Since the beginning, this project has evolved. I thought to myself, “What a great way for someone to enter a city, to the sound of music.” My biggest goal in music is to help play a role in turning San Diego into an international music destination, so to greet new visitors at the airport, train stations and bus depots certainly makes sense. It was so inspiring to watch the responses of the people passing by as he dazzled the space with some boogie woogie. He took some time to talk about the project, what his goal is for it and why music is so important to him.Ī: The idea came to me about 2½ years ago from watching a video of piano player Henri Herbert playing a repurposed piano in an airport in France. Along with his music production company, he’s spent the past couple of years working on The Piano Project, an effort to repurpose donated pianos and other musical instruments to public spaces and public schools in order to help build music education programs. Rexrode, 50, lives in Fallbrook and has two children. “I’ve been blessed to attract and recruit some of the finest musicians in San Diego and rely on their musical expertise.”

I focus on what I know best, and then surround myself with the most talented people,” he says. However, I’ve been a dreamer and promoter of all things much of my life. “It was an interesting idea (a career in music production) since I hadn’t played an instrument for several years. Today, Rexrode is the president of RexRode Productions, where he manages and builds different projects through his company, including his Six String Society and the Revival of the Singer-Songwriter Series, both at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. It turns out, mom was right to push him toward music because while the professional sports career never happened, but the music one did. After being strongly nudged to try the piano and trombone when he was younger, he was finally “set free,” as he says, to pursue his dream of becoming a professional athlete. Kenneth Rexrode’s mother is a pianist, but he never had any real interest in playing an instrument.

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