-house photography team — we were able to share over 300 gorgeous photos from this weekend's Gasparilla Music Festival.
Still, there's really just one set of photos that matters more than the others.
Pictured above and below are students from Crestwood Elementary. The Tampa school is a beneficiary of the nonprofit Gasparilla Music Foundation's Recycled Tunes program, which teams up with national nonprofit Little Kids Rocks to help grow or start school music programs.
The foundation has a general goal of supporting music and education in the Tampa Bay area. Together with Little Kids Rock, Recycled Tunes seeks to enrich the lives of the area's underserved and impoverished children by giving them access to musical instruments at no cost to the students.
I remember how expensive it was for my parents — who actually showed up at GMF this year — to rent my first trumpet, and in hindsight I can now see how endlessly practicing "Montego Bay" changed my life and played a part in how I learned to appreciate music. I was lucky to have a set of parents who worked to give me opportunities. But as we all know — that's not the case for everyone.
In 2015, GMF and Recycled Tunes announced a partnership with Little Kids Rock, a national organization dedicated to providing underserved schoolchildren across the U.S. access to fun, engaging, Modern Band music classes and brand new instruments at no cost to the students, teachers, or school districts.
For 12 months out of the year, Recycled tunes holds instrument drives, trading gently used musical instruments for GMF tickets. Tampa's Don Banks music refurbishes them, and they end up in local schools.
And that's what you're supporting when you show up to nonprofit festivals like GMF (and other philanthropic festivals like Clearwater Jazz Holiday, which believes in similar jazz-related endeavors).
See more photos below and learn more about Recycled Tunes by clicking here.
