Montville students’ music helping children heal

With banks of keyboards, headphones, computers and editing equipment, Judy Abrams’ music classroom at Leonard J. Tyl Middle School looks more like a recording studio. It happens to be both — and more. On Tuesday, Abrams’ eighth-graders will embark on the second year of a service project that’s the first of its kind in the state — and it all starts on those computers in her “Adventures in Music” classroom.

This spring, Abrams will present a 30 song, two-CD set of original compositions by her students to the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, where officials will pipe the music through playrooms, administrative offices, patient rooms and during procedures. The albums have become such a big hit, they’re heard nearly every day at some location within the hospital, Connecticut Children’s President Martha Schall said.