Gottschalk’s Summer Music Academy in Modesto has something for everyone

The sound of school being out for summer is music to many students’ ears – quite literally.

Gottschalk Music Center, which for decades has been synonymous with music education in the Central Valley, is starting up its annual Summer Music Academy on Monday. Students of all ages are invited to take part in the program, which will run for varying lengths during six weeks this summer. Classes in different instruments and disciplines are available.

The classes are part of the center’s ongoing commitment to area music students, something that started 80 years ago when the original store owners, the late John F. and Emily Gottschalk, started the business in 1936. The couple began the music center in Michigan but then moved to Modesto in 1951. It’s been at its Burney Street location for some 64 years.

“We love watching the next generation of musicians come up and helping to cultivate the next generation of musicians,” said one of the store’s three owners, Nicky Richardson. “This has always been a musically strong community.”

In 2011, Richardson, along with Ernie and Karen Bucio and Jan Leer, purchased the store from the original owners’ son, C.K. Gottschalk, who had taken it over from them. Longtime area musician and music educator Ernie Bucio died shortly after from a stroke. But the three remaining owners carry on in his stead, keeping the center’s focus on providing instrument sales and rentals, sheet music and music lessons, and repairs and accessories to area musicians.

“It was hard to get over,” Leer said. “The whole music community mourned him. He brought so much to the community. The three of us could not do everything he did by himself.”

For its 80th anniversary year, Leer said the store’s focus is on education as strong as ever. The store rents out well over 1,000 instruments to students in school bands across the region. And as it has for some 50 years, the store provides the now iconic green and beige Gottschalk Music Center music folders complimentary to school districts from Modesto to Turlock, Oakdale to Manteca, Sonora and beyond. Richardson estimates they give out about 10,000 each year.

“One of the great things about being part of this store is you can have a music folder in your hand and a stranger will say to you, ‘Oh, I remember that store. I had one of those folders.’ It’s an institution,” Richardson said.

The center also has more than a dozen private instructors who give lessons out of their on-site studios in everything from guitar to woodwinds and vocals. The center has nine studio spaces that can be leased as well as a band room and a recital hall.

Modesto musician Martin Martinez, who has taught woodwinds at the Gottschalk studios for 20 years, said what helps to set the music center apart is its family feel. While the Gottschalk family is no longer involved, the new owners all worked at or played in the store’s various bands for years. It’s also the place he bought his first instrument, a saxophone.

“This is a music community,” he said. “When you get into music it becomes a circle of friends, and that develops into something like a family itself. So you feel like you belong here. Plus (the owners) know their stuff.”

Many of the music teachers Gottschalk works with will also be helming the classes at the summer music academy. Among them are Modesto musician John Baucum, who taught private classes at Gottschalk for the past seven years. Baucum, who has two other instructors who work for him, teaches students from age 4 to 78 the guitar, drums, piano, ukelele and bass guitar.

He said Gottschalk is an invaluable resource for the community, both through its work with the schools and its summer academy.

“It’s very important because you need to be able to have a place where you can got to be exposed to all these different instruments,” he said. “With the academy you get the opportunity for people to try something without a big time commitment.”

The hourlong classes are offered daily for two weeks or once a week for six weeks. They include everything from the Exploring the Instruments class, which introduces students ages 3 and up to a variety of instruments from trumpet to violin and drums, to classes for concert and jazz band and even mariachi. The program is $65 per class regardless of length. At the end of the academy, each class will have a concert at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto.

The store also runs its own bands, which perform regularly at area events and special occasions. They include the Gottschalk Music Center Concert Band, which played at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2011, and the retiree-led New Horizons Band and New Horizons Jazz Band.

“We just try to support every facet of music,” Leer said. “We want to keep the Gottschalk name alive and would never change it. It’s a legend.”

The Summer Music Academy kicks off Monday. Classes are $65. To register or for more information, call 209-523-5326 or go to www.gottschalkmusic.net/classes.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 11:10 AM with the headline "Gottschalk’s Summer Music Academy in Modesto has something for everyone."