10/07/2026
In “Soaring Instrument Prices Could Stop the Music at Many Schools” (New York Times, October 2, 2026), Sydney Ember shares the challenges schools around the country are facing from tariffs that “are straining meager band and orchestra budgets.”
NAfME member Jeff Lipscomb a high school orchestra director in Kanawha County, West Virginia, shared, “I’ve actually had to buy instruments out of my own pocket.”
“I don’t even have a budget. Zero money,” shared Carolynn Langston, who has been teaching music at low-income elementary schools in Oregon for two decades. “Instruments are more expensive, which then squeezes even tighter on somebody like me.”
NAfME member Latasha Casterlow-Lalla, supervisor of visual and performing arts for Passaic Public Schools in northern New Jersey, shared that the prices of many instruments have grown exponentially since the pandemic. “A student saxophone that used to be $420 is more than $900. Tubas are at least $9,000, and the high school band wants four. If the proposed brass tariffs go into effect, she said, buying all of them would probably take her five or six years. By then, the would-be tuba players would have graduated.”
“We’re going to eventually hit our rubber-meets-the-road moment,” Casterlow-Lalla said.
NAfME Southern Division President Annamarie Bollino of Virginia also weighed in, saying she expected the proposed tariffs on brass instruments would further push up prices.
Read the full article (registration/subscription required): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/business/economy/tariffs-instruments-school-music-programs.html
Take action today by contacting your members of Congress: https://bit.ly/oppose-brass-wind-tariffs
And read more about the issue here: https://bit.ly/brass-wind-tariff-blog
