Warren Mendes, Director and Founder
My name is Warren Mendes, and I am the Director and founder of Musical Minds. I began offering after school music programs back in 2001, after spending a few years as the Director of Marketing for the music education division of the Rhodes Music Corporation. At Rhodes I worked to promote the highly acclaimed teaching methodology of the legendary Harold Rhodes, developer of the famous Fender Rhodes piano. Before that, I was a recording artist, a session musician and a songwriter. I was lucky enough to have several of my compositions recorded by successful artists, and I was able to work with many "big name" artists, but I was always frustrated by the state of the music industry. Growing up in the United Kingdom and the West Indies, and being exposed to so much incredible music as a youth, I developed a huge passion for all things musical. I studied law at university (my pragmatic side made that decision), but my understudies were always music courses. As soon as I graduated I promptly sought out a career in music. My friends and I soon secured a record deal, and away we went!
By the time I became involved with music education, my passion for being in the mainstream of the music industry had significantly mellowed, and I believe that in the realm of teaching I had found my knish. I love working with kids and showing them how to experience a little of the passion for music that I have enjoyed through the years. I'm a strong advocate of music and art as two key formative building blocks of childhood development. I believe that for kids, music is one of the keys to self confidence, self esteem, creative thinking (essential for problem solving in subjects like math and science), and even social awareness. I have seen all kinds of kids in our program - gifted and talented kids, slow learners, kids with behavioural issues, autism, ADD, ADHD, shy kids, happy kids, you name it. They all love music, and they all enjoy learning to play music and they get so much joy learning to make music.
From the very first class that I started in West Los Angeles I could see the vision of bringing a high quality program to schools everywhere. Slowly I assembled my team, and together we have grown steadily, so that our program can now be found in schools up and down the West Coast, from as far north as Seattle all the way down to San Diego.