Jamese Lockett teaches in the same office where she once took lessons. The piano and its sound still fill the room, and she remembers the way she first brushed the keys as a child enrolled in the Birmingham-Southern College Conservatory.

“I was always near the piano when my older brothers played. I would press on the keys and open my mouth to sing some kind of tune,” Lockett says.

After her mother first recognized her interest, Lockett took piano lessons at the Conservatory from age four to her senior year of high school. This foundation in music led her to perform with the U.S. Army band during her years of service, study music and voice in college, and return to BSC to teach in 2013.

The BSC Conservatory of Fine and Performing Arts, which has been a part of the music department for more than 120 years, makes college-level music lessons available to students of all ages. No matter the experience level or musical interest, the Conservatory can pair students with the right teacher.

“What I loved the most when I first started was getting to work with so many professionals,” Jodean Tingle says. She and current Conservatory Director Lucy Victory have been teaching piano in the department for more than 30 years.

While some lessons are more popular than others, the Conservatory can offer lessons in anything that’s taught at the college level, including piano, voice, guitar, violin, organ, and band instruments. If they can find the right instructor and the right interest, they will offer the class, Victory says.

Some classes are held in the Hill Music Building, but others take place around the Birmingham area. The Conservatory offers classes at Highlands and Advent Day Schools, and faculty teach at their homes and churches in the community. The music department faculty at BSC can also take on classes at any time.

Tingle teaches a wide range of students — a range that reflects the inclusion of the department’s lessons. She teaches music and drama in her preschool class at First Church Birmingham and also keeps up lessons with Marilyn Rowell ’60, a BSC graduate who returned years later to take piano lessons.

“A lot of people want to get back into music,” Tingle says about her adult students. “They either wanted to take lessons as a child and couldn’t, or they talked their parents into letting them quit. They feel like they really missed out.”

Often serving as a feeder for BSC’s music department, the Conservatory prepares many elementary through high school students for a future in music. The faculty build close relationships with their students and keep up with them once they leave and continue their careers.

“Children can play on the big stage once a month if they want to,” Victory says. “For a lot of them, the performance becomes an old habit. They don’t get as nervous.”

If they love the spotlight, students can claim the stage more often than performing in one end-of-the-year recital. However, performing does not have to be the central goal for Conservatory students. The faculty have seen lessons strengthen students, even those who do not make a career out of performing, in a way that only music can.

“Music deals with discipline, artistry, and passion, and I’ve seen those things change students,” Lockett says. “They will learn to appreciate the art of music, and it will benefit them mentally, physically, and emotionally.”

While some students perform whenever they can, others participate in more private festival competitions or just focus on lessons. Tingle and Victory see value in learning an instrument and have watched their students succeed in a wide variety of paths, from law school to medical school to orchestras and companies around the United States.

“Musicians are the best people to recruit for any kind of job. Piano helps teach self-discipline and uses the different sides of the brain,” Tingle says. “You can gear the lesson to what the students need. That’s the beauty of private lessons.

For Lockett, performing always drew her. Her habits of singing in the kitchen transformed into her first professional singing experience in the Army band, where she performed in front of Bill Clinton during his presidency. When she thinks back to some of her earliest on-stage recitals through the Conservatory, she remembers the time she froze at the piano.

“I’ve always been a perfectionist, and somehow, something went wrong that day. I sat down, could not remember my piece, and started to cry,” Lockett says. “But I showed courageousness and showed that I’m a fighter. That showed me what I could do in a moment of pressure.”

After leaving the stage, she returned towards the end of the recital and successfully performed her piece. Lockett sees that moment of perseverance as something the Conservatory helped develop in her.

Those lessons of strength and inspiration learned at BSC fuel her love for teaching. Lockett mainly teaches children, and she enjoys the fearlessness they bring as students.

“I don’t know if the faculty realize what they have done for me,” she says. “I appreciate Ms. Victory, Ms. Tingle, all of them, for pouring into me. They were the foundation that made me the musician I am now. I love bringing everything I’ve learned and giving back.”

Visit the BSC Conservatory’s webpage to learn more about the classes they offer and their fall registration.