School of Rock Berlin

May 13, 2010

Last night, I had the pleasure of playing songs from my new album with three rock bands made up of students age 10-13 years old from the Berlin Cosmopolitan School.

Students and parents from the school plus the public came out to the Grüner Salon in the famous Volksbühne to support the kids and to celebrate music. There was Beat Box training, Salsa lessons, a cool DJ and then me and the kids rockin' out.

The all-girl band, Chinchilla Pearls, began the gig playing "Happy" with me. Mia, Luna, Antonia and Sophia did a wonderful job and looked like rock stars. We missed Charlotte, who was to sing lead, as she was in Paris with her family.

Chinchilla Pearls

Next up was the all-boy band, Square, playing "Bring Me Down". The boys really rocked this song up with Milan, Max, Linus, Vincent and Joshua doing a super job, even coaxing me to change the lyric at the end to "Bring me down to Chinatown". Our inside joke.

Square

Finally, we closed the show with Rockers Paradise, made up of 2 girls and 3 boys, playing "Lost". Theresa, Antonia, Freddy, August and Vincent knocked this one out of the park. They were true professions and gave it loads of rock star attitude.

Rockers Paradise

We filmed the gig and hopefully will have a video for you before too long. Thanks to Graeme Pearce for coming along to film.

Thanks to Tom Fanore and Jessica Roth for organising me doing this project and for their excellent job teaching the kids. They have done an outstanding job with the kids.

Thanks to Kusi who had the original idea of me playing my music with kids and contacting Tom about working with BCS.

Most of all, thanks to the kids for playing my songs with me. We practiced for an hour, one day per week, for four weeks. They embraced the project and brought loads of enthusiasm and energy to the songs and worked very hard learning their parts. I was so impressed by their talent, courage and willingness to take on new projects. Hats off to them!

The Berlin Cosmopolitan School is an international school that has a number of afternoon clubs for the kids to join including yoga, cooking, ballet, Chinese, football (soccer) and rock band.