PORTLAND -- Nearly every weekday afternoon, the upper floors of the Parish House of Woodfords Congregational Church bustle with students.

Children skip down the hallway, musical instruments in tow. The sounds of violin, piano and guitar emanate from behind the glass-and-wood doors that shutter the private music studios.

The church has always been a vibrant place, but never quite so much since the Portland Conservatory of Music moved in as a primary tenant in January.

"We're popping the lid off," said Deirdre McClure, the conservatory's executive director.

Founded in 1995, the conservatory helped anchor the upper end of Free Street on the Portland peninsula for more than a decade. Along with the Maine College of Art, the Portland Museum of Art and the Children's Museum of Maine, the conservatory added to the vitality of the Arts District by bringing hundreds of musicians into downtown almost every weekday.

But with a student population approaching 350, the conservatory simply ran out of space at its Free Street location, said board president Laura Williams. So it signed a five-year lease with Woodfords, ensuring its new home for the immediate future. The decision to move to Woodfords in Portland's Deering section wasn't easy, Williams said. Giving up a lease in a downtown building that offered high visibility created much discussion and consternation among board members. But the move made the most sense to enable the conservatory to grow.

"Our location at Free Street was just too small. We couldn't do what we needed to do," said Williams, who, in addition to serving as board president, also takes piano lessons at the conservatory.

"We couldn't grow and become anything other than what we already were."

The marriage of the conservatory and the church represents an example of nonprofit organizations working together for a common goal, said Carolyn Lambert, the church's associate minister.

For Woodfords, it means adding a tenant consistent with its mission that will utilize space in the 1920s Parish House, which otherwise remains mostly vacant except for Sunday school classes.

For the conservatory, it means easier access for students with ample and free parking, better options for concerts and the opportunity for growth.

Perhaps most important, Williams said, the conservatory can now enroll students and hire faculty with disabilities. At its Free Street location, it could not because the building lacked an elevator. Woodfords has an elevator, making it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"Being ADA-compliant was very important to us. How can you hold your head up when you are not ADA-compliant? That weighed heavily on us before," she said.

Bob Adams, a musician's parent from Falmouth, endorsed the move to Woodfords.

Sitting in a church lounge awaiting the beginning of his daughter Ellie's guitar lesson, he said the central location of the church makes it convenient for people, and easier to reach -- especially during the late-afternoon rush hour.

"There's plenty of parking, and that's an important factor. It was very hard to find a place to park on Free Street," he said. "And it's a nice facility. The rooms are nice and big."

The conservatory is a community music school that enrolls students of all ages and abilities. Most of its programming involves private lessons. It also hosts a rock 'n' roll camp, and sponsors recitals and concerts by students and faculty. Lambert said the church is pleased to have an anchor tenant. It rents out and makes available for free many rooms for various nonprofit groups. Partnering with the music school on a long-term lease makes sense because music already is an institutional focus of the church, she said.

The Portland String Quartet is among many musical groups that use the church for rehearsals and concerts, and the church choir, under the direction of Harold Stover, stays active all year.

"Music already is an important part of who we are as people of faith and how we use our facilities. But the possibility of teaming up with an organization that would use our classroom facilities during the week seemed like a no-brainer," Lambert said.

"Most of the time, our buildings are empty, but they still must be heated and cared for. For quite some time now, we've been looking to team up with another group or organization."

McClure, the conservatory's executive director, said the partnership feels natural.

"We're both stirring the soup to create better people. We're in the business of improving the human spirit through music education. The church is doing the same thing, but in a religious way. We're both trying to make complete human beings, only our work is just a little bit louder."

For information about the Portland Conservatory of Music, visit www.portlandconservatory.net.