New York, NY –– Music Will, a leading nonprofit provider of free musical instruments and teacher training to U.S. public schools, hosted its second annual Big Kids Rock! Battle of the Bands fundraiser at the Hard Rock Café in Times Square on Thursday, June 12th. More than $92,500 was raised through ticket sales, raffles, and a “sponsor-a-school” donation portion of the program.
Music Will is the nation’s leading nonprofit provider of music lessons and instruments to under-served public school districts across the country, currently serving over 130,000 children in 25 cities, including more than 26,000 kids in New York City. The charity’s curriculum is rooted in teaching kids to perform, improvise and compose the popular musical styles that kids already know and love, like pop, rock, hip hop, blues, country, reggae, country and funk.
Last year’s reigning champs The London Wail, defended their title against Zero Recall and Big House Groove and took home the title once again. Band members included Music Will supporters from Taylor Woods Capital Management, The Blackstone Group and River Birch Capital. A special performance by students enrolled in Music Will’s free music program at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens inspired the crowd into a giving frenzy, helping expand music programming in schools through the city.
They were judged by legends in the music industry including Liberty DeVitto (Billy Joel’s drummer 1976-2006), Ricky Byrd (guitarist from Joan Jett and the Blackhearts) and the Beehive Queen Christine Ohlman (Saturday Night Live Band vocalist).
About Music Will:
Music Will is a national nonprofit that transforms children’s lives by restoring and revitalizing music education in under-served public schools. The organization trains, equips and supports public school teachers in under-served school districts to run Modern Band programs, which focus on teaching music as a second language and engaging kids with lessons rooted in the popular musical genres that they know and love, like rock, hip hop, pop, country, blues, reggae and funk. Music Will also donates all of the instruments and curricular resources necessary to run this Modern Band program. To date they have reached more than 300,000 students in 25 cities and currently serves more than 9,000 students in 130 LAUSD schools. More info at https://musicwill.org
About the Bands:
The London Wail: The London Wail often overestimates the predictive power of our own intuition. When in doubt, we ask ourselves “what could go wrong?” and then ignore the answer. The London Wail find it difficult to keep things in perspective. We often confuse songs that are good with songs that we know how to play, though we are always extremely confident in the outcome.
Zero Recall: Zero Recall is an all out, fun time cover band from New York City. The goal every time we play is to make awesome music and to make the crowd dance and sing along. We all come from different backgrounds and draw from many musical genres for our performances. We look forward to entertaining you soon!
Big House Groove: A blues based, funk inspired band not afraid to extend a song for another jam. Big House Groove draws from their classic blues and blues rock influences such as The Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, The Black Crowes, The Rolling Stones, Freddie, B.B., Albert, Muddy and Elmore, as well as funk/jam band influences like The Meters, Soulive and Phish. Respecting the tradition of the music and applying our groove to the jam, we look to perform tunes we dig, that have influenced our musical journey.
