For the fifth year in a row, the Rock Academy has brought home first place for music school in Chronogram’s Readers’ Choice Awards. For director Jason Bowman, the honor isn’t about trophies.
Founded in Woodstock in 2018 with a mission to teach music through performance, the school has become something more: a lifeline for kids who don’t thrive in traditional classrooms, a home for budding creatives, and—depending on whom you ask—the reason there are fewer teenagers experimenting with substances on the Town Green. “It’s a community,” Bowman says. “One hundred percent.”
Bowman says he sees kids come to the music school who have had a “tough time in the public education system, don’t talk much, and have problems with eye contact.” However, once they experience their program, those same kids are seen on a stage playing a Fender Telecaster, waving their curly hair back and forth, and rocking out “Under Pressure” by Queen and Bowie, their friends, parents, and grandparents watching from the seats.
This change that is seen in kids is in part to the small-size of the Rock Academy, and the individual attention its instructors are able to provide. “We are not a big corporation with a one-size-fits-all approach,” Bowman says. The Rock Academy is tailored to the experience level and interest of any given group of students. This is particularly shown when picking its seasonal shows, which are based almost entirely on what the kids want to and are capable of playing.
There is much to come for these talented kids, from their summer shows at the Rosendale Street Festival and the Woodstock Library Fair, to the regional tour their showband is embarking on, starting in Maine and ending with a homecoming show at the Colony in Woodstock on August 6. The Rock Academy is just “so grateful to the community for their involvement, and the love and support they have given us over the years,” Bowman says.
