From China (and Chicago) With Love...of Music

What happens when a free-spirited rock drummer from Chicago and a former child prodigy from China decide to go into business together? You get iSchool of Music & Art, which over the past two years has enrolled more than 350 students in its Syosset location. 

From the time he was introduced to the drums as a third grader, Ken Benshish was hooked.

"A friend up the street had a drum set, and I was over there all the time," he remembers. "After a year of badgering my parents, they finally bought me a snare drum." He spent all his spare time playing drums, and he knew early on they would always be part of his life.

"When I was a kid sitting around Thanksgiving dinner, relatives always asked, 'What do you want to be when you grown up?' and I'd say, 'I want to play drums,'" says Benshish. "And every year they'd ask the same thing, and I'd give the same answer. After awhile I thought, 'Why do you keep asking me?'"

After graduating high school, Benshish earned his bachelor's degree in music from Millikin University in Decatur, Ill., and went on to pursue a master's degree at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University.

Yi Qian started out in music at an even younger age.

"I wasn't a regular kid attending school every day," he says. "As a 6-year-old prodigy in a small town in Southern China, my early life involved extensive touring of my province."

He was taught to focus only on music from early on.

"My parents said, 'Other subjects are fine–do the best you can,'" recalls Qian, '"but music is your thing–this is what you're going to do.'"

At the age of 13, Qian went to a boarding school. "I'd have half a day of music, half a day of academics," he notes, "and I was there for six years."

In 1992 Qian came to the United States to attend the Chicago Musical College, and it was there that he met Benshish and they became friends.

"I didn't speak a word of English–just 'Hi' and 'Bye,'" says Qian, laughing, "and Ken became my translator without speaking Chinese, because he's the most patient guy."

Even as the men's educational and career paths took different directions, the two remained friends. Qian went on to finish his master's at Northwestern University and got a job teaching music lessons in Indianapolis.

Meanwhile, Benshish was taking a less regimented approach.

"I was gigging and teaching private lessons in Chicago," he says, "and I'd take off in the summer and go all over the country on my Harley-Davidson... just kind of get lost."

After living in New York City for a year, Benshish was offered a fellowship at the University of Texas in Austin.

"I left the day after the '03 blackout, in a $500 van that had no muffler, no registration and no A/C," he says.

But the fellowship wasn't exactly what he expected.

"They were paying me to get a degree–I thought it was a pretty good deal," says Benshish. "But I was 35 years old and had been playing professionally for years. I had my own ideas about how to do things and they weren't in synchronization with the university's."

By now, Qian had moved to New York and dedicated himself to his dream of becoming a percussive soloist in an orchestra. But to be a concert performer, "You have to go through competition after competition," he says, "and soon, music became a burden rather than a joy."

As the pair sat in the New York City apartment Qian shared with his wife, talking about the frustration each was feeling, an old conversation arose. Over the years, Benshish and Qian had casually spoken of one day opening up a business together. They decided that it was time to actually do it.

Both had experience teaching private music lessons, so that was a logical choice.

"But we wanted to make the lessons unique," says Qian. In the process, they developed what has become the core program in the school. Called iBand, it combines music lessons with actual experience playing in a band.

"Kids can hone their skills in lessons," explains Benshish, "then play in a band together. It's like job training."

iSchool also offers art instruction.

"We believe that music and art can inspire one another," says Benshish. "So, it's important for art to be part of the overall program."

For more information about iSchool in Syosset and Port Washington, visit www.ischoolmusicart.com.