by  KYW's Brad Segall

The Settlement Music School is celebrating its 100th anniversary with news that it will be expanding its presence in Montgomery County with a new building scheduled to open next September that officials say will significantly increase the number of students who can take advantage of the music programs.

Settlement has been at its Jenkintown location for about two decades, and executive director Bob Capanna says they were out of space three years after they moved in.

On Friday morning the school held a groundbreaking for a new $8-million facility in Willow Grove that Capanna (second from right in photo) says will allow them to nearly double enrollment to 1,500 by the year 2012.

He says the need for a community-based arts school remains strong:

"We teach kids how to play instruments and how to sing and how to write music, and the theory behind it.  And then they can apply those very basic skills to any number of things that they want to do.”

The new building will have 29 studios and a 320-seat recital hall.

School officials recently announced a $25-million campaign designed to bolster the school’s programs. They have already reached nearly 75 percent of that goal.

(Photo by KYW's Brad Segall)