Joe Russo, John Medeski and Marc Ribot at TeachRock’s Concert for Creative Classrooms (A Gallery + Recap)

Photo Credit: JMSArtandPhoto

On Saturday, December 14, Joe Russo, John Medeski and Marc Ribot united for a headline performance at TeachRock’s Concert for Creative Classrooms benefit event. From the iconic S.O.B.’s in New York, the all-star combo served up a distinctive genre-bending set to advance TeachRock’s mission of using music to reimagine education and engage a new generation of students.

The Concert for Creative Classrooms commenced with a happy hour, which saw VIPs rubbing elbows with TeachRock founder Steven Van Zandt, Medeski, Russo and Ribot, as well as scene favorite attendees like Dark Star Orchestra’s Rob Eaton and Little Feat’s Scott Sharrard and Tony Leone. After the mingling, The Hell or High Water Band kicked off the musical program with an hour of top-tier treatments of the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, both of which are close to the heart of the acclaimed New York cover ensemble.

While the crowd was riding high on an exceptional first set, TeachRock Executive Director Bill Carbone took the stage to introduce TeachRock and its commitment to using that same rush to guide new perspectives on pedagogy. The opening act and headline performance took on new depth as Carbone cued the audience to the connections that we all make through music as adults, and the capacity of that feeling to inspire young minds.

Van Zandt followed Carbone to tell TeachRock’s story in full. Launched over a decade ago by the iconic E Street Band guitarist and multi-hyphenate creative, with the Founders Board of Bono, Jackson Browne, Martin Scorsese and Bruce Springsteen, TeachRock provides vital education resources for schools around the world. Through the sound, stories and science of music, the program endeavors to create engaging lesson plans and materials for history, math, science, design, music and more, using the form’s connective power to inspire students from all walks of life—at no cost to students, teachers or families. TeachRock has found tremendous success with this unique perspective, and today supports over 70,000 educators and 30,000 schools in all 50 US States, England, Spain, Norway and beyond.

“Rediscovering rock’s power was step one. But all of us were getting older—we needed to pass it on,” Van Zandt writes in his memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. “Instilling its lessons, its energy, its intelligence and its spirit in a new generation was our only hope.”

Van Zandt then welcomed the evening’s TeachRock Trailblazer Award honoree, Ben Wides, with a video of his work at East Side Community High in the East Village and the class who testified to TeachRock’s positive impact on their education. After Wides delivered a moving speech on how TeachRock helped his students to become critical thinkers and problem solvers, Carbone and Andrew Blackman–a representative from event sponsor Schulman Lobel–presented the TeachRock Visionary Award to Deborah Solomon; Solomon is the founder and owner of Wall Street Dead aHead Networking Events, which has served TeachRock as its affiliate charity for the past two years.

With the ceremony completed, the stage was set for a performance from the Medeski Russo Ribot Trio. The rarely reunited outfit, comprising three independently storied instrumentalists, pooled their talents and respective expertises for a set that blended jazz, jam, funk, no wave, Cuban, fusion and more into one rich, fluid sound. Without any covers, the band presented an immersive, arresting instrumental set, then accompanied Carbone for a coy Beat poetry-style reading of the evening’s auction winners. By the time the lights went down, the Concert for Creative Classrooms had raised more than $100 thousand to support programs around the world like the ones at East Side Community High.

“This curriculum has a shot to go all the way,” Van Zandt observes. “The arts really are our common ground, worldwide. It’s what brings us together. If we can integrate the arts into every aspect of every curriculum of every school, our depressed society has a chance of returning to the optimism of the ‘60s.”

Get an inside look at the event in the gallery below, courtesy of JMSArtandPhoto. For more information on TeachRock and its inventive offerings–including “the world’s only Grateful Dead curriculum for math, science, social studies, and language arts classrooms”–visit teachrock.org.