Allegro Music

Since my first review, my experience with Allegro Music has improved.
They were extremely quick to bring in the Student Music Organizer that my students are using this year. The books came in within 1 or 2 weeks.
Charlie, the teacher/​staff member I dealt with during my visit last month, was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. He provided sound advice on my booklight and metronome queries after tracking down all the books ($ 300 worth) that I needed.
Further to Jacqeline Serpas’ follow up on my initial review, she addressed several things:
1 — The staff member who slammed the other music conservatories and gave some of my students grief with special orders is no longer employed by Allegro Music. Ms. Serpas assures me that no one on her staff bears a negative attitude towards the other conservatories.
2 — Chad W’s comment about Allegro’s teaching was also addressed. Some teachers on Allegro Music’s staff have their Masters or their Ph.D. in music. As for his comment about the teachers’ «lack of enthusiasm», as teachers, Ms. Serpas and I both agreed that it does depend on the chemistry between the teacher and the student.
3 — Since my initial review, Allegro Music has been carrying an increasing amount of material for Conservatory Canada, CNCM’s Northern Lights series and London College of Music (when possible as LCM has their own distributor).
Ms. Serpas explained that Allegro endeavours to carry a good selection of titles. However, with the state of the economy, they (like other music retailers) have had to scale back a bit on their inventory so that items items don’t sit on the shelves for long periods of time. To this end, they have dedicated a great deal of energy towards developing their special orders. She has promised to speak to her staff to conduct update calls to clients if their special order is on back order.
In addition, several of my students have taken advantage of Allegro’s digital sheet music selection and are quite happy with what they got. They really like the idea of just buying one song (and be able to get it transposed before printing) instead of buying a $ 30 book for just one song.