N.Y. school is almost ready to rock ’n’ roll

College aims to attract, stimulate talented musicians

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. — It’s a syllabus you can headbang to.

Students at the Woodstock Music Lab will bend notes alongside guitar heroes, and jamming in class will be encouraged. Assignments will include re-creating the Beach Boys’ classic “Pet Sounds” note-for-note and making a progressive rock album based on Egyptian mythology.

So it will go at the rock school for college-age students planned for the famous Catskill Mountains artists’ colony in the coming years. Think Juilliard with power chords. Or, as cofounder Paul Green said, think of a “giant, fertile petri dish” where young guitarists, producers and arrangers rub shoulders with each other.

“Odds are you can step out of the studio and say, ‘I need a saxophone,’ and some other kid here working on a jazz project will say, ‘I’ll be right down!’ ” Green said as he showed off the old elementary school that will be repurposed. “It gives you that sort of Abbey Road, Muscle Shoals, Motown sort of collective beehive.”

Green is the voluble, veteran rock teacher often credited as being the inspiration for Jack Black’s character in the 2003 movie “School of Rock,” though the film’s writer has denied that. Among the other cofounders is Michael Lang, the promoter of the original 1969 Woodstock festival, which took place in a muddy field some 50 miles from here.

Their group has raised several million dollars and needs more than twice that amount. They hope to open the school as early as next year, though Lang said that timetable is optimistic. The school will offer a two-year program in which students will learn performing, production, arranging and marketing.

The founders are looking to attract talented collegeage and post-college students. Metalheads, indietypes and beat-makers are all welcome.

Everyone will take two instruments per semester, one the student chooses and the other chosen by faculty members.

The school will not grant degrees at first, but the founders expect students will be able to earn college credits acceptable at other institutions.

A big attraction will be guest professors. Green and Lang will use their music world connections to bring in names, some who have homes in the woods around Woodstock. For now, they’re naming just a handful, such as former Yes singer Jon Anderson.

Mark Mulligan, a music industry analyst at Londonbased Midia Research, said such a talent incubator could be useful, especially in an era when musicians looking to get signed need to work not only on music, but skills such as marketing and social media.

“To be an artist in the current era — right or wrong, good or bad — requires much more than being a good musician,” he said.