HERO Guitar - Mario Licciardi
HERO Guitar - Mario Licciardi
HERO Guitar - Mario Licciardi
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<strong>Mario</strong> started Rockstar 101 at Consolidated<br />
Music, the music store located in the Barrington<br />
Commons, four years ago. A guitar instructor at<br />
Consolidated Music for 16 years, <strong>Mario</strong> had been<br />
mulling the idea of playing mentor to young rock<br />
bands for a long time, but the true impetus was<br />
the persistent popularity of the 2003 Jack Black<br />
movie, “School of Rock.”<br />
“It made parents and adults realize what a fun<br />
thing it is for kids to learn rock ’n’ roll,” <strong>Mario</strong> says.<br />
The movie inspired an influx of rock ’n’ roll classes,<br />
but <strong>Mario</strong> believed many were too regimented.<br />
He wanted to create something looser, something<br />
that reflected the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll. “The<br />
Rockstar thing is really cool,” <strong>Mario</strong> says, “because<br />
I’m definitely an individual who likes to teach to<br />
individuals.”<br />
Once students enroll in Rockstar 101, <strong>Mario</strong><br />
arranges them into bands of four to six members<br />
sorted into the classic garage band arrangement:<br />
drummer, bassist, singer, one to three guitarists,<br />
and possibly a keyboard player. Students range in<br />
age from 8 to 17, and <strong>Mario</strong> prefers that they have<br />
six to nine months of music instruction before<br />
signing up.<br />
we’re an american band<br />
<strong>Mario</strong> lets the students choose their band’s name.<br />
He gets them started with simple songs of two<br />
or three chords and one or two change-ups, but<br />
108 • Quintessential Barrington | QBarrington.com<br />
the bands determine their own set lists. “I let the<br />
kids pick the songs,” he says, “which is really cool.”<br />
Students play everything from Chuck Berry to the<br />
Beatles to Nirvana to the White Stripers. At the<br />
end of the three-week session, the bands “graduate”<br />
with a concert at the Penny Road Pub in<br />
South Barrington.<br />
Steve Muscarello’s daughter, Alyssa, is a Barrington<br />
High School student and Rockstar 101<br />
veteran (at age 15) who is lead singer in the band<br />
Theater Candy. He will never forget the look of<br />
joy on her face the first time she performed at the<br />
Penny Road Pub. “After the show, she said to me,<br />
‘This is the best day of my life!’”<br />
Steve adds, “This really has been life-changing<br />
for her. It’s probably the most important thing in<br />
her life right now.”<br />
<strong>Mario</strong> believes Rockstar can be life-changing<br />
because it teaches lessons beyond musicianship.<br />
“It’s about the whole entire band having to learn<br />
the song and playing it in time,” he says. To do<br />
that, they must master communication skills.<br />
“They learn they have to speak and not text or<br />
Twitter each other.”<br />
it’s only rock ‘n’ roll<br />
<strong>Mario</strong> usually sees students coming to grips with<br />
this issue after a few weeks. “By the third or fourth<br />
class of the session, they see that they have to address<br />
the issue of the musicality of the band face<br />
to face, with each other, and with me. They have to<br />
face the music, so to speak.”<br />
Teamwork grows from this kind of communication,<br />
as 11-year-old guitarist, Joseph Jazwinski<br />
of Cary realized. “It’s not that you all have to learn<br />
to play your parts. It’s harder than that,” says Joseph,<br />
who plays in a White Stripes cover band. “It<br />
makes you realize that teamwork really does count<br />
in everything,” adds the band’s 10-year-old lead<br />
singer, Gracie Ransom of Lake Barrington.<br />
Seventeen-year-old Ron Gierlach, who will<br />
be a senior at Barrington High School this fall,<br />
says he gained leadership skills through Rockstar.<br />
“Even if I’m not the most talented musician in the<br />
room, I’m the one who knows how to get everything<br />
together,” he says, “and if it weren’t for Rockstar,<br />
I’d be just as lost as I was before.”<br />
Ron adds that he loves spending time with<br />
<strong>Mario</strong> simply talking rock history. “I’m always<br />
bouncing bands off of <strong>Mario</strong>, and he’s always<br />
bouncing bands off of me.”<br />
Joseph’s mother, Tamara Jazwinski, has noted<br />
this connection between <strong>Mario</strong> and his students.<br />
“He’s like the Pied Piper,” she says. “Kids follow<br />
him, they ask him questions. He keeps them curious.”<br />
<strong>Mario</strong> has a dual passion for music and teaching.<br />
A major reason that he created the Rockstar<br />
program was to give students the benefit of something<br />
he didn’t have at their age. “It may sound<br />
Reprinted With Permission - Quintessential Barrington Magazine - Copyright © 2011