For Graysin Slade, the time to help others is now — and with his decades of experience behind the guitar, that means putting music in the hands of others: “You can’t just say, ‘When I have enough ...

On a recent evening in a second-floor room of the University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, Joshua Pongsitiphon tries out the final chords of a funeral march on a slightly out-of-tune piano.

As happy as some people are to mimic their favorite six-string slingers on air guitar (or its digital equivalent, Guitar Hero), some of us actually want to do the real thing—be on stage, playing a ...