Craig Sasson
Imagine a 7-year-old playing live in a band on Broadway. That’s not out of reach for students at the School of Rock in Franklin. The school's December showcase is set for Tin Roof.
After 15 years working at other School of Rock franchises in Connecticut and New Jersey, new owner Craig Sasson jumped at the chance to own School of Rock in Franklin, with proximity to Music City. The program offers after-school programming and summer camps, with students taking part in private lessons and bands, rotating between categories of focus like Woodstock, New Wave or classic rock, among others.
Since he took the helm in July, Sasson has added 30 or so students, bringing the total enrollment to 170. His goal is to reach 250 to 300 students in 2026. Sasson has also opened up the school on Saturdays, and is opening the programming to more adults and younger children.
The School of Rock in Franklin is set to play on the main stage at PumpkinFest next week. Sasson sat down with the Williamson Scene to discuss his new role.
What has been your history with School of Rock, and what led you to this role in Nashville?
I've always been really, really passionate about music education, especially with kids, because I just see how it transforms them. I've worked for different franchise owners, and I've worked for the [School of Rock] corporate entity, and it was great and fulfilling, but I always had a dream to own my own school. I always really was attracted to the Nashville area just because it's Music City.
A year ago, I was very much looking out the window every day saying, "Is this it? There's got to be more to life." I knew I needed to get my passion back, and I knew that was owning my own school. So when the opportunity rose, and it was in Franklin — which is just such a great community — I jumped all over it.
I noticed with School of Rock, there's definitely an emphasis on performing live. Tell me about why that's important to you.
Especially in Nashville, you can get a guitar lesson from anyone, but the big differentiator with us is the performance aspect. We're putting students together in bands pretty early on, and we're pairing it with a private lesson. Most places are just doing a private lesson and there’s not really an end goal and an end game.
They're taking their private lesson and what they learn in that, and they're applying it every single week in this band situation with their friends. They don’t want to let their friends down, so they’re working at home really hard on the material. Plus it's material and songs that they're into, that they can relate to.
The transformation that you see from students starting out at the beginning of that, and then four months later when they perform, is how much more confidence they have and how much more they believe in themselves. They've made more friends. We change lives every single day. We say “The stage is the ultimate teacher.”
How does working here and teaching music here differ from New York and New Jersey?
One of the first things that I noticed here was how plugged in the teachers were, how passionate and committed they actually are to these students and to the end results. They're all songwriters, they're all musicians, so they all are really, really invested in the students and getting them on the right path. I've noticed that it was just harder to locate those people in New York and the tri-state area, where, here, there's a plethora of them, and they're super talented.
The staff here is just super, super invested into it. Music is their thing. Back home, music was maybe the second thing, another way to supplement what they did. This is their focus down here.
Back home, a lot of times, the music programs, unfortunately, were disappearing in these schools. A lot of times, the only music that they were getting was in a program like ours. Here, the kids are involved in a band or even church. The kids are involved in music a little bit more.
Anything else you’d like to add?
School of Rock is not just a music school, it's like a movement that brings young musicians together, and they get to grow and build confidence and gain real world experience and perform.