TMP: About

Our Overview

We build a supportive community among high school musicians, emerging artists, and all passionate about promoting the collaborative and performance spirit of Contemporary Music.

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TMP values contemporary music’s emphasis on performance, originality, and collaborative composition! Through school-based experiential educational programming, TMP provides student-driven music-making and social emotional learning opportunities. The PLAY-off program allows students to learn, write and perform the music they’re most passionate about, in a fun and engaging way.

TMP supports emerging artists through innovative concert production models that facilitate band-formed coalitions to increase promotion and build community and audience. TMP provides sound and lighting support and captures performances for future promotional use. These events, as well as fundraising concerts, are facilitated through the support of celebrities and media production professionals.

Our History

The Music Path was founded in 2016 by Robby Krieger and Mitch Zelezny

Over his long career as a recording engineer, Mitch observed trends in the music industry. Computer-based music production led to more “making records” (product), while “making music” (live performance), particularly music created through the collaborative efforts of all band members, was becoming less common. Additionally, market consolidation in live concert promotion and “Pay to Play” practices at clubs began eroding the market power of emerging artists and the economic health and creative diversity of local music scenes.

Married to a school psychologist, Mitch was exposed to the challenges facing public schools and students, and concepts such as “experiential learning” and “social emotional learning”, the educational underpinnings of the PLAY-off program. Additional insights were also acquired while volunteering his mixing skills for the Drama and Music programs at his kid’s high school. Traditional Music programs often integrated Contemporary songs, but students were not exposed to the broader enriching and collaborative process experienced by the band members that originally created or performed them. It also became clear how challenged school staffs were to operate and maintain the donated or purchased audio equipment / instruments they had obtained.

Mitch pitched ideas for the PLAY-off program to Robby, and conveyed to him how foundational participating in “Battle of the Bands” had been for building his self-esteem and identity while in high school. Robby, who had no such experience, immediately loved the concept and thus began the process of creating the PLAY-off pilot in partnership with the very high school Mitch’s children attended.

Robby and Mitch quickly realized that the student bands formed in the program could greatly benefit from continued support after members graduated, and this was the catalyst for the On The Horizon program. . . Ultimately, after so much incredibly positive feedback from music industry friends and colleagues, the concept of a broader platform of support for the music community began to form.