First Houston Bach to Rock Franchise Featured in Houston Chronicle

Houston-area natives to oversee operations of new music school

The Houston Chronicle recently highlighted the new Bach to Rock franchise opening soon in the Memorial area of Houston, Texas. The new site, which will be located at 9075 Katy Free­way, Suite A, is currently under construction and is tentatively slated to open by February 2016. The new location will be the first in the Houston area, and joins 11 other Bach to Rock music schools currently open in the U.S.

Franchise owners Alex and Lynley Stern have obtained rights for two separate Bach to Rock locations and are currently scouting out potential spots for the second location. Both Bach to Rock franchises will offer music instruction programs for children and adults, including individual lessons, group classes and summer camps.

“We both grew up in Hous­ton, so we are pretty fa­mil­iar with Hous­ton proper,” Alex says. “We are think­ing about the West Univer­sity/Bel­laire area or maybe Su­gar Land or The Wood­lands. The thing about Hous­ton is there are so many great ar­eas.”

Alex grew up in Bel­laire and at­tended Bel­laire High School. His wife, Lyn­ley, grew up in the Me­mo­rial area and at­tended Me­mo­rial High School. Both at­tended the Univer­sity of Texas. Alex Stern has an In­ter­net mar­ket­ing back­ground; Lyn­ley Stern is a school teacher. Their educations, career backgrounds and love of music have helped prepare them both for the responsibilities that being a Bach to Rock franchise owner will bring.

“We both love work­ing with kids,” Alex says. “We are both from big fam­i­lies with a lot of nieces and neph­ews. Bach to Rock is a con­cept that re­ally hit home for us be­cause we are both pas­sion­ate about mu­sic, and we wanted to find a busi­ness where we could work with kids. We ex­cel in that en­vi­ron­ment.”

The Bach to Rock music school franchise continues to grow at impressive speed. The franchise is of­ten named to En­trepreneur mag­a­zine’s Fran­chise 500 list and, in 2014, was named one of the fastest-grow­ing pri­vate com­pa­nies in Amer­ica for the third year in a row by Inc. Mag­a­zine. The franchise is also ranked as one of Fran­chise Times mag­a­zine’s 500 Pow­er­house Brands, and is on its Next 300 Fran­chise Sys­tem list.

The new Me­mo­rial lo­ca­tion is among five fran­chise schools the com­pany cur­rently has in de­vel­op­ment, four of which are open­ing this win­ter. An ad­di­tional 30 schools sold na­tion­wide.

“Our suc­cess would not be pos­si­ble with­out our ded­i­cated fran­chisees and site di­rec­tors who are fo­cused on bring­ing mu­sic and arts pro­grams into cities across the coun­try,” says Bach to Rock President Brian Gross. “We look for­ward to of­fer­ing our fun, pro­gres­sive cur­ricu­lum to fam­i­lies in these new mar­kets.”

Alex says the mu­sic lessons in­dus­try is un­der­de­vel­oped in Hous­ton, and that the new Bach to Rock location will offer a mod­ern so­lu­tion to fill that void.

“Mu­sic lessons are tra­di­tion­ally more of an old-school mar­ket where you go to the back of a gui­tar cen­ter or to one-on-one lessons in homes,” he says. “It isn’t in­ter­ac­tive. It’s not fun and mod­ern. Most kids burn out quickly when they have to learn tech­ni­cal stuff. With Bach to Rock, stu­dents point the di­rec­tion of where we go. If they want to learn Tay­lor Swift, we learn Tay­lor Swift and do all sorts of fun things.”

The music school also gets stu­dents into mini-bands of three or four peo­ple with an in­struc­tor to col­lab­o­rate and build con­fi­dence, and is where Adam says the “real magic happens.”
“Each stu­dent is on a dif­fer­ent in­stru­ment. They get to cre­ate their band name, and it’s very cool in­ter­ac­tion that gives these kids a real taste of mu­sic. They are not just stuck in a back­room some­where by them­selves,” he says.