Summer for Dace’s Rock ‘n’ More Music Academy students and teachers was about networking as well as cultivating opportunities.

Musicians from the nonprofit music school, which was founded in Maple Valley by Dace Anderson in 2005, spent the warm months of the year playing at a variety of events and venues which could lead — and some cases already have — to other chances to play throughout the region.

Anderson’s band, Sealth, which started at Rock ‘n’ More several years ago, played at the Seattle True Independent Festival’s kickoff party before summer started which set the tone for the coming months.

“That was pretty cool … because in that whole scene we’re networking with really creative people and getting to know filmmakers,” Anderson said. “Besides just getting to know these really cool creative people it may open up opportunities for us or our students to get music in films or work with filmmakers to make music videos. We did a lot of stuff this summer that is going to be opening up a lot of opportunities for our students.”

Beyond the film festival, Rock ‘n’ More partnered with the Rat City Rollergirls on a songwriting contest. The winner, the Dakota Poorman Band, played at halftime of a contest at Key Arena.

“His songs got three times as many votes as all of the other bands,” Anderson said. “We had a band from California enter, as well, and they were finalists. Dakota was able to get all of his friends to rally around and support him.”

In addition, Amanda Brielle, another student of Rock ‘n’ More — Poorman is a student of Anderson’s — got sing something she wrote at halftime. The success of that halftime show during the summer led to more chances for students to perform at roller derby matches in the future.

“It sounds like we’re going to have some people play in the concourse at Key Arena during all the roller derby bouts next year starting in January,” Anderson said. “It won’t be in front of 5,000 at halftime but it will be as those 5,000 as they come into Key Arena.”

A new event over the summer was the 24-hour webathon, which Anderson said went well in terms of a high entertainment factor, but it did not bring in as much money as the fundraiser it replaced. That means Rock ‘n’ More’s tuition assistance program will need additional support this year. Anderson said the tuition assistance program still is in high demand by students despite the apparent recovery in the economy in the past year.

“A recession like that, a business like ours, we’re the first to get hit and we’re the last to recover,” Anderson said. “When the economy tanked and people couldn’t afford lessons, one of the things that started happening is people started learning online. So, now even though the economy might be recovering a bit, there are so many free options, a lot of people don’t realize that in person lessons might be a little bit better than video lessons.”

Still, Anderson remains undeterred in providing classes and lessons to anyone who wants to take them, no matter how much they can afford to pay. And he wants to continue to go beyond that by building on the networking from this past summer to offer even more to students than instruction.

During the summer, Anderson said, they took advantage of a number of opportunities to get involved in community events such as booking the music for the Covington Days Festival in July, playing at Maple Valley Days in June and Black Diamond Labor Days as well as at Renton’s Movies in the Park.

“Because of all of that stuff, I suppose, we’re starting to break into the Eastside,” Anderson said. “We’re going to be playing at Redmond Town Center every Friday night during the holidays. By doing these things locally … we’re opening up more opportunities for our students. We spent the summer just trying to get out and get to know people.”

Anderson will also start teaching guitar classes at Crossroads Community Center soon while classes at the Renton Community Center are slated to begin in January.

It is important, Anderson said, to be flexible when partnering with cities or community organizations which is something he believes Rock ‘n’ More does well much to the betterment of the students.

“I think we’ve got the best music school there is, for one thing, we’re the only music school that I can think of that will actually teach you to play and perform whatever it is you want to play and perform,” Anderson said. “No other music school that I know of does that for everybody, adults and kids. We’re willing to work harder than any other music school to get our students opportunities to do what they want to do. We work with cities, we work with community centers, we work with schools, filmmakers, all this stuff. What it does for us, it makes us so that we’re better known, our name is getting out there. They work with us, and it’s easy, we make other people’s jobs easier when we work with them. That’s our goal, to use the things we do well to make other people’s jobs easier.”

It seems like that approach is working as the opportunities for students to play throughout the region are rolling in thanks to Rock ‘n’ More’s productive summer.