Tower District music school expands into north Fresno. Here are grand opening details

Debi Ruud has been training musicians in and around Fresno’s Tower District since the late 1990s.

Those with long enough memories will remember her first venture, the Voice Shop, so named because of its focus on singing lessons.

Ruud is a known singer around town and has performed with any number of acts including the Joe Lenigan band and Papa Clutch and The Shifters. She’s done a series of duo performances with Vince Warner and helped start Hearts on Fire rock and roll choir.

Since 2016, Ruud and partner/husband John Alden have been running Fresno Music Academy and Arts and the Vista Theater, both situated on a strip of retail spots on Wishon Avenue in the Tower District.

The pair is expanding the business into north Fresno with a 10-room facility in an old day spa in the Parkwood Plaza center at Cedar and Nees avenues.

Fresno Music Academy and Arts North had its first official lesson on Monday and hosts a grand opening and open house on Friday and Saturday. The Fresno and Clovis chambers of commerce will be on hand for the ribbon cutting.

The place is still a bit of a work in process, Ruud says.

Each of the 10 rooms has been outfitted — most have pianos, the drum room has a full kit that’s ready to play — and just need some finishing touches.

“My poster of Dolly Parton has not arrived,” Ruud says.

Like the Tower location, each of the academy’s teaching rooms is themed with posters and memorabilia, the names marked in black letters on the walls. There’s a room for the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones. There is a Freddie Mercury room and a Woodstock room and a classical-themed Mozart room.

Then there’s a Hernandez/Hamada room.

That is “the most special room,” Ruud says.

It’s named in honor of Dave Hernandez and Brian Hamada.

Hamada was a longtime Fresno music educator (and genius jazz drummer) who died in 2018.

Hernandez taught drums at the academy until he died earlier this year. He left his collection of drums to Ruud. It’s now set up in his namesake room at the academy.

The academy offers drum, piano and singing lessons, obviously, but also guitar, bass, piano, ukulele and violin (or fiddle, because there is a difference, Ruud says). Instruction is taught mostly by professional, gigging musicians with long roots in the Fresno scene.

The new location also features space for the academy’s Music FunTime program, a weekly half-hour group lesson for children 2 to 7 years old. Here children learn foundational musical skills as a kind of preschool.

In the same way young children learn letters, numbers and shapes, “they can also learn the name of notes. They can also how to clap rhythms,” Ruud says.

It’s a headstart for parents who know they will be getting their children lessons at some point.

The move didn’t come without some worry, Ruud says. She doesn’t want anyone thinking they were abandoning the Tower District community. Students (and instructors) will be able to choose which location they want to visit and most will remain in the Tower, she says.

The academy’s group lessons, recitals and performances will still happen at the academy’s Vista Theater space.

The move expands the academy’s geography and reach into another section of the city, Alden says. The location is in proximity of seven schools. Five new instructors have been brought on in expectation of the growth.

“It takes what we do and multiplies it,” Alden says.

To celebrate the opening, the academy is giving away 20 free months of lessons,10 months for both the north and Tower District locations. Information is available online.