2010.09.21 - Little Kids Rock - Q&A with Matt at McKinley School

Report in Pasadena Star-News, Sept. 21:
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School of Rock lives in Pasadena

PASADENA – Wearing head-to-toe black with red suede shoes, Matt Sorum looked every bit the perennial rock star as he waited outside the McKinley School auditorium Tuesday.

The former Guns N’ Roses drummer – he’s now with Velvet Revolver – was dropping by to unveil a new drum set for the school, and to jam with about 50 eager students.

Inside the auditorium, the atmosphere buzzed with a low-level excitement, rose to a frenetic whisper, then exploded into riotous screams as Sorum entered.

Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit program aimed at filling gaps in public schools where music and arts funding has been obliterated in the economic crunch, brings celebrities like Sorum to schools to encourage the next generation of artists.

“We’re one of the leading organizations for free instruments and music programs,” said program coordinator Miranda Altman. “What we do is we get kids improvising, writing songs, performing popular music. These visits are a way to get kids excited about it.”

In Pasadena alone, Little Kids Rock serves around 900 students.

At McKinley, fifth-grade teacher Raimer Rojas went through night and weekend training sessions to learn curriculums before the organization donated 10 keyboards and 10 guitars – and then more, when demand went up – to his after-school classes.

Haily Gold, now a seventh-grader, learned guitar with Rojas two years ago.

“I thought it was really cool,” she said of the classes. Rojas “didn’t just use music after school – he used it during class to teach us things, too.”

While the program was launched in 2002, outreach coordinator Keith Hejna said the roots were planted much earlier.

“In 1996, David Wish was a regular elementary school teacher upset about having no music programs in school, so he started giving free guitar lessons to kids after school. He got a grant, more volunteers, started training teachers, and raising money,” he said.

Now, said Hejna, the program reaches about 55,000 kids across the country.

After pulling a sheet off the “surprise” drum kit, one of 100 donated by Musician’s Friend to LKR programs across the country, Sorum sat down to play “Eleanor Rigby” and “Eye of the Tiger” with the kids. Rojas looked at least as excited as his students.

Sorum fielded several variations of the same question from the students (the answer to which was invariably “The Beatles”), and summed up his early start, at age 5: “I saw the Beatles on TV; I pointed at the drummer,” he said.

The musician, who recently co-founded a nonprofit with similar objectives, Adopt the Arts Foundation, told his young fans, “We’re trying to to help bring back music to schools because the government is trying to take it away. It’s the only thing in life that keeps everyone connected.”

Gold said she’d never heard of Guns N’ Roses before. “But I was really excited once I learned about the band,” she said.

A small boy in the front row, even younger than Gold, likely didn’t know the seminal band that dominated popular music for nearly two decades, either.

But it mattered little: When Sorum sat down to play a virtuosic solo, the boy’s face fell flat. Mesmerized, he sat stone-like until the tempo peaked, a slow smile cracking across his face.

https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2010/09/21/school-of-rock-lives-in-pasadena/