Ten flutes.
Ten kids who can take one home.
I teach a beginner flute class at a Houston middle school. The kids are good, the flutes stay at school, and a flute you only touch in class is a slow way to learn one. Cadenza Arthouse is starting an instrument library: it buys ten student flutes, lends one to each kid to take home, and passes it to the next kid when they move on. Play the game below, and if you can, help buy the flutes.
Thank you.
Your payment went through and Square has emailed your receipt. If the Square checkout is still open in another tab, you can close it. Your gift is added to the total below on its own, usually within ten minutes, and every flute this money buys will be listed on this page when it is bought and when it goes home with a student.
Progress toward the goal
Flutie Cats · the flying game
Starring Rocco, one of the real animals behind Flutie Cats. Hold to fly: touch, click, or the space bar. The only sounds are beeps. Make the top ten and you can put your initials on the board below, where they stay for everyone to see.
★ High scores ★ Top ten on this page
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Put a flute in a kid's hands
Every button opens a Square checkout owned by Cadenza Arthouse. Square handles the card, emails your receipt, and keeps 2.9% plus 30 cents of each gift; the label under each amount is what actually reaches the library. Twenty-five dollars is the smallest amount we ask for, because below that the flat 30 cents eats too much of it. If that is more than you want to give, play the game or share this page instead. That is genuinely enough, and we mean it.
Secure checkout by Square · No account needed · Questions? [email protected]
The game, and the flute at home
Flutie Cats is a game you play with a flute. In the full game, a held note makes the cat climb and silence lets it fall; on this page the same game takes a tap, a click or the space bar, so anyone can fly Rocco through the trees and put their initials on the board. My students play it in class. The ones with a flute at home get better at it, because they get better at the flute, and that is the whole idea of this page: a kid who can practice at home gets to keep the thing we started in the room.
The room
The school used to have a full band program; the band hall next door to my room is a piano lab now. I was given the choir room and fifteen flutes in cases, one of which leaks, and I have never had more than ten students in the room at once. The class runs four to six, and by the time the kids have eaten, walked over, taken the roll and put the flutes away clean, the time with a flute against a lip is a fraction of that. The flutes belong to the school and have to serve three groups of students a year, so they cannot go home. I understand that decision. It is still the wrong outcome for the kid, because the first months of flute are physical: a sound out of the head joint, wrists that do not twist, air behind the note, the flute up and sounding on the downbeat. That is muscle memory, and muscle memory needs the instrument to be where the kid is.
What they can already do
They can play B, A and G, and they are learning what the thumb does to B. They know a downbeat from an upbeat, and they can rest for three beats and clap on four together, which is what you need before you can play in a band without being the one who plays through the rest. I put a page of quarter notes in front of them before I had explained one, played it, and they followed it with their eyes and ears. Play first, so that reading, when it comes, is reading something you already know how to say.
They have met The Stars and Stripes Forever, Chaminade played by Galway, and enough big-band trumpet that a drummer will never surprise them. The principal has asked for a concert, and they are going to give one. The handouts are printed at home, the sound in the room is my living-room soundbar, and I beat time with my hands. That is the floor. One flute at home is what would raise it.
The library
Cadenza Arthouse is starting an instrument library. Not a giveaway: a library. The company buys the flutes and owns them. A student borrows one for as long as they are a Cadenza Arthouse student, takes it home, practices on it, and hands it back when they move on, so it goes to the next kid. If a particular kid needs a flute to keep, I will give one. Mostly the flutes keep circulating, which is how one flute ends up serving more than one child.
The flute I mean is a closed-hole, C-foot student flute with a case and a cleaning rod. It is not a professional instrument, but it is a real one: I play on one of them in that room every afternoon, it was good enough to get me the job, and it is good enough to carry into high school. A beginner with a flute at home will outplay a beginner with a better flute in a locked cabinet.
Where the money goes
I priced the flutes at checkout on September 25, 2026, without buying them, to get the real totals. Bought one at a time, each flute is $115.81 with shipping and Texas sales tax. Bought as one order of ten, the total is $1,089.99, because the $6.99 shipping is charged once per order and the tax rides on it. Buying them together saves $68.11, which is most of another flute. So the plan is one order of ten, placed when the goal is met.
Square keeps 2.9% plus 30 cents of every gift before it reaches the library. That is the ordinary cost of accepting a card; every processor charges about the same, and there is no way around it. It also means a goal set at the cost of the flutes would come up short, so the goal on this page is the gross figure, $1,122.85, which nets the $1,089.99 the ten flutes cost.
| You give | The library gets | Square keeps |
|---|---|---|
| $25 | $23.97 | 4.1% |
| $50 | $48.25 | 3.5% |
| $100 | $96.80 | 3.2% |
| $250 | $242.45 | 3.0% |
The flat 30 cents is why there is no five-dollar button: on five dollars it is 9% before the percentage even starts. Twenty-five is where the loss gets reasonable, so that is the smallest amount we ask for. Everybody cannot give twenty-five dollars, and that is fine. Play the game, share the page, and put your money toward something more important. We are not trying to squeeze anyone; we just do not want to lose good money to fees that cannot be avoided.
- Ten student flutes, one order, $1,089.99 with shipping and tax, bought when the goal is met.
- Square's processing fee, the difference between the goal and that cost. There is no other overhead: no platform, no middleman, no salary.
- Anything over the goal buys more flutes first, then cleaning supplies for the ones we have, then the next instrument the library needs.
Every flute this campaign buys is listed on this page when it is bought, when it goes home with a student, and when it comes back. Cadenza Arthouse is a Houston company, not a registered charity, so a contribution is a gift to the company in support of what is written here and is not tax-deductible. The progress figure at the top updates itself from Square's own records within about ten minutes of each gift, and it is dated so you can see how current it is.
If you would rather give an instrument
Thank you. Some people will want to, and it is a kind offer. The library can only take an instrument in perfect working order, because there is no budget for sending one out to be repaired or refurbished. If yours is old or valuable, it will do more good with an advanced player than in a beginner loaner library, and that is a better home for it. If you still want to send one, please contact me first at [email protected] so we can talk about it before anything is shipped.
What I am not asking for
I am not asking anyone to fix the school, the district, or the way arts education is staffed in this city. This page is smaller than that. It is ten instruments, for ten kids I can name and you cannot, so that the hours they spend with me are not the only hours they ever hold a flute.
The ledger
No purchases yet. The ten flutes are bought as one order when the goal is met.
Written by Frankie Mohammed from his own teaching notes, August 13 to September 2, 2026. The school, the district and the students are deliberately not named: this is a Cadenza Arthouse campaign, not coverage of a client, and no student is photographed, quoted or identified here. Frankie Mohammed teaches this class as an independent contractor. Cadenza Arthouse is his company, and the instrument library is its own program, separate from any client.
About this page. A Cadenza Arthouse campaign is a first-person appeal, not reporting. It states a concrete objective, the author's own account of why it matters, and what the money buys. Progress figures are maintained from Square's records and dated; purchases and their outcomes are recorded on the page itself.