Donate church music, hymnals & choral libraries in Albuquerque

By Josh Eldred, owner-operator, NMLP · Published May 20, 2026 · ~2,300 words

A choir library is heavy, and nobody wants to be the one who throws it out

There is a particular kind of room in a lot of Albuquerque churches: the choir room, or a back office, with a wall of file cabinets. Pull a drawer and it's full of music — anthems in their manila folders, hand-labeled by title, decades deep. Stacked on top: Mass settings, a Cherubini Requiem in fifty copies, Handel choruses with the covers worn soft, a Service of Darkness for Tenebrae, festival choruses, descant sheets, accompaniment editions. On the shelf below, the hymnal stock itself, bound in blue and maroon and green.

It represents decades of a choir's life. Every piece in those cabinets was rehearsed, sung in a service, filed back. And when the choir winds down — the singers age, the director retires, the congregation merges with another, the worship style shifts to projected lyrics and a praise band — the music stays in the cabinets. It is genuinely heavy. It fills a room a church now needs for something else. And no music director, no choir librarian, no church administrator wants to be the person who carries beloved music to a dumpster.

That is the exact problem NMLP exists to solve. I come and take the whole thing — for free, in one visit — so it is no longer the church's burden. Most of a choir library is recycled responsibly; whatever can genuinely still be sung, I try to rehome.

What I take from a church music collection

Everything in the choir room and the music library. Specifically:

• Choral octavos — anthems, introits, the single-piece sheet music that fills the file cabinets, in any quantity from a folder to a full wall of drawers
• Hymnals — current editions, superseded editions, denominational and ecumenical, pew stock and choir stock
• Major works — Masses, Requiems, cantatas, oratorios, Passions, festival choruses, the Handel and the Brahms and the Rutter
• Accompaniment material — piano-vocal scores, organ editions, accompanist books, handbell music
• Choir folders, music stands of paper, hymn-board numbers, and the contents of the choir-room cabinets generally
• Songbooks, music education materials, and any books — church libraries often hold more than music, and NMLP takes books, DVDs, and CDs alongside the music

There is no condition rule. Water-stained, mildewed from a leaky storeroom, marked up in pencil by forty years of choir members, falling out of its binding — bring it. I sort condition after pickup so the church doesn't have to.

And the church library, not just the choir room. Most churches clearing a choir library also have books elsewhere in the building — a parish library, Sunday-school and Christian-education materials, Vacation Bible School supplies, leftover rummage-sale stock, a retiring pastor's study being emptied. NMLP takes those in the same visit, or comes back for them. A church doesn't need to sort which is the “book” call and which is the “music” call — it is one pickup, one contact, whatever the building needs cleared. For most churches the music clearance is simply the first time I meet.

Where the music goes — the honest answer

Churches ask, and they deserve a straight answer rather than a comfortable one.

Most of a church choir library is paper-recycled. This is the honest expectation, and it is worth saying plainly. A choir library built up over decades is mostly superseded hymnal editions, anthems most directors already own, and octavos in quantities no choir needs. By the time a church is clearing it, the music has usually already been offered around — to other choirs, to the regional music community — and there were no takers. That is the normal story. For the bulk of a choir library, the realistic outcome is recycling.

Whatever can be rehomed, I try to rehome. If a piece can genuinely go back into a choir's rehearsal folder — an accompaniment edition still in print, a hymnal edition a small congregation still sings from, a clean set of a standard anthem — I make the effort to route it to a choir, a school or community music program, or a music director who can use it. I don't promise it, because for most church music there is simply no onward home, and I would rather be honest than hopeful. But the attempt is real.

What I can promise is the part that matters most: it is handled as paper recycling, not thrown in a dumpster. The material goes to a regional paper recycler; binding and non-paper components are dealt with appropriately. A church clearing a choir library really has two options — a dumpster or NMLP — and the difference is that one is a landfill and the other is recycling, carried out by hand by one person so no volunteer hurts their back.

And the church does not have to be the one to decide what is salvageable. That triage is heavy — emotionally as much as physically. I take the whole collection and sort it afterward. The church gets a cleared room and an honest account of where the music went.

Why a church usually calls

Five situations account for nearly every church-music pickup:

• The choir is disbanding. The singers have aged, the program has wound down, and the library outlived the choir.
• The music director is retiring. A new director arrives with a different repertoire, and decades of the predecessor's library needs to clear to make room.
• The congregation is merging or closing. Two churches become one, or a church closes its doors, and the music has to go somewhere as the building is emptied.
• Worship style has changed. A church moves to projected lyrics, a praise band, or contemporary worship, and the old hymnal stock and choral library are no longer used.
• A storeroom flooded or the cabinets are simply full. Sometimes it is just space — the music has accumulated past the room, and some of it took water damage in storage.

Whichever it is, the call is the same: 702-496-4214. tell me roughly how much there is — a few boxes, a wall of cabinets, a whole choir room — and I schedule a pickup.

How a choir-library pickup works

It is a single-operator service, and that is deliberate. When you call, you reach Josh — the person who will actually do the pickup. I agree on a time. On the day, the operator arrives with a hand truck and dollies, and carries every box, every cabinet drawer's worth of music, and every stack of hymnals out personally. The church staff does not lift anything. The choir librarian does not have to pre-sort, pre-box, or pre-clean. The cabinets can be emptied as they stand.

A recent Albuquerque church pickup is a fair picture of the scale this service handles: a full choir library — roughly 3,000 pounds of choral music, hymnals, octavos, Mass settings, and accompaniment scores, drawer after drawer of hand-labeled folders — cleared in a single visit, every item hand-carried by one person across about two and a half hours of work. The church got its room back the same afternoon. In the words of the church's own thank-you afterward: they were "so appreciative to find a home for my beloved music." That is the outcome NMLP is built to deliver: the room cleared the same afternoon, no volunteer's back thrown out carrying file cabinets, and the music handled with care — recycled responsibly rather than dumped, with a genuine try at rehoming anything that still can be sung.

For churches outside the immediate Albuquerque metro — Rio Rancho, Corrales, Bernalillo, the East Mountains, Santa Fe, Los Lunas, Belen, and statewide New Mexico — pickup is still free; I cover the distance for a full choir library.

For music directors, choir librarians, and church administrators

If you are the staff member tasked with clearing the music, here is what makes this easy:

• No sorting required. Leave the cabinets as they are. I take it all and sort condition afterward.
• No lifting required. The operator carries every item. Choir-room file cabinets are heavy when full; that is my job, not yours.
• No cost. Free pickup, any volume.
• No disposal guilt. Most is recycled responsibly rather than landfilled; anything that can be rehomed, I try to.
• One contact. You call one number, you talk to the person who shows up, and the collection is handled in one visit.

If your church works with a moving company during a relocation or closure, or an estate-style cleanout service, those services can loop NMLP in directly for the music portion — it is often the part they are least equipped to place thoughtfully.

A note on the music itself

Choral music is not like other paper. A folder of anthems carries the pencil marks of every choir member who sang from it — breath marks, cut-time reminders, a name in the corner. A church clearing its library is not clearing inventory; it is closing a chapter. I treat it that way. Most of it will be recycled — that is the honest expectation for a decades-deep choir library — and I will try to rehome whatever genuinely can sing again. Either way it leaves the building with dignity, carried out by hand, not bagged for the trash.

Related pages

Last reviewed 2026-05-20. NMLP is a for-profit New Mexico business; donations are not tax-deductible. Church music pickup is provided free of charge, any volume, any condition, across the Albuquerque metro and statewide New Mexico. Corrections: [email protected].