Studio Percussion Music & Dance Center, Gainesville

Tobin Wagstaff has traveled quite an interesting path: he founded a nonprofit music school, and, in a turn of events profiled on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, hobnobbed with rock royalty Kiss. All the while, Studio Percussion has been teaching pupils to tickle the ivories, strum the guitar, drum up a storm, and sing their favorite tunes, whether they’re jazz ballads or traditional Klingon folk songs. The instructors—all of whom remain active in the industry—help to whisk their pupils into the limelight during performances at UF sporting events, city music festivals, homecoming parades, and even family jam nights, during which participants take turns reciting their ancestral lineage to music.