Colorado duo keeps students playing, save thousands by repairing school instruments in-house

School kids are rough on the musical instruments they play, and it can be expensive for a school district to send them off to be fixed when they are broken. So, Cherry Creek Schools has figured out a way to cut down on that expense; bring everything in-house.

Surrounded by musical instruments, Cherry Creek Schools' Instrument Repair Technicians Jeff Eisold and Alan Davies move together in a symphony of silence. Nestled in a shop in Overland High School they bring the district's damaged band and orchestral instruments back to life, like a fifty-year-old baritone sax.

"Pretty much every inch of the instrument is about covered with dents. All the pads on the instrument are very old and they're not sealing correctly. Keys are hitting each other. There's broken solder joints and braces that are bent out of shape, missing screws and posts. That should be a circle but (it's) more of an oval. Stuff is taped together so it's not falling apart, and you might not see it on the video, but the body is actually bent," says Alan as he showed off the sax.

Alan is the younger of the two. Just six years ago he was walking the halls of Overland with his sax. He graduated and went to CU-Boulder for music. That's where he met an instrument repair technician that changed his life.

"(I) saw a little bit about how he did the work. And from there, I transferred into a school that offered a degree in band instrument repair," said Davies.

After college, he was working at another music shop that was closing. That's when the district hired him and Jeff to maintain their collection of instruments. Jeff says it's saved the school a large amount of money.

"So far in the year that we've year so that we've been doing this, I think we're nearing somewhere around $100,000. We've saved them," said Eisold.

Jeff, who's been doing this for more than forty years, says he likes having an apprentice of sorts in Alan. And with the art of instrument repair seemingly dying off, he hopes one day he can train more young men and women like him.

"Jeff and I have a very good friendship as well as a working ability," said Davies.   

"Hopefully at some point, this will become a curriculum for us to teach to teach kids to do this because it's very enjoyable," said Eisold.

In addition to fixing broken instruments, the pair has also undertaken the task of restoring instruments donated to the district. Jeff said he once repaired a tenor sax that was run over by a bus, so don't worry about the condition it's in if you have an instrument you want to give them.