AVENUES

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THE PRACTICE ROOM

We are partnered with Avenues: The World School, providing our group classes and private lessons for Avenues students, on the Avenues campus.

To enroll in any of the lessons or group classes below, you will need to register through the Avenues enrollment portal, not through The Practice Room.

Spring 2025 After-School Groups

  • The Yellow Sweatband Party

    Pre-K-K, Mondays

    leaders: Ari Brand and Carrie Henrichson

    We are going to keep being weird with this one. Join us after-school on Mondays for a continuing experiment in musical creativity. This multifaceted party/project is designed to be the perfect antidote to a long Monday at school. Along with music and singing games, we will be learning and deeply engaging with at least one full song and using the song to inspire student-led choreography, props, scripts, and costumes as needed to express our understanding of the music. Our final goal is the creation of an art-filled music video showcasing this mishmash of music, art, theatre, and general messiness. It’s going to be cool. After an incredible fall semester with the Coldplay classic Yellow, we will be using yet another yellow themed song to celebrate our favorite color- YELLOW!

    *yellow sweatband is included

  • Circle Sing

    1st-5th grade, Tuesdays

    leaders: Amber Mitchell and Jules Kucks

    Welcome to our casual singing group for 1st-5th graders who want to sing with their friends. In Circle Sing, we meet weekly to practice vocal warmups, work on understanding our breath, play vocal games, learn how to harmonize, and, most importantly, sing (and sometimes move!) as a group, with feeling. Repertoire will be mostly selected from the pop and rock canon, with some musical theatre thrown in. This semester we will be learning about group vocal improvisation and collaborative songwriting. This project is open to anyone who wants to sing.


  • The Yellow Sweatband Club

    Nursery, Wednesdays

    leader: Ari Brand and Aaron Ray

    Get ready to boogie!! This engaging group will be an often rowdy, sometimes soft singalong style music class where we will stomp our feet, clap our hands, sing, and dance to classic songs loved by children, with some adult favorites thrown in. Exploring volume, tempo, and different moods in music will be celebrated in all their amazing extremes. It’ll be sweaty, joyful, and fun.

    *yellow sweatband is included

  • Producing a Beat

    1st-5th grade, Thursdays

    leaders: Sean Hannon and Brian Bibb

    Let’s be real, y’all: music producers make hits, not guitarists! The digital age is upon us and technology has become an integral part of every professional field…and music is no exception! Every star, whether it’s Beyonce, Chappell Roan or Taylor Swift, has an entire team of producers who compose, write, and arrange in the digital medium to create the sound of the modern classics we know and love.

    In this collaborative and casual class we will use synthesizers, drum loops, digital pianos, and programs like GarageBand, to help students learn how to make their own songs, step by step, and upload their creations to streaming services, like Spotify and Apple Music, culminating in an end of the semester album release party. In the Producing a Beat studio they will learn the basics and fundamentals of music and songwriting, adapted to the digital environment they are already familiar with- their laptops and headphones. Basically, it’ll feel like they are playing Roblox with their friends, but they are writing hits? Can we say this?! Sure. By the end of the semester, they’ll feel equipped and empowered to go home, put on their headphones, slap on some drum loops, and upload their dope lil’ contributions to the music world.

Private Lessons at Avenues

Lessons at the Early Learning Center (ELC)

We understand that students this age might not be quite ready to dive into traditional 30 minute lessons on one instrument. To bridge this gap, our private Music Exploration lessons are created to inspire and encourage curiosity about all forms of music, while preparing students to confidently begin private lessons on a primary instrument in the near future.

Each Music Exploration lesson is tailored just for your child’s interests and abilities and includes activities meant to introduce musical vocabulary and concepts, while keeping the body moving and singing. Among other things, students will play on multiple melodic and rhythmic instruments, write songs, and use their bodies to understand concepts like pulse, tempo, rhythm, and dynamics. Note reading and musical notation are immediately introduced, using color coding for pre-readers and more traditional letter names for readers. After one or two semesters, students are fully ready to transition into piano or loog guitar lessons- ahead of the curve!

If you believe your child would thrive in a more traditional lesson, focusing on learning a primary instrument right away, that is available- just let the teacher know what your goals are at the beginning of the semester.

Lessons for Lower Division (LD)

Join us after-school for our private 45 minute music lessons on piano, voice, guitar, bass, ukulele, and woodwinds.

In these supportive lessons, each teacher sets appropriate goals, based on each student’s unique personality and interest.

We teach all levels and all styles of music. Is your 11 year old only interested in Taylor Swift songs? We can use these songs to teach all of the musical concepts taught in more traditional lessons, while keeping his or her interest. If Bach is more your thing, we have extremely skilled, classically trained teachers on our team that would be delighted to dive deep.

All lessons will include the teaching of note reading, level appropriate rhythmic concepts, technique, and will always encourage creativity on the instrument.

The ultimate goal for all of our lessons is to create a practice habit away from the school. We often talk about the “practice of practicing”, which is not only required for technical progress, but can create independence, curiosity, and confidence. For many of us, and our students, the “practice of practicing” is experienced much like meditation or yoga. It’s a time to put the phone away, leave self judgment at the door, and become curious about what we are capable of, when we actually give ourselves the chance.

*all students at this age must have an instrument to practice on at home! Ask us if you’re unsure what is needed.