By CHELSEA LEHMAN and HEATHER HADDON

Once home to quiet prayer and meditation, the second floor of the convent at St. Brendan’s Church now resonates with the tickling of piano keys and strumming of guitars. The Norwood institution realized a long-held dream last month when its music school opened in the school’s former convent.

While the school is non-sectarian and open to the public, its founders talk about their new home for vocal and instrumental music with a particular zeal. “Our mission is to spread music,” said Renee Harris, the school’s director of music.

Teaching music at St. Brendan’s elementary school since 2001, Harris knew there was a need for a dedicated facility. “Many students and parents asked me to give them private piano lessons,” said Harris, who runs the local Cantabile Concert series. “I had a two-year waiting list for lessons.”

Harris began floating her ideas with the school’s administration about converting the convent, which, like many neighborhood Catholic churches, no longer houses nuns. Both Principal Paricia Gatti and the church’s former pastor, Pat Hennessy, supported the idea.

While plans slowed after Hennessy died last summer, his successor, Father George Stewart, kept the ball rolling. “[Harris] immediately brought it up to me, and I thought it was a great idea,” said Stewart, who joined the church in June. “But first I wanted to see how feasible it would be.” 

With the dominance of video games and other digital entertainment, one might doubt that local kids would line up to learn the subtleties of a Bach prelude. But Harris is confident. “There is a great demand for music here,” she said.

Though still in its infancy, the school already boasts nearly 50 students of various ages and abilities. Ten teachers offer lessons in piano, violin, guitar, voice, movement, and group violin sessions. Due to the demand, Harris recently hired new instructors to teach flute, percussion, brass, and woodwinds.

All the school’s teachers are professional musicians, many of them from the Manhattan School of Music. Harris chose the instructors based on their musical skill, and their ability to make learning pitch or chord progressions fun. “The teachers are not only very talented but they are also very good with children,” she said.

Putting together the music school was a community endeavor. St. Brendan’s recruited its own maintenance chief, Jorge DeTomas, to do the bulk of the renovations. Three of their choir students, Tara McDermott, Denise O’Leary and Natalia Orzel, pasted up advertisements around the community. And Harris and her husband Larry, a former professional football player turned concert opera singer, secured substantial donations from national and local businesses — including many of the Bainbridge Avenue and 204th Street merchants.

“She’s been tapping into her connections in the music industry,” Stewart said. Steinway Piano Company loaned a new piano to the school and Harris is currently in the process of trying to attain more instruments from them. Her husband is working on getting additional funds through National Football League arts grants.

Harris is also busily writing grants in hopes of offering scholarships to students who can’t afford the school’s rates—which, at $18 for 30 minutes, are quite affordable. She also dreams of a possible expansion to the convent’s third floor to house the louder instruments.

The school’s immediate success not only bodes well for its longevity, but a sign that the desire for musical expression is alive and well in area young people. “With the great stress on technology today, it’s nice to see the rise of a program that is dedicated to music and art,” Stewart said. “That will be beneficial for the community, and us as well.”