School of Rock
If Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus have you worried over the musical taste of the next generation, have no fear. An after-school franchise is educating thousands of kids on the importance of the power chord, walking bass line and the all-important rock ‘n’ roll scowl.School of Rock (SOR), founded in 1998 by Paul Green (who left the company a decade later), aims to provide a thorough music education. But instead of making clients slog through scales and time signatures on the oboe or the glockenspiel, SOR takes the opposite approach. First, kids get up and running on classic rock tunes, then they come back and learn about the scales and modes they’ve been playing.
“Music is part of the human soul; it existed before speech in most cultures,” says SOR CEO Chris Catalano.