The beloved shop, which was featured in an  short  last year, repairs students’ school instruments across the district: taking in, fixing up and and sending back school pianos, tubas and drum sets on a daily basis.

It’s been operating for 65 years, and now the shop needs to raise $15 million to ensure it keeps functioning well into the future, said Ben Proudfoot, who co-directed the Academy Award-winning documentary about the shop and co-chairs its fundraising campaign. 

This month, the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation gave the shop a big start on its ambitious goal, with a $1 million gift. 

And to celebrate, cellist Yo-Yo Ma visited and played a couple riffs at a party held in the shop’s slightly ramshackle, downtown L.A. warehouse digs.  

“That’s the thing with this particular project, it’s hard to argue with,” explained documentary co-director Proudfoot, who is also campaign committee co-chair for the repair shop’s fundraising efforts; and why it attracts such support. “It’s just really an important thing.”

And the shop itself, a windowless warehouse encircled by a security fence, is due for an upgrade. 

Surrounded by blocks of choking traffic and not so far from skid row, the shop’s entrance is marked by a pair of fireproof doors and an unassuming sign reading  “Musical Instrument Repair.”

Many people had no idea about the shop, and even those who used it didn’t quite grasp its significance, said Proudfoot. 

But what stood out to him was that it was the last of its kind. 

The country’s second-largest district is the only one left where students could have full access to music education without spending their own families’ money, Proudfoot said. That’s in part due to the repair shop that keeps their instruments working.   

That’s a big deal for a school district where about 80% of students live in poverty.

Proudfoot said music education is important for all students, not just the ones particularly wealthy, lucky, or skillful.

“You learn discipline, you learn to listen, you learn you play a part in a whole,” Proudfoot said. “There are so many great lessons in music education.”

But Proudfoot said he noticed immediately why the shop needed help. There weren’t enough employees to cover the work. Only a dozen district employees were tasked with repairing and maintaining about 130,000 school instruments.

Amid the pandemic, L.A. Unified used federal relief money to purchase roughly 32,000 new musical instruments for students. The repair shop was busier than ever. 

With many employees on the verge of retirement, the shop needed publicity to bring in skilled technicians or job seekers willing to learn. 

So, Proudfoot and co-director Kris Bowers decided to put their filmmaking skills to use to help the shop. The plan worked, with the documentary garnering massive national attention — and also winning an Oscar.  

Now the pair is helping with fundraising for the shop. Proudfoot said 90% of the money raised will go to apprentice programs to train the next generation of repair shop workers.

As an extra incentive to get big donors, sections of the repair shop can be named in their honor or for their loved ones. 

The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation was the first to make a donation; now a new sign in the repair shop reads “The Lorre Family Strings Department” in honor of their donation. 

That $1 million is more than all of the other donations thus far combined, and will allow the district to begin training the next generation of repair shop workers. 

To make the celebration even more spectacular, the students and faculty got a visit from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who underscored the shop’s importance. 

“The young people that are getting these instruments, they will probably see the world in the year 2100,” Ma  â€œWe may not see that world, but we can help make it possible that world is actually a good world.” 

Proudfoot said the best part of fundraising is seeing small donations from over 30 states where people have no connection to the shop, but feel compelled to help in any way they can. 

Those small donations, added to the $1 million, have brought the total to $1.7 million in less than a year. 

Proudfoot said Ma was no different, and getting him to come to the event was as simple as showing him the documentary about the shop. 

“We told him, ‘Do you want the little girls in this film to have a violin or not?,’” Proudfoot said. “If you do, then you gotta show up. That’s our campaign.” 

This article is part of a collaboration between ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The ABCs of Book Banning, directed by Trish Adlesic, Nazenet Habtezghi and Sheila Nevins, spotlights texts that have been challenged and/or restricted at school libraries across the country in recent years. In several sequences, students address the camera directly, read aloud from the publications, and share their thoughts on the furor surrounding the books. 

You can . Here’s recent footage from a lively post-screening panel discussion at the New York Public Library: 

Elsewhere today at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, Ben Chapman spotlights another nominated film: The Last Repair Shop, which spotlights the four-person team who maintain and repair some 80,000 musical instruments provided free of charge to any and all public school students in Los Angeles. 

You can learn more about the film, and stream it for free, right here. 

The 96th annual Academy Awards air at 7 p.m. ET Sunday night on ABC. 

When the directors of the Oscar nominated short documentary “The Last Repair Shop” walk the red carpet next month, the four LAUSD workers who keep thousands of musical instruments in good repair will be right by their side. 

The four craftspeople who work in one of the nation’s last free instrument repair shops, are at the heart of the already celebrated documentary, out now via the Los Angeles Times and Disney+. The film chronicles the lives and impact of the four unsung LAUSD heroes unlocking the possibility of music education in Los Angeles.

Now they’re about to get their Hollywood moment.

“Everyone was over the moon excited for this once in a lifetime experience,” film co-director Ben Proudfoot (Oscar winner for The Queen of Basketball) told LA School Report. “Everyone is abuzz figuring out what to wear! The plan as of now is for them to wear their aprons, at least for the photos on the red carpet so people know who they are!”

The film was also co-directed by LAUSD graduate Kris Bowers (Composer for The Color Purple, King Richard, and Bridgerton) — who realized while making the documentary that shop supervisor and piano tuner Steve Bagmanyan was the same man who repaired his broken piano in the 90s while he was an LAUSD student.

Los Angeles is one of the last school districts in the nation to offer free instrument repair, provided to students since 1959. Along with a staff of 12, the four LAUSD employees toil in the shop which operates out of a warehouse on Naomi Avenue in Los Angeles. 

Bagmanyan said he’s excited about his night at the Oscars, but his priority is LAUSD’s students and their musical instruments. 

“My Oscar everyday is the job I’m doing for our kids, for our students,” Bagmanyan told LA School Report. “When I see a happy teacher, or get a thank you reply on an email, or a thank you card from students, that is our Oscar.”  

As for what he’s wearing on his big Hollywood night, Bagmanyan said he’ll pull out the tux he wore two years ago to his daughter’s wedding. 

The Last Repair Shop profiles Bagmanyan, string instrument expert Dana Atkinson, brass specialist Paty Morena and woodwind keeper Duane Michaels. The four talk deeply and emotionally, providing moving details about their lives and how they came to their jobs. The film also features several LAUSD students who detail how music has enriched their lives.

Since the premiere of the documentary, the quartet has been elevated to community stardom. Besides walking the Oscars red carpet, the group was honored in January at L.A. city hall. 

“There is an extraordinary rush of catharsis when after working on public school tubas and trombones and trumpets for 20 years, suddenly you’re standing in the council chambers of .LA. City Hall, and the president of the city council is thanking you for your service and telling you how many lives you have touched,” Proudfoot told LA School Report. 
Delicately assessing instruments in need of fixing sent from district schools, employees at the music repair shop magically bring back to life and maintain an estimated 80,000 instruments, which according to Bagmanyan has grown to about 140,000 more recently.

Lathering rusted tubas in sonic baths and using intricate tools to tune atonal violins, no instrument is left unplayable.

“The city council president .. compared L.A. of the 21st century to Vienna of the 18th century. It is the epicenter for music,” Proudfoot said. “And he really centered these repair people as heroes of our city, and heroes of the global community of musicians.” 

“This is not just a musical instrument repair shop,” Bagmanyan says in the documentary. “When an instrument breaks, there’s a student without an instrument. No. Not in our city.”

Proudfoot said LAUSD’s music program plays a critical role in creating a pipeline of opportunity. 

“It’s part of what makes Los Angeles the creative capital of the world, our ability to have the world’s best musicians at hand, and many of them start in the LAUSD system.” Proudfoot said. “You can’t have people who can play the newest Star Wars score in a quick moment, if you don’t have good music programs.”  

Students featured in The Last Repair Shop exude enthusiasm about their profound relationship with music, professing “the violin is my best friend” or “when I’m feeling tense or I’m feeling sad or angry, the saxophone calms me down.”

“I was also just so moved by how articulate they are about the necessity of music in processing the journey of their lives,” Bowers said. 

The generational love for music programming concludes the film, with a reunion of LAUSD graduates  playing a final piece on the Warner Bros. Eastwood Scoring Stage.

“You had people who had played on the Jaws score in 1975 who went to LAUSD and you had (LAUSD student) Porshay, who is nine years old and just in the first couple years of learning how to play violin,” said Proudfoot. “So I don’t know if that has ever happened before, if a group like that has been assembled. The sort of avengers of LAUSD music.”

LAUSD is currently working to expand music programming, taking advantage of the traction gained from the documentary. LAUSD arts administrator Titus Campos said the documentary has opened the door for partnerships and support for more arts initiatives. 

“We want to continue to be able to
  enhance the team at the last repair shop,” said Campos. “So we’re exploring that possibility with Ben and Kris.. to expand our technicians who fix the instruments, and thereby be able to increase our turnaround time in fixing instruments.” 

Bowers said he was proud to have highlighted the work of the repair shop, and is excited to share the Oscars red carpet with the craftspeople.   

“Our intention with making this film was to lift and shine a light on these remarkable individuals whose work has touched and impacted thousands of lives, but has gone mostly unseen,” said Bowers. “So sharing this moment with Steve, Paty, Duane and Dana where they’ll be seen and celebrated in such a massive way will be .. the height of achieving what we set out to accomplish with this film.”