In honor of promoting Hit Like A Girl's 12th Annual Contest and Women's History Month, School of Rock wanted to highlight our very own drummer - Alaska! 

Alaska has been playing music almost her entire life. She teaches some of School of Rock's most advanced drummers and has another talent - keys! With her heavy gigging schedule, you can find her playing with her band or performing music of her on the regular. Alaska entered the Hit Like A Girl Contest last year and is currently competing for a spot in the Back Roads Tour in April. We got to ask her some questions about how music impacts her outside of School of Rock. 

1. How long have you been involved in music? What instruments do you play? 

Alaska: I’ve been involved in music since I was 5. I started with piano and then picked up drums when I was 10.

2. Are you currently working on any musical projects outside of work? If so, tell me about them! 

Alaska: I currently play in a LGBTQIA+ band named Oux, work with various DJs across the city doing everything from the Chicago Bulls to high school proms (drumming or DJing), as well as my own solo project which combines various forms of electronic music into performance. 

3. Give me your most controversial musical opinion. 

Alaska: I believe that the feeling of music should triumph theory. I’ve run into so many people who know everything about theory but everything they play sounds robotic and lacks humanness to it. Personally I prefer to “feel” what I’m playing and then after try to understand what it is I was doing. 

4. Give me your top 5 albums of all time and why. 

Alaska:

1. The Sufferer & The Witness by Rise Against. - This was the first album I fully listened through as a kid and it really opened my eyes. 

2. Clairvoyant - The Contortionist. This album got me through one of the hardest period of my life so far. 

3. Under Pressure - Logic. Sampling and hip hop masterpiece. Super underrated but one of my all time favorites.  

4. Hybrid Theory/Meteora - Linkin Park. Chester will be one of min favorite vocalists forever. He changed so many people lives including mine. 

5. Actual Life 3 - Fred Again.. A more recent find. This album has completely changed what is able to be done in electronic music and has been super inspiring to me since it came out. 

5. What artist, dead or alive, would you like to sit down and have lunch with? 

Alaska: I would love to sit down with Fred Again or Brian Eno who are both pillars of electronic music. To understand just a little bit of the perspective they approach music with would be life changing.

School of Rock is partnering with Hit Like A Girl to promote their annual drumming contest beginning March 1, 2023. The Hit Like A Girl contest is an opportunity for young drummers around the world to be critiqued by celebrity judges, win scholarships, make new friends, and network in the music industry. With multiple ways to win, you can learn more about the contest and how to enter here.