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Music Store A Noteworthy Business

Tribune photo by CHRISTINE DeLESSIO

Greg Koss Music Center recently moved from Zephyrhills to Wesley Chapel. The store offers music lessons and the owner, Greg Koss, has a dream of starting a fine arts institute.

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By RONNIE BLAIR

rblair@tampatrib.com

Published: January 17, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - Greg Koss' life has revolved around music since childhood, when he learned to play the accordion and other instruments.

More than 50 years later, his enthusiasm hasn't waned, and Koss can wax poetic about his love of jazz, his family's musical history and famous performers - such as Tony Bennett - he met and worked with while playing in Las Vegas orchestras.

To a large degree, though, he considers himself a music educator as well as a musician.

"It's all about the kids," he said.

Koss owns Koss Music Center, which in July moved from Zephyrhills to a location in Wesley Chapel, 26242 Wesley Chapel Blvd., in the Grand Oaks Square shopping center.

He sells guitars, banjos, flutes, clarinets, trombones and other instruments and gives music lessons to about 60 students, children and adults.

He makes the children take an oath in front of their parents, promising to practice - a gambit that tends to work.

On Wednesday nights, some of his students gather for what Koss calls "Rock School," a jam session where the students form a band and let their talents shine through. The band includes a teenage drummer who is autistic and a middle-age business executive.

The client base has grown so large that Koss needs more music teachers.

Koss also would like to establish the Koss Music and Cultural Institute and bring jazz and classical musicians to Wesley Chapel. As he envisions it, the institute would teach music, dance and art.

"Wesley Chapel needs culture, and it needs music," Koss said. "It needs more fine arts."

In December, he incorporated his institute with the state. Now he must secure funding. Grant writers are trying to raise $4.5 million.

Koss grew up around the music business in Ohio, where his father, Ed, owned a music store.

After high school, Koss attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston and later graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in jazz studies.

After graduating from college in 1979, he was ready to put his skills on the trumpet to the test.

"I bought a car and drove to Las Vegas," he said.

Koss soon found work, first in an orchestra that backed up Wayne Newton and later at the Sands Hotel, where the orchestra played with a number of singers and musicians who performed there, including Bennett and Doc Severinsen.

Near the front of his store, Koss keeps a wall of fame. There are autographed pictures of some of the celebrities he has met and newspaper clippings about his musical career.

After leaving Las Vegas, he worked in Atlantic City, cut an album, "Greg Koss and the Sound Factory," and toured for a more than a year in the mid-1980s with a revival of Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Eventually, Koss returned to Ohio, but he and his wife moved to Florida five years ago to escape the frigid winters near Lake Erie.

His father's store now is run by a relative.

Koss works closely with band programs at some of the area schools. On a recent morning he had four instruments waiting to be delivered to Benito Middle School in Hillsborough County.

He's a big believer in school music programs because of studies that show music helps improve standardized test scores and that band students tend to develop better social skills and math skills.

Band participation also teaches the students discipline and builds their confidence as they work together to achieve their goals, he said. Koss worries about music getting shoved aside as school boards ponder budget cuts.

To him, cutting music should never be an option.

"We need to institute more music," Koss said.

Reporter Ronnie Blair can be reached at (813) 948-4218. Keyword: Music Center, to see the Koss Music Center's Rock School jam.

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