Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aaron Sizemore. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Aaron, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
My wife and I were working musicians who recognized a major flaw in the traditional approach to private music lessons. These lessons usually occur in a little room in the back of a sheet music store, or maybe in someone’s home. The student shows up to the first lesson with all kinds of exciting dreams about what it will be like to be a musician. And then reality sets in. Daily practice, punctuated only by a 30-minute one-on-one lesson, week after week. The lesson, itself, is the main musical event for the student which is kind of an existential dead end. This doesn’t work. Lessons should exist so that the student can “do” music, for real, outside of the lesson. Music is a communal art form — it’s a language and a culture.
So I called up a bunch of my musician friends — drummers, horn players, pianists, etc. — and asked them if they had any students with potential, but just hadn’t caught “the bug” yet. All of them, of course, did. I contacted their parents and proposed an idea. I’d rent rehearsal space for the students, coach them through a series of rehearsals, and book them a gig. I ended with two full bands worth of students and the experience was transformational. Students who had been languishing in the never-ending treadmill of private lessons suddenly “got it.” They were excited and motivated in a way that my colleagues and I had never seen before. All those abstract concepts about musicianship we’d been trying to teach our students suddenly clicked into place. And. upon reflection, it made perfect sense. The students were actually “doing” music for the first time. They were speaking the language and making social connections.
Pretty soon word got out and I found myself with more and more students who wanted to do this. I went from 2 bands, to 4 bands, to 6 bands. My wife, a classical oboist, was helping me coach the bands by this time and we thought, “We need to do this for real.” So we created a place where students can collaborate, perform, and feel part of something
bigger than themselves.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Before I started the school, I was a jazz musician who performed an average of 5 nights per week. I supplemented that with some teaching on the side, which I discovered I enjoyed and was good at.
It’s funny, but sometimes I feel as if Music House is solving a problem that people don’t realize they have. No one seems to question how out of touch music education has become. The mediocrity is just left unexamined and is accepted. Private lessons are flawed because you can’t teach a language and communal art form in a 30-minute one-on-one format. School music programs are out of touch because they’re based on a model that was developed in the early 20th century when band and orchestral music dominated the culture. So people often come to us expecting more of the same and we get to say, “Oh boy, are you in for a surprise!” Usually, they’re surprised and excited, but sometimes they’re overwhelmed. They imagined an old lady and a piano and we’re talking about concerts, bands, jams, and all these collaborative opportunities. I think that’s my favorite part of the job — that eye-opening moment when people see the possibilities they hadn’t even considered.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I started the school with my wife, Katrinka. We were total partners and I trusted and relied on her completely. After two years of running the very quickly growing business, we discovered that she had stage 4 breast cancer. She was only 30 at the time. We decided that her job should be her health and that I would run the business on my own, but I secretly thought that I would probably fail, To my surprise, I didn’t. In fact, I opened a second location three years later.
I was hit with a much more profound sense of despair and imminent doom after she died. I felt that the school was part of her legacy and that to fail would somehow betray her memory. But again, I didn’t. Three years later I opened a third location and take great satisfaction in the thought that she would be proud.
How’d you meet your business partner?
My wife and I actually met while teaching the sort of music lessons that we eventually endeavored to disrupt and fix. We were both teaching out of little studios in a music store and it was love at first sight.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.musichouseschool.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musichousekc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MusicHouseSchool/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/music-house-school-of-music
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/musichousekc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-knUMW37a9Rzg_c40rPnvg
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/music-house-school-of-music-overland-park-overland-park
- Other: The yelp list above is for the Overland Park location. Lenexa location: https://www.yelp.com/biz/music-house-school-of-music-lenexa-lenexa Prairie Village location: https://www.yelp.com/biz/music-house-school-of-music-prairie-village-prairie-village