June 2016 Archives - The Instrumentalist

New Music Reviews

theinstrumenta — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 18:37:51 +0000

CONCERT BAND

(C1) The Birthplace of Kings – Check-Rated

By Patrick Roszell

This attractive composition was inspired by the composer’s visit to the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Bath, Somerset, England. Commonly referred to as Bath Abbey, the church is the third to occupy the current location. The first king of England was crowned on this site in 973 AD, a coronation service that set the precedent for coronations of all future kings and queens of England, including Elizabeth II. A stately, majestic opening section introduces a regal melody first stated by the clarinet section. A full ensemble section, now with melodic material in the trumpets, leads to a smoother, contrasting section with flowing, lyrical lines in the upper woodwinds and alto saxophones accompanied by staccato quarter notes in the bass clarinet and low brass. A brief passage for brass only is followed by a short transition that leads to a restatement of earlier material. The introduction is then presented as a noble finale, bringing the work to a grand conclusion. Chimes (or optional bells) and optional timpani in certain locations adds to the regal mood of the piece. This is a delightful number sure to engage performers and audiences alike. ($51, Belwin-Mills, 2:30) M.H.

(C2) Autumn Reflections – Check-Rated

By Steve Hodges

This beautiful piece conveys a sense of reflection – on what could have been and what lies ahead as summer comes to an end with the chill of winter on the horizon. A brief, expressive introduction leads to a contemplative opening section with initial melodic material in the clarinets and alto saxophones. Additional instruments are added before moving to a short, rhythmically fragmented passage that introduces a joyful full-ensemble section with lush harmonies and flowing eighth note lines that proceeds to a powerful climax. A more subdued passage follows that quickly builds in intensity before moving to a quiet, thoughtful ending. This expressive composition features, straightforward rhythmic material, engaging lines for each instrument, thoughtful percussion writing, and two-part scoring for clarinets, alto saxophones, and trumpets. ($49, Alfred, 2:45) M.H.

(C3) Prayer – Check-Rated

By Steven L. Rosenhaus

Written at the request of the Sacred Heart University Concert Band, the dedication of this moving work reads, “In memoriam, Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012.” Performed at the first memorial service for the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School, located a few miles from the university, this slow, sensitive piece begins with a single note on the chimes. Additional instruments are added as an emotional melody in G minor soon appears. The emotions conveyed gradually move to a feeling of contemplation as the key shifts to Bb major. A sense of consolation is apparent as the composition proceeds to a quiet, heartfelt conclusion. Allowing some flexibility concerning instrumentation, the piece includes two-part scoring for alto saxophone and horn, three-part scoring for clarinet and trumpet, a trombone 2 part as a substitute for horn 2, a flute 2 part as a substitute for oboe, and optional parts for bass clarinet, double bass, and piano. Also provided are cross cues in the euphonium for horn 1, and in the bassoon for bass clarinet. Chimes make an important contribution to the composition, and they sound 26 times. Piano or synthesizer may be substituted for chimes if necessary. ($55, Music-Print Productions/distributed by LudwigMasters, 6:00) M.H.

(C4) The Old Pirate’s Tale – Check-Rated

By Darren Mitchell

This engaging programmatic piece will stir the imaginations of performers and listeners alike. Intended to depict tall tales of high seas adventures as told by an old pirate, the piece begins with a dark, mysterious opening section that represents the pirate gathering his crew. The intensity builds and soon a bold melody emerges as tales of swashbuckling adventures, battles won, storms, and shipwrecks begin to be told through a variety of sections ranging from calm, thinly scored phrases to animated full ensemble passages. A final march-like section brings the work, and the pirate’s stories, to a victorious and exciting conclusion. The composition includes two-part writing for flute, clarinet, bassoon, alto saxophone, trumpet, horn, and trombone and interesting percussion writing for a full complement of instruments including castanets, wind chimes, temple blocks, whip, brake drum, tri-toms, cowbell, and vibraphone. An enjoyable piece that will be a memorable addition to any concert program. ($100, Grand Mesa, 6:12) M.H.

(C5) Downshifting – Check-Rated

By Dan Welcher

Commissioned by a consortium of 20 high school and college bands, the inspiration for this creative work comes from the composer’s fondness of riding his 21-speed bicycle. Because of the gears available, it is possible to keep one’s legs moving at a constant speed while the bike is moving slowly or quickly. The composer ueed this basic concept while scoring this musical representation of a bike ride, keeping the same mathematical inner pulse while shifting (conveyed through the use of a ratchet) as the hilly terrain and scenery changes. The journey is reflected through contrasting textures, changing meters, and a variety of melodic and rhythmic material as the work proceeds through sections with subtitles such as, “Working harder – Seeing the climb, ahead…,” “Steady and committed (The climb begins!),” “Straining against the grade,” “Reaching the crest,” and “Flying, Over The Top.” Expertly scored with engaging parts for each wind section and well-conceived percussion writing, the composition is ideal for showcasing an ensemble’s musicality. An enjoyable and uplifting work that will appeal to performers and listeners alike, the composition will be a memorable addition to any concert or festival program. ($150, Theodore Presser, 6:30) M.H.

(C2) Guardians of the Banner

By Joseph Compello

This original march is ideal for introducing the march style to developing musicians. Scored in 2/4 time (quarter note = 100-112), the composition features interesting lines for each instrument and rhythmic energy throughout. Accurate execution of marcato-style articulation, uniform note lengths, proper tone and intonation during the final fortissimo section, and a steady tempo are needed for an outstanding performance. The piece includes identical bass lines for low brass and woodwinds, and two-part scoring for trumpet and clarinet. Clarinet 2 is written entirely below the break. ($50, Carl Fischer, 2:10) M.H.

(C2) Jubilant Fanfare

By Michael Story

A majestic opening section introduces the heroic main theme, initially stated softly by the clarinet section accompanied by a stately snare drum. The intensity then begins to build as additional instruments are added as the piece moves to a full-ensemble section with melodies for trumpets and low brass. A bold, slightly faster section with driving rhythms leads to a dramatic restatement of the introductory material, bringing the work to a joyous and powerful conclusion. Expertly scored with engaging lines for each instrument, the piece includes two-part scoring for clarinet and trumpet, well-conceived percussion writing, and effective dynamic contrasts. An engaging composition for performers and listeners alike, the piece will be a memorable addition to any program. ($57, Belwin-Mills, 2:30) M.H.

(C2) Shalom!

By Gene Milford

This delightful composition effectively captures the spirit and energy of two well-known Hebrew folk songs. An energetic opening section (2/4 , quarter note = 120-128) introduces the playful Shabat, Shalom with melodic material initially in the trumpets supported by the full ensemble. The traditional round Shalom Chaverim (4/4 , quarter note = 108) provides the basis for a contrasting section with softer, more lyrical lines, changing textures, and brief solos for flute and alto saxophone. An effective key change then highlights the return to the opening material. An effective accelerando during the final phrase brings the work to a rousing conclusion. Well conceived percussion scoring is for xylophone, bells, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, tambourine, suspended cymbal, and crash cymbals. Precise execution of syncopated and dotted rhythms, strict observance of dynamics, and proper balance between melodic lines and accompanying material are needed for an outstanding performance of the piece. ($60.00, Carl Fischer, 2:55) M.H.

(C3) C-141 Starlifter

By Randall D. Standridge

This commissioned work with a cinematic flair was inspired by the composer’s visit to the Air Mobility Command Museum in Dover, Delaware, which houses an Air Force C-141 Starlifter, an essential piece of military equipment that was first launched in 1963. A brisk opening section (4/4, quarter note = 160), representing the aircraft speeding down the runway, leads to an exciting fanfare that announces the plane’s ascent into the sky. Images of the Starlifter soaring through the clouds are conjured during the main body of the piece, which features changing meters (5/4, 4/4, 3/4) and contrasting sections that alternate between energetic, rhythmically intense passages and smooth, lyrical phrases. Expertly scored with attractive textures and melodic and rhythmic interest throughout, the composition features two-part writing for clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, and trombone; and active, well-conceived percussion parts for a complete complement of instruments including tom-tom, brake drum, wind chimes, marimba, and China crash. ($70, Grand Mesa 3:35) M.H.

(C4) Cycle of the Werewolf

By Jeremy S. Martin

This interesting work was inspired by a 1983 Stephen King story of the same name. In 1985 the story was made into a film titled Silver Bullet. A dark opening section, reflecting the werewolf’s character, begins with driving triplet rhythms that introduce an ominous melody initially stated by low brass and low woodwinds. The rhythmic intensity builds as the piece reaches a brief majestic section in major tonality that represents the arrival of a hero to fight the creature. This is followed by a shift back to minor as the werewolf howls into the night. After a brief pause a soft, mysterious section depicts the hero awaiting the werewolf’s return. The intense fight begins anew as the composition moves to a triumphant conclusion signifying the defeat of the beast. With melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic interest throughout, the composition includes engaging lines of similar levels of difficulty for each instrument, parts for string bass and harp, and percussion scoring that includes parts for vibraphone and tam-tam. This is an outstanding choice as a cinematic-like change of pace number. ($75, LudwigMasters, 3:40) M.H.

(C4) Children of Gaia

By Robert Sheldon

Sometimes referred to as Mother Nature, Gaia is a primordial deity in Greek mythology who had numerous children of great significance to the ancient Greeks. Three of these – Typhon, Tethys, and Enceladus – are musically depicted in this dramatic work. The opening material of the composition represents Typhon, the largest and most fearsome of all creatures, who had a hundred dragon heads on each of his hands and eyes that flashed fire. A soft anticipation-filled introduction, depicting the sleeping giant, leads to a loud, fiery section with sixteenth-note flourishes, agitated rhythms, and bold melodic material that represents his violent outburst after being suddenly awakened. Tethys, the mother of the Earth’s chief rivers and the embodiment of the world’s waters, is represented by a thinly scored, calmer section with flowing lines that convey a sense of floating in water. The ill-behaved and menacing Enceladus was buried under a volcano. Volcanic fires were said to be his breath, and the Greeks referred to an earthquake as a “strike of Enceladus.” This section, conveying a mischievous mood, is filled with changing meters, loud rhythmic outbursts, and intense sixteenth-note figures. A loud final phrase brings the work to a powerful conclusion. Percussion requirements include parts for vibraphone, brake drum, two toms, mark tree, and ocean drum. An engaging number for performers and audiences alike, this unique composition will be a memorable addition to any program. ($85, Alfred, 6:00) M.H.

(C4) Fanfare: A Vision and a Dream

By Ryan Nowlin

The fascinating historical background for the commission of this work will appeal to young musicians across the nation, to all car enthusiasts, and specifically to the residents of Warren, Ohio, where the first Packard automobile was built in 1899. Mr. Packard generously provided financial support for a music hall and band for Warren that continues to this day, providing the northern Ohio region with cultural and musical programs each year. This special fanfare honors the Packard legacy and is used as a celebratory opening for band concerts at the W.D. Packard Music Hall. However, because of its stirring rhythms and emotional content, directors will certainly want to consider this number as a fanfare for any special occasion. The music requires strong performances from the flutes, piccolo, and clarinets. Brass is brilliant and exciting with only a few high Cs for the first trumpet. The spirited composition moves across the seventy-nine measures in a two minute dash with spirit at quarter note = 152+. ($75, Kjos, 2:00) J.W.K.

(C4) Triumph of the Argonauts

By Robert Sheldon

This can be a great multi-discipline work that forges connections with art, history, and literature departments. Like a tone poem, this well crafted composition conveys the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Even if students are familiar with the heroic myth, it is worth the time to revisit it. Mental imagery is an important filter for emotive playing, and vivid imaginations will enhance the musical interpretation. The composition was commissioned by the Argo High School Band of Summit, Illinois, Bob Good and Megan Corkins, directors. Rated for grade 4, this composition has the right mix of pageantry, calm, courage, travail, and resulting triumph. Jason and the Golden Fleece has been a fascinating tale of enchantment for centuries, and I commend Robert Sheldon for bringing it to the public again with the ringing sonorities of his exciting music. Some rhythm sections may need extra attention, especially the meter changes of 3/2, 4/2, and 6/4. There are exposed solos for flute and oboe, and the presto quarter note = 176 may challenge even the percussion section. The band members will learn a great deal about balance, dynamics, interpretation, and playing with inspiration. ($85, Alfred, 6:10) J.W.K.

JAZZ BAND

(J2) Unit 7

By Sam Jones

Arranged by Rich Sigler

This arrangement swings using alternating two-beat and four-beat styles, and it cleverly integrates a recurring vamp section reminiscent of Stan Kenton’s Intermission Riff. This arrangement includes a written solo line and chord changes for alto sax I, a horn soli section, and a four-bar drum solo. Rhythm section parts are fully notated, with the exception of the bass part, which does not include chord changes. Additional parts are included for flute, Bb clarinet, tuba, horn, vibes, and baritone treble clef. This swinging arrangement would work well in a festival or concert setting. ($46, Belwin Jazz, 2:50) D.F.

(J2) Cariba

By Wes Montgomery

Arranged by Victor Lopez

Cariba is a fun way to introduce young players to the music of guitarist Wes Montgomery. The tune is a bossa nova in a 12-bar blues form that uses a 3/2 clave pattern in the drums and a samba-like rhythmic pattern in the piano, guitar, and bass parts. The arranger recommends that the rhythm section practice separately to establish a strong Latin groove. This arrangement includes a sax soli as well as written solo lines and chord changes for tenor sax I and trumpet I. Additional parts are included for flute, Bb clarinet, tuba, horn, vibes, and baritone treble clef. ($46, Belwin Jazz, 2:50) D.F.

(J3) Red Clay

By Freddie Hubbard

Arranged by Mike Kamuf

This energetic arrangement features opening melodic statements in a combo-like tenor sax/trumpet combination, followed by a full band restatement that leads to the solo section. Solo written lines and chord changes are supplied for both tenor sax I and trumpet II. The closing includes an optional drum solo cadenza to bring the arrangement to an exciting conclusion. The arrangement is playable with reduced instrumentation, or with additional instruments including flute, Bb clarinet, tuba, horn, vibes, and baritone treble clef. A successful performance will benefit from careful attention to the original recording in order to capture the soulful 1970’s groove. This arrangement is a great way to introduce the music of Freddie Hubbard. ($46, Belwin Jazz, 5:40) D.F.

(J4) A Moment in Time

By Paul Lohorn

A Moment in Time is an original medium-tempo F Blues swing tune that features written solo space for tenor I and trumpet II. Although there are no written repeats, the song could be opened up for other soloists as needed, and backgrounds could be cued as desired. Trumpet I reaches written D6 and trombone I reaches A4. All brass players have written long note shakes, and less experienced players may be challenged by this technique. The guitar part contains chord changes and comping rhythms. The bass part is written out and includes chord changes. Optional parts are included for flute, clarinet, and horn. ($50, Jalen, 3:00) D.F.

(J5) The Sun Will Shine Today

By Patrick Williams

This up-tempo swing original is a feature for solo clarinet, but Williams includes optional solo parts for Bb, Eb, C, and bass clef soloists, as well. Optional horn parts will enhance the tune, but most of these lines are also cued in other parts if horns are not an option. There is a brief saxophone soli that follows the open solo section. Brass parts are designed for advanced players, with trumpet I reaching written F6 and trombone I reaching Db5. Advanced bands looking for an up-tempo swing feature for a soloist should give this arrangement a try. ($80, Belwin Jazz, 5:20) D.F.

(J5) The Cannonball Run

By Gordon Goodwin

This is a Latin pop-style original written in cut time. It includes a saxophone feature (written for S-A-T-T-B) and space for various soloists. Trumpet I reaches mostly to written D6 with three phrases reaching beyond to E6, F6, and G6, and trombone I reaches A4). In addition to the written sax soli, which cleverly opens with trading two-measure phrases with a soloist, there are solo chord changes supplied for all saxes, trumpet IV, and trombones I and II. This is a great choice to feature a talented saxophone section and great soloists from across the band.

($72, Belwin Jazz, 6:30) D.F.

STRING ORCHESTRA

(S1) Jack in the Box

By Loreta Fin

Designed to teach organization of bow division and planning of bow speeds, this clever piece contains off-the-beat accents, rest counting, and extreme dynamic shifts. A contrasting pizzicato section provides a character change and coordination challenge. The piano part does not double the orchestra but adds interest in the B section. The conductor’s score contains helpful rehearsal suggestions. Bowings are included and the whole work can be played in first position. ($45, Wilfin, 2:25) S.G.

The post New Music Reviews appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

More than Marching, An Interview with Gary Smith

theinstrumenta — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 23:54:06 +0000

Gary Smith has spent a lifetime in music beginning in childhood at the Smith Baton Camp, founded by his parents in 1949. The camp, which would evolve into the Smith Walbridge Clinics, was the first of its kind. From a young age, Smith met such distinguished collegiate directors as Harry Begian, John Paynter, Nilo Hovey, and Charles Henzie. Smith later decided to pursue a career in music education and earned degrees from Butler University and Ball State University. He taught first at North Side High School in Fort Wayne and moved later to college positions at Saint Joseph’s College and Indiana State University. In 1976 he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois as Associate Director of Bands and Director of the Marching Illini, a position he held until 1998. He also ran the Smith Walbridge Clinics from 1983 to 2013. Although to some he is best known for his work in the marching field, Smith also has strong ideas on directing concert bands, one of his true passions. Among many career honors, he was elected to the American Bandmasters Association in 1988 and is currently the president elect.

How long have you been a part of the Smith Walbridge Clinics?

I did maintenance work and cleaned cabins until high school. Then I took over the clinic store and canteen. In college I started teaching, especially drum major camps. In 1983 I took over the operations in Syracuse, Indiana until we sold the camp grounds.

How did the philosophy and curriculum of the camp evolve throughout the years?

It started with my dad. The original intent of camp was to train drum majors. We taught them how to do drill, how to write charts, and how to conduct. Back then, drum majors ran the marching band and did all the teaching because few directors knew much about marching. The philosophy at the beginning was to provide a resource for learning about marching band because it was not being taught in colleges.

I developed the motto, “system plus spirit equals success,” from Charles Henzie, my college band director. I saw how to sum up a great band with this little theory, and built my career around it. When I started teaching, almost all marching bands were run through fear and stress. It bothered me. When I took over the camp, I did an immediate 180-degree change. Some instructors resisted the change but they quickly realized that students learned more quickly and found joy in working hard.

Gary with brother Greg, 1961.

How did you fare in your first college job at St. Joseph’s College?

They had previously eliminated the marching band after a performance that was so bad that people brought vegetables to throw at them during the show. I was expecting 100 students to turn out for band, but at the first rehearsal, only 18 showed up. I worked hard to get them excited, and we had 45 – a wind ensemble-sized group within a couple weeks. One day I took everybody outside during class for some exercise and sunlight. I lined them up in a company front, and taught them how to march down the field with a comfortably sized step. As we did this, about 40 college kids sat on the sides watching, clapping, and yelling.

That night I went home and wrote a four-part arrangement of Man of La Mancha, which was popular then. We played through it in the band room and then we went down to try it on the field. As we were marching up and down the field, about a hundred college kids were there cheering. Suddenly, the band was excited, and they said “let’s do it at a football game.” Even though the season was half over, we showed up to play at a game and the crowd went crazy. It took off from there. We were up to 90 players when I left.

What did you learn from teaching with George Graesch at Indiana State?

He had a symphonic band of about 90 players, and I had a tiny second band about 35 players. The Indiana State marching band was really good, and I learned a lot about entertainment by watching their films. I felt he was the best college band director in the country then.

My first love was concert band, and it was frustrating not to be able to play good literature with such a small second band. George was an anti-wind ensemble guy and believed in a full symphonic band; his philosophy was similar to Harry Begian’s, who I worked with later at the University of Illinois. To show how unselfish Graesch was, he cut his top band down to a wind ensemble with 43 players, and all of a sudden I had a 90-piece symphonic band. It was a good band, and it really excited me.

Then as the marching band became even more popular, our numbers took off and I started a third band. I directed the second and the third band because I realized that the better I made the third band, the better the first two bands would be. These groups really became good by my third or fourth year.

Why did you use flugelhorns to cover third trumpet parts in marching band?

That is a concept I still believe in, and I almost hated to see it go away. When trumpets have notes at the bottom of or below the staff and try to play loudly, they get a raspy, edgy, bad sound. The flugelhorn has a larger bore and can produce more volume in that part of the range.

Flugelhorn also adds a different color to the ensemble that can be used a variety of ways. For example, if I wanted the music to sound like there were four trombone parts, I might use two trombone parts, baritone, and flugelhorn. Flugelhorn can also strengthen a mellophone part. At times, I even used flugelhorns as a separate section.

Using flugelhorns fattened the sound of the band. My marching bands had a lot of middle, which is not something frequently encountered. It also gave a bit more prestige to playing third trumpet parts. I even had some music majors request being placed in that section because they did not want to mess their chops up playing high all the time. There were a lot of advantages to using flugelhorns.

How did you make your college basketball bands such a success?

When I taught at Indiana State, we were one of the first to use a rock band within the band itself, so the basketball band was extremely popular. Incidentally, Larry Bird was red-shirted at Indiana State during my last year there. The band was popular because we played current music: Blood, Sweat, and Tears; Chicago; and Earth Wind, and Fire. When I came to Illinois, I added the rock band, which meant we played a lot more between plays. Some people thought it was a distraction, but the coach liked it.

When you moved to the University of Illinois, how did you make the second band so successful?

I never called my group a second band. There are just good and bad bands. I don’t think the kids who were in it ever viewed themselves as a second band. When I got on the podium and worked with the symphonic band, it felt like waking up on Christmas morning. Every rehearsal I ever went to, I experienced that enjoyment. I’d look forward to it that much – especially the fact that I had full instrumentation and talented players. I could perform just about any kind of work I wanted. I had no desire to become director of bands anywhere, because my band at Illinois was so good. I had no interest in going to another school just to have the director of bands title.

When you are a successful marching band director, people tend to stereotype you and are unaware of other things you do. I think most people who direct marching bands use it as a stepping stone to break into a director of bands job. It is more rare that someone makes their entire career in college marching band.

To the general public the marching band director is considered the leader of the program. The average football fan has little idea that other bands even exist. In the profession the most prestigious position is director of bands, and the assistants are sort of looked down on because they do not to get the same level of invitations to guest conduct.

Did you approach your ensemble any differently than you would any other ensemble?

I have worked with middle school and high school bands, and I have found you are better off not to lower your standards or talk down to any group. Good pitch is good pitch; good intonation is good intonation. The only difference would be the areas I could focus on in rehearsals. In some pieces when the pitch and tone was good, I could talk about style and articulations. When it wasn’t, I talked about breathing, tone, and pitch. When I get a on podium, the first thing I do is establish a concept of ensemble sound, even when I’m guest conducting. I have devised techniques and methods to achieve that quickly because in many cases I may only have one day to work with a group, and I do not want to just start working on the music itself. Unless you fix the things that cause music to sound good, it is never going to sound good.

How do you prepare for rehearsals?

I learned in college to set short- and long-range goals. I would write down my goals for the day, week, month, season, and the next five years. I approach marching band the same way. For each rehearsal there was a lesson plan, often written right up on the board or passed out to section leaders. The players appreciated seeing our progress toward our goals each day.

What is your approach to programming literature?

When I was in college, we played mostly original band works. I was never a fan of transcriptions until I heard Begian’s group play. He spent time mentoring me on the proper way to perform transcriptions, which opened another whole realm of great literature. Although I believe that 90% of transcriptions do not work for band, there are the 10% that are great. I have always been attracted to new contemporary works, at least ones with enduring value, rather than works that sound like some guy beating his fist on the piano. There is a difference between temporary music and contemporary music.

Having grown up in the camp world, I had heard every march ever written by the time I reached college. I can get on the podium and conduct almost any march by memory. Diversity of literature is something lacking in many modern school band programs, with an overemphasis on new works.

What is your approach to score study?

A long time ago I read an article with some of the great maestros on the role of the conductor. I think Solti said that the role of the conductor is to compare what the ensemble is playing to what is in your head, and try to match them up. If you don’t have anything in your head, you are just beating on notes and rhythms.

With score study and listening to every performance I can find, I try to get an overall view of how it sounds. I am not so brilliant that I can look at a score and know exactly how it will sound. I use George Solti’s method of marking scores with colors. He uses highlighters, a certain color each for primary lines, secondary lines, and important cues. I mark when there is a tempo or meter change, because this allows you to glance at the score and see what is coming. However, I do not mark the score until I have studied it a lot, because this can lead to many unnecessary marks. I mark the critically important things, such as a cymbal crash or the introduction to a solo.

I sing complex parts, which I also do later when students have difficulty in rehearsal. I learned that from Begian. who almost always sang how he wanted something played, whether it was a rhythm or shaping a line. If I am conducting a tune I know well, like the Holst Suites, I know instantly if someone’s playing a wrong note and who it is, because the music is in my head.

What are the most important lessons you learned from Harry Begian?

I went to him because I revered him, I thought he was the greatest band conductor of all times. I do not think there’s ever been anybody better. Revelli was good, too, but I felt Begian was a notch better. I would sit there and quiz him on interpretation of marches, warm up, tuning, listening, and solfege.I wanted to glean everything I could from him.

The post More than Marching, An Interview with Gary Smith appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Annual Index August 2015-June/July 2016, vol. 70

theinstrumenta — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 01:05:19 +0000

Annual Index August 2015-June 2016, vol. 70

Interviews and Profiles

by Dan Blaufuss (2/16, p. 14)

by Onsby C. Rose (5/16, p. 12)

(12/15, p. 20)

by Dan Blaufuss (11/15, p. 24)

by Dan Blaufuss (3/16, p. 16)

by Dan Blaufuss (4/16, p. 10)

(11/15, p. 21)

by James M. Rohner (11/15, p. 18)

by Dan Blaufuss (10/15, p. 12)

Conducting and Literature

(8/15, p. 54)

by Brian Shelton (12/15, p. 30)

by Onsby C. Rose (1/16, p. 10)

by Jerry Nowak (1/16, p. 16)

by Stephen Rhodes (4/16, p. 16)

by Jerry Nowak (9/15, p.24)

Teaching and Rehearsal Ideas

by Lisa Martin (8/15, p. 45)

by Kevin M. Geraldi (5/16, p. 22)

by Frederick Jaeschke (2/16, p. 30)

The First Six Weeks: A Beginning Band Curriculum by David Dunham, (5/16, p. 16)

by Tom Lizotte (11/15, p. 28)

by Schuyler Thornton and Cosette Bardawil (1/16, p. 32)

by Rod Sims (1/16, p. 20)

Recruiting that Works by Wendy Hart Higdon: (2/16, p. 18); (3/16, p. 12)

by Jim Shaw (9/15, p. 30)

by Alexander Ritter George (1/16, p. 2)

by Gary Fagan (12/15, p. 6)

by Patricia George (11/15, p. 31)

by Chad West (11/15, p. 12)

Unforgettable Lessons (8/15, p. 32); (9/15, p. 18)

by Anthony Pursell (3/16, p. 20)

by John Thomson (10/15, p. 18)

Instrument Clinics

by Micah Everett (3/16, p. 24)

by Josh Rzepka (5/16, p. 34)

by Adrian D. Griffin (4/16, p. 24)

by Mitchell Peters (1/16, p. 23)

by Jason Kihle (9/15, p.35)

by Matthew Temple (4/16, p. 20)

by Robert Grifa (10/15, p. 24)
by Jerome Franke and Samantha George (12/15, p. 40)

by John Seaton (12/15, p. 34)

by Stacey DiPaolo (9/15, p.40)

by Jordan VanHemert (2/16, p. 24)

by Andrew J. Allen (10/15, p. 30)

by Andrew J. Allen (4/16, p. 22)

by L. Anne Browne (11/15, p. 34)

by Andrew J. Allen (12/15, p. 44)

Jazz Articles

by Joel Moore (2/16, p. 51)

by Luke Malewicz (4/16, p. 26)

by Lee Bash (11/15, p. 38)

Marching Articles

by Sean Smith (8/15, p. 38)

by Mike Howard (5/16, p. 28)

Miscellaneous

(10/15, p. 36)

(3/16, p. 34)

(10/15, p. 33)

(8/15, p. 80)

by Timothy Todd Anderson (9/15, p.8)

(8/15, p. 52)

by Caitlin Ippolito (2/16, p. 54)

by Jasmine Choi (3/16, p. 22)

Life of Reely by Trey Reely: (8/15, p. 48); (9/15, p. 44); (10/15, p. 112); (11/15, p. 48); (12/15, p. 4); (1/16, p. 4); (2/16, p. 64); (3/16, p. 4); Novel Ideas (5/16, p. 48)

(12/15, p. 14); (12/15, p. 22)

by Rachel Taylor Geier (5/16, p. 38)

by John Philip Sousa (3/16, p. 30)

Always a Friend by Heidi I. Sarver (8/15, p. 30)

Essential Matters by Donald Hunsberger (8/15, p. 23)

Follow Your Dream by Dale Clevenger (8/15, p. 23)

From Canning to College by Colonel Arnald D. Gabriel (8/15, p. 18)

Hard Work Matters by Mark Camphouse (8/15, p. 12)

How to Succeed by Charles T. Menghini (8/15, p. 31)

Inspired by a Pioneer by Mary Land (8/15, p. 16)

Learning from Horses by James Barnes (8/15, p. 16)

Lifelong Learning by Paula A. Crider (8/15, p. 20)

Music’s Intrinsic Value by Frank L. Battisti (8/15, p. 22)

Never Forget by Richard Floyd (8/15, p. 28)

Play for Someone You Love by Steve Wiest (8/15, p. 26)

Those Magic Moments by Terry Austin (8/15, p. 21)

Three Notes by Frank Ticheli (8/15, p. 11)

A Wealth of Mentors by Quincy C. Hilliard (8/15, p. 14)

Notes from Northbrook

by James Warrick (4/16, p. 2)

by Dan Blaufuss (2/16, p. 2)

by James M. Rohner (12/15, p. 2)

by James M. Rohner (9/15, p. 2)

by James M. Rohner and Ann Rohner Callis (8/15, p. 2)

by Dan Blaufuss (11/15, p. 2)

by Michael Reynolds (5/16, p. 2)

by James M. Rohner (3/16, p. 2)

Personal Perspective

by John Knight (3/16, p. 64)

by Marlene Schutter (11/15, p. 4)

by Justin Matthew Antos (1/16, p. 6)

by Korey Coffer (9/15, p. 48)

by Kathy Melago (10/15, p. 4)

by Lisa Martin (5/16, p. 6)

by Trey Reely (4/16, p. 32)

Index of Authors

Allen, Andrew J., Oct./30; Dec./44; Apr./22

Anderson, Timothy Todd, Sep./8

Antos, Justin Matthes, Jan./6

Austin, Terry, Aug./21

Bardawil, Cosette, Jan./32

Barnes, James, Aug./16

Bash, Lee, Nov./38

Battisti, Frank L., Aug./22

Blaufuss, Dan, Oct./12; Nov./2; Nov./24; Feb./2; Feb./14; Mar./16; Apr./10

Browne, L. Anne, Nov./34

Burge, Ben, Oct./2

Callis, Ann Rohner, Aug./2

Camphouse, Mark, Aug./12

Choi, Jasmine, Mar./22

Clevenger, Dale, Aug./23

Coffer, Korey, Sep./48

Crider, Paula A., Aug./20

DiPaolo, Stacey, Sep./40

Dunham, David, May/16

Everett, Micah, Mar./24

Fagan, Gary, Dec./6

Floyd, Richard, Aug./28

Franke, Jerome, Dec./40

Gabriel, Arnald D., Aug./18

Geier, Rachel Taylor, May/38

George, Alexander Ritter, Jan./2

George, Patricia, Nov./31

George, Samantha, Dec./40

Geraldi, Kevin M., May/22

Grifa, Robert, Oct./24

Griffin, Adrian D., Apr./24

Higdon, Wendy Hart, Feb./18; Mar./12

Hilliard, Quincy C., Aug./14

Howard, Mike, May/28

Hunsberger, Donald, Aug./23

Ippolito, Caitlin, Feb./55

Jaeschke, Frederick, Feb./30

Kihle, Jason, Sep./35

Knight, John, Mar./64

Land, Mary, Aug./16

Lizotte, Tom, Nov./28

Malewicz, Luke, Apr./26

Martin, Lisa, Aug./45; May/6

Melago, Kathy, Oct./4

Menghini, Charles T., Aug./31

Moore, Joel, Feb./51

Nowak, Jerry, Sep./24; Jan./16

Peters, Mitchell, Jan./23

Pursell, Anthony, Mar./20

Reely, Trey, Aug./48; Sep./44; Oct./112; Nov./48; Dec./4; Jan./4; Feb./64; Mar./6; Apr./32; May/38

Reynolds, Michael, May/2

Rhodes, Stephen, Apr./16

Rohner, James M., Aug./2; Sep./2; Nov./18; Dec./2; Mar./2

Rose, Onsby C., Jan./10; May/12

Rzepka, Josh, May/34

Sarver, Heidi I., Aug./30

Schutter, Marlene, Nov./4

Seaton, John, Dec./34

Shaw, Jim, Sep./30

Shelton, Brian, Dec./30

Sims, Rod, Jan./20

Smith, Sean, Aug./38

Sousa, John Philip, Mar./30

Temple, Matthew, Apr./20

Thomson, John, Oct./18

Thornton, Schuyler, Jan./32

Ticheli, Frank, Aug./11

VanHemert, Jordan, Feb./24

Warrick, James, Apr./2

West, Chad, Nov./12

Wiest, Steve, Aug./26

The post Annual Index August 2015-June/July 2016, vol. 70 appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Frederick Fennell: Lifetime Listener

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 05:14:46 +0000

Despite his passing in 2004, Frederick Fennell remains one of the essential voices in our field. Decades after his articles were published in The Instrumentalist, his observations remain just as charming and wise. In this classic from 1986, he warmly recalls his early musical development at Interlochen and Eastman.

At a recent press interview an excited young lady asked, “What’s it really like up there on the podium making all that music?” The question lit up my flashers: “Deny, deny, deny.” The denial was for her last four words, “. . . making all that music?” The first eleven, though equally difficult to really answer, do elicit a positive – if highly personal – response. But those four final ones – they may have hung a colleague or two, I fear, inasmuch as it has been my lifetime belief that “up on the podium” I don’t make anything; I just try to listen and react. When it comes to making music the program to be played is the only thing that a conductor can do alone, and that is done out of the listening experience that covers one’s conscious lifetime.

Mine probably began at age six when I became aware of my father and his brothers-in-law playing together as fifers and drummers in our family’s fife and drum corps. This was part of the annual day-long celebration of the Fourth of July held at Camp Zeke, which was assembled on the two-and-a-half acres that remained of my grandfather’s pioneer farm in what is now southeast Cleveland. Describing my family’s pursuit of the study of our country’s history through these summer-long assemblies at Camp Zeke is even more difficult than replying to my interviewer’s so well-meant question about conducting. May it suffice to say that 66 years later I have not yet recovered from the wonderful sounds of those shrieking fifes and rattling drums. They really got my attention, and later when Father hung a very big drum around my very little neck and told me to play along, I did what I did by listening to what was happening around me. There was nothing very different about that, but I knew from then that this was to be my number-one way to learn while staying out of trouble.

But just avoiding problems is hardly fit behavior for a would-be conductor; I ran headlong into a full catalog of them. My first group experiences came at Miles Elementary School just across the street from where Camp Zeke ended. At Miles my days of playing mostly without music ended when I was introduced to the Bennett Band Book and the Fox Orchestra Folio. Then a very cute girl pianist in my classroom and I were asked to play a march out in the big main corridor for the changing of classes. In addition to noticing her, I discovered that we sounded louder out in that cold-looking open space than when we practiced on the warm, carpeted stage in the auditorium. Acoustics began to be part of my listening life along with Our Director and Evelyn Bittner, the pianist. Our romance ended a year later when she refused to learn El Capitan, but I’m still chasing acoustics and listening to marches by John Philip Sousa.

Next came my first set of drums as a Christmas present when I was ten. My sister Marjorie and I put together another piano and drums act that we played for parties at the mill where our father worked almost all of his life. Our musical inclinations and nature’s priceless gifts of hearing and retention came from him. When my father was our age there were no musical opportunities such as his interest and support made possible for us to enjoy at home and in school. Home included a 1926 state-of-the-art phonograph and cabinet filled with a variety of records, and that phonograph’s rewarding instant replay set me on my way to begin learning how to listen to music.

The family library included Arthur Conan Doyle’s remarkable Adventures, and it was while reading one of Sherlock Holmes’ recapitulations of how he solved a case by observation and deductive reasoning that I began to apply the Doyle/Holmes words to discipline to become a true listener. The great detective’s companion, Dr. Watson, full of questions when expressing amazement at how Sherlock Holmes had discovered the facts that revealed the criminal, would be chided: “My dear Watson, you see, but you don’t observe.” So too, the musician who hears but somehow forgets to listen, passes rich opportunities to learn.

High school began in the ninth grade when I went to John Adams. There I met a teacher who would further sharpen my listening habits while introducing me to the ordered study of harmonic practice. John B. Elliot’s position on the Adams faculty reflected the unusual commitment of the Cleveland Board of Education to the teaching of music; he was our full-time professional accompanist for everything that happened in school. He also taught a class in theory, counterpoint, form and analysis, and music materials, which functioned in tandem with Amos Wesler’s orchestra and band rehearsals; it was no surprise when both ensembles became national champions. For those who could meet his high standards, Elliot’s classes were a learning experience I could only wish to pass to others; they were to ease me into the next school in my life.

In my high school freshman year Elliot led us through the most detailed and rewarding examination of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger, required music for the Greater Cleveland Contest. I still have that miniature score. From it I began the habit of playing while trying to listen for everything — which in Meistersinger, of course, is everything. Repeated rehearsals afforded me the chance to isolate instruments. As a challenge I would follow each instrument in a single line of counterpoint or play the game of switching concentration from one to another on call. I had heard a lot of music prior to this but now I was really beginning to listen and to think about what I was hearing. Meistersinger became my bible of music composition. Elliot’s classes, Wesler’s rehearsals, and Wagner’s music were exciting lessons for a young man.

There were other lessons for those of us in the Cleveland schools at this time; Music Supervisor Russell V. Morgan had worked out a Saturday morning plan of instruction with members of The Cleveland Orchestra and other musicians in the city whereby we could have top teaching for 50¢ a private lesson given in a centrally located school. Cleveland was truly a hotbed of young musical talent in those years. Families who had recently arrived in the United States had produced first-generation children who were to have everything that might have been denied their parents, including the time to practice the violin every day after school. As I participated, I also learned to listen with them.

Listening to the radio was another of my pastimes. One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1930, I happened to hear a concert broadcast from Interlochen, Michigan played by the National High School Orchestra. It was a shatteringly wonderful experience and I became determined to get to that camp, however impossible it seemed in the second year of the economic depression. Once again the Cleveland schools helped me, this time when I received a booklet about Interlochen from my mentor, Mr. Morgan. When the camp was short on percussion players for the 1931 session, my talented father found the way to get me there. I date my life from those eight weeks spent between the beautiful lakes in the northwestern Michigan woods.

At Interlochen all my listening and studying and practicing were up for grabs. I found myself in company with a stageful of what had to be some of the most outstanding young musicians of that time. The Interlochen Bowl stage, a magic place for so many of us campers, afforded me the next dimensions in my quest for the education I needed to become a conductor. Here I was listening again, with an added ingredient called competition, that dominant element in the world of professional music making. I’m glad I had to face it at this early age when I was just beginning to learn a few things about myself. Fellow percussionists, older and with two summers of camp experiences ahead of me, were way out in front. Listening as I watched them play, I began to close the gap of experience between us.

I was never without a pair of heavy drum sticks under the belt on my blue corduroys, a rubber practice pad in one hip pocket, and a dog-eared miniature score in the other. (I didn’t need a pitch-pipe for tuning the kettledrums; I just listened to the one nature had put in my head.) The summer was spent listening and sopping up everything I heard at Interlochen.

Placement of percussion instruments (and especially the kettledrums) in large ensembles offers a panoramic view of the technical command of the conductor as well as all that is happening in the other sections. Usually it is while listening from the rear (where balance is easily disturbed) that percussion players lose touch with what is happening in front of them. The percussion part is a problem, for it rarely tells players anything beyond when to play; even how to play and with what is vague. The good percussionist is thereby obliged to become an acutely tuned listener and to develop retentive habits that account for all that is played. Listening while following the score or a violin or clarinet part is much more informative and rewarding than trying to be an adding machine. Listening to the sonorities of which the percussionist’s music is part is the key to balance and the only reliable guide to texture. At camp I had the chance to do this twice daily seven days a week. I had not been there long before my principal concern was to find some way to get back there for my two remaining years of high school.

It was obvious to me from the start that Interlochen is a great separation center. Young men and women there stand at the fork in the road. Camp helps them make the sometimes painful choice: doctor, lawyer, merchant chief – or, for a few, musican. When that field is to be performance, a person had better have a peaceful understanding of the demands. Those who discover that they don’t like to rehearse and who find the daily routine of practicing to be a drag will have to go in another direction. Interlochen groups certainly offer a fair shot at the former. Other factors along with the practicing routine probably help lead a camper to a decision. Mine had been made for me; I simply could not have done anything else in joy or with purpose.

It was interesting to discover that first summer that retentive listening saved me a lot of time and that it wasn’t just the music I could remember. The visual scene of the trees in the grove, the hour of the day with the morning aroma of the canvas awning in front of the bowl being heated by the sun, the look of a Breitkopf & Härtel music cover, the smell of the pines, the way horn players in front of me barely got the tuning slides back in place to play after dumping water – all these are still indelible memories of the first time I played Brahms’s Symphony in C Minor. All these sensory receptions and retentions were stimulated by listening as I heard.

I did make it back to camp the next two summers and was fortunate to add two more disciplines to the experience of performing. The urge to conduct had been fed a bit the first summer when Vladimir Bakalienikoff herded about 50 of us into Grunow Hall for his basic class in baton technique. Knowing that anything beyond that class was strictly daydreaming, I took the only route open to me in 1932 as a potential music leader – the Interlochen course in drum majoring, all 5’1" of me. Mr. Giddings, director of instruction, arranged for me to attend the university class in drum majoring and field tactics offered by Mark H. Hindsley, whose pioneering Cleveland Heights High Marching Band was peerless on the field. His order and logic in teaching those studies were in sharp contrast to the guarded secrets of the twirling baton when I sought some lessons from a counselor at Boys’ Camp. The counselor told me that, in the best tradition of the magician, I could keep what I could steal from him – which I did.

Returning home to my final fall at John Adams I found Mr. Wesler open to the idea that I might be the band’s drum major. At least and at last I could conduct the band for marching although that square one-two, up-down motion didn’t really interest me, even then. My life as a music leader was happening, and I have always cherished the way it began; the long road to a podium was to be shortened considerably by events that occurred in the summer and fall of 1932.

It was time to be thinking about a music school, like the one in Rochester, New York where Howard Hanson was director. We all knew him as annual guest conductor of the National High School Orchestra, and his school had everything I needed, including a generous program of student financial aid. We had talked about it in 1932, but there was no action on my application for admission as late as June of the following year. William F. Ludwig, Jr. became a camper in 1932, and by 1933 we were close friends and sharing the kettledrum stool on a draw lots basis. Bill drew the lot for Hanson’s visit that year. Desperate to make any points with Hanson, I was grateful when Bill offered me his week so that I could play in Hanson’s first Interlochen performance of Symphony No. 2, “Romantic.” This is probably how I became a percussion major at Eastman that September; Interlochen’s fork in the road pointed straight to Rochester, New York.

Bill Ludwig and Frederick Fennell at Interlochen.

The discipline I chose for my final high school camp session was composition. Among the pieces I wrote for class was a mildly successful march. I decided at camp, however, that I would neither clutter nor pollute the world with further creative attempts and that I would devote my life to listening and hopefully to conducting the music of others. This, too, was a listening decision made by all that great music from the National Emblem to The Rite of Spring. Before this abandonment, however, A.A. Harding had invited me to make my debut as a conductor with the National High School Band leading that summer’s march composition at the final concert. A treasured photograph of the occasion reveals all that could possibly be wrong in a very young conductor – except the look on my face.

At Eastman, as at Interlochen, I was free of the usual domestic responsibilities – no trash to take out, no grass to cut, no wood to carry for Grandma Putnam’s magic oven (but no pies and cakes, either). Listening was for keeps at Eastman, where amidst the fast pace I was oh-so-grateful for all to which I had been exposed en route.

If memory is born of interest and listening is fed by curiosity, why not pool all of these as we listen to others perform, practice, rehearse, improvise, warm-up and down, wherever and whenever we find them? I was about to learn some of these big lessons.

The Eastman Years

I had never seen a real chamber music hall, let alone one as strikingly beautiful as Kilbourn, or a theater as impressive as the one that bore the name of George Eastman. Word was that this genius of industry and finance with an obvious passion for music could not (perhaps to his eternal regret) carry a tune in a basket. Maybe this is why he built and endowed so magnificent a school for the training of those who could. Both of these remarkable halls were to become important rooms in my life. Everything about the Eastman Theatre was impressive – the sheer size, the beautiful murals, the elegant crystal chandelier, the big stage – but the setting was not what struck me then.

What made me stop and pay attention was the sound of that marvelous acoustical chamber, which later was to become so vital a part of the many phonograph recordings that the Eastman Wind Ensemble and I would make there.

The first time I heard the special sound of that theatre I was in it all alone – which I never should have been. Over the years the never-should-have-beens were to mount, but for now they were confined to surreptitious forays into the darkened Eastman Theatre, where in the silence of those ghostly surroundings I could listen to the thoughts in my head.

The preliminaries accomplished, I spent those first weeks at school adding to life’s two inevitables, death and taxes, a third called theory – thank you, John Elliot. We music students knew we were in a school of a university where the academics took no secondary place. The parent University of Rochester recently had moved to a beautiful new campus where its College for Men was housed. An aerial photo showed a modest but handsome athletic stadium with high stands on one side. I thought I’d try becoming involved as drum major with whatever football and marching band activities there were. I asked the director of athletics at the River Campus (who also had the challenging responsibility for teaching Eastman’s most hilarious class, hygiene) if he could tell me where I might contact the leader of the band for an audition as drum major. His reply that they didn’t have either lit up all my youthful flashers and this time the printout was: go, go, go! “How would you like to have a marching band?” I asked. “I can organize and lead one for you.” After a silence, which I was fortunate not to break, an unforgettable look of disbelief crossed his face. Two weeks later, however, when several willing sources of energy pooled their resources into a group – many former Interlochen campers joining out of courtesy, other people out of curiosity – Dr. Fauver’s look of approval was unhesitating.

It was a pretty good parade – thank you, Mark Hindsley. My career as a band conductor had begun as an Eastman School freshman with no warning of its arrival and no hint of the consequences ahead. While the money I earned put me through school, the audacity of my act put me in touch with kindred souls, and I had a great need for both. The number one kindred soul and critic (I needed that, too) eventually became my wife after a succession of bone-chilling fall Saturday afternoons and all that attends life with the conductor of a marching band. Dorothy Codner didn’t much care for bands as she heard them, and some of the time neither did I. Doing what we could about that was to consume much of our life together. A violinist who switched to viola, Dorothy was a year ahead of me in school. I was happy to have found myself through her.

School was tough. In addition to old-fashioned competition came grades, class lessons, studio pressure, practice-room checkers, and house mothers. Eastman had been around for 11 years and Howard Hanson had been its director for almost all of them; there was no doubt of his complete (but benevolent) authority and the students’ great admiration for his musical leadership. My little bit of business with Dr. Fauver and the assembling of those never-should-have-been marching Eastmanites (plus men from the college who paid the bills) happened only with his approval.

Eastman’s resources reached beyond practice rooms and marble halls into immediate and intimate association with the thriving professional music life of the city of Rochester, located right across the corridor from the school. The professional life was always part of our education, and non-university groups shared the rehearsal and performance facilities so generously provided by Mr. Eastman. The chance to hear our teachers play for keeps under almost every imaginable ensemble circumstance, six days a week, was the ultimate lesson. Furthermore, when it became apparent that the skills our teachers demanded in the studio were the same ones they needed under the pressure in the professional hall, it encouraged all of us to reach beyond what we had thought was our potential. This lesson, together with the immense holdings in the Sibley Music Library, were Eastman’s greatest assets.

After the initial success of the band that marched while it played, some of the players encouraged me to organize one that sat down in a nice, warm room. The University of Rochester Symphony Band played its first concert on January 25, 1935, on campus. It was my debut conducting a concert band. Howard Hanson was present and requested a repeat performance a few weeks later in Kilbourn Hall. When the dust had settled our name was changed to the Eastman School Symphony Band, and we were added to the ensemble curriculum. I was the group’s conductor for the next 26 years.

Our percussion teacher and performer par excellence, William G. Street, was a solid supporter of my moves toward conducting. At the same time I was still a percussionist, and I practiced the instruments as though that was all I had to do. I performed in all the school’s ensembles, and when I graduated with my class in June 1937, I was Eastman’s first percussion major to receive the Performer’s Certificate.

Bill Street had taken me into the section of the Rochester Philharmonic a few years before. It was an opportunity of priceless value for a young conductor to be part of a group with such a high level of professional playing and to be in the company of international soloists. There was much for which to listen, and I had scores to everything that I could buy of what was played.

The music director of the Philharmonic was the distinguished Spanish musician and pianist, José Iturbi, who enjoyed the privilege of parking his car in the garage under the main rehearsal room. Hearing sounds from above, he came upstairs unobserved to watch a rehearsal that I was conducting with the band. Some days later, to my complete surprise, he asked me to conduct a portion of the same work, Enesco’s Rumanian Rhapsody, so that he might go out into the Eastman Theatre to hear the Philharmonic’s sound and balance. Hearing the wonderful sound of the orchestra coming right at me, so well-played and so responsive to whatever I did, was overwhelming. I began to feel what it was like to be up there on the podium “making all that music.”

My first employment was not as a conductor but as a kettledrummer with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. I was hired to play the full 1936 summer season at The Bowl in Balboa Park as part of the California-Pacific International Exposition. Others from Eastman, including two players who had gone to San Diego High School with the conductor, Nino Marcelli, were in the orchestra as well. The cross-country trip in my car, mostly alone, was an education in itself. I’d never seen an ocean, and my first view of the Pacific coming up over the brow of a hill in what is now Camp Pendleton was a sight that has never left me. California was very different from New York; San Diego was charming and beautiful. Rehearsing and playing daily in a good orchestra became another way to expand my knowledge of repertory and learn what worked. Playing from scores and listening for everything was endlessly informative.

That summer Otto Klemperer, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, offered a cycle of the Beethoven symphonies on Monday nights at the Hollywood Bowl. We San Diego players had the night off, so in company with Norman Herzberg, our first bassoonist and Harold Kurtz, the flutist who had steered us into the San Diego job, I drove to Hollywood to hear performances of those masterworks. Seated on the fringe of the sound in the Bowl I heard things that I still associate with the proper interpretation of this literature. The lack of amplification did not seem to hinder the strength of the music. Klemperer was impressive, not only as a conductor, but also as one so tall that he did not need to use a podium.

One Monday afternoon the San Diego’s wind players and I went neither to the bathing cove at La Jolla nor to Klemperer’s Beethoven. Instead, John Barrows, our principal hornist, assembled us at his family home, a classic California wooden cottage with ample room and a great sound for chamber music. Among the works to be read was a piece I had not heard, the Serenade, Op. 7, by Richard Strauss. I was along as a listener, but when things became a little rocky in the middle section (B minor, piú animato) Herzberg suggested that I assist the ensemble. The subsequent play-through was the beginning of a long love affair with this charming piece; I had found one of the pivotal scores that would lead me to the Eastman Wind Ensemble. At summer’s end Norman and I went to see the Big Trees at Yosemite; at last they were more than just black-and-white photos in a geography book.

School and the marching band season began without Dorothy, who had graduated and returned home to Iowa. In 1935 the University of Rochester had a new young president, and somewhere among the myriad questions asked him was one by a local sports writer as to when the band might get some real uniforms. His casual reply that an amount would be allotted for the fall of 1937 was enough encouragement for me to request a cost quote from Greenville, Illinois. The quote led to drawings and a fitting session for all the men who would return. With the slim assurance of a few devoted alumni that somehow the bill would be paid, I gulped a few times and sent in the order. Two weeks later I hurried off to Iowa to be married.

The automobile trip to San Diego and the 1937 summer season of the San Diego Symphony were our honeymoon. Back in Rochester, the new uniforms had arrived, along with a huge bill. I went to see President Valentine, the bill in my hand and my job on the line. Somehow, and with his appreciation of what the band had been contributing, another never-should-have-been came to pass.

Both Dorothy and I were in graduate school on a very tight budget – hers! We practically lived in Sibley Library, researching our material for dissertations in music theory. The Orchestral Development of the Kettledrum from Purcell through Beethoven demanded and got every other minute of my time for two years; the rest of my work went on around it. I became a looker as well as a listener. Research to support the thesis meant that I had to explore all printed scores before Purcell and then patiently to peruse every score in the complete works of Purcell, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Through this survey of a composer’s use of the kettledrums I had the chance to observe much beyond that area as well.

School had barely begun that fall of 1937 when a notice appeared on the bulletin board from the Institute for International Education Lifetime Listener advising that applications for the Salzburg International Prize in Conducting should be completed by the first of October. The Mozarteum in Austria would award the prize the following summer. This was the only prize for a young conductor at the time, but confidence that my training and experience made me eligible was tempered by a realization that conductors of bands sat rather low on the artistic totem pole. I vividly remember dropping that application in the Eastman corridor mailbox and thinking, “Well, who knows?” Howard Hanson, José Iturbi, and Vladimir Bakaleinikoff had agreed to let me list them as sponsors; when time passed with no acknowledgement, I finally ceased to think about it. The mountain of paper on my Sibley study cubicle received all of my attention. On the 28th of February word came that I had been awarded the prize after a jury had secretly visited the darkened Eastman Theatre during a Symphony Band rehearsal.

Dorothy’s and my happiness at this great opportunity ended as abruptly as it had begun with the news on March 12th that Hitler had completed the annexation of Austria for the Third Reich. Wanting no gifts from Nazism, I relinquished the prize, and my disappointment was eased when the Mozarteum Academy’s summer plans were cancelled. Dorothy and I were in Iowa for the summer when I received a telegram from Howard Hanson stating that the prize was on again. The State Department requested that I please be in Salzburg by July 10th. Somehow I was, and alone. The sudden change from pastoral Iowa to the busy decks of the German liner Europa found me with my nose once again in a German dictionary.

The first night in Salzburg I lodged in a comfortable private home. The score to Mozart’s “Jupiter” rested atop a great white down comforter as I read my way into the spirit of my new surroundings. Amid reflections of the family, teachers, and players who had sent me there, sleep was about to claim me when I heard the distant but unmistakable sound of marching boots approaching in a precise crescendo. Then this rude interruption of Mozart and my reverie became the accompaniment to German soldier songs. As the marchers sang and passed, sleep no longer came easily or peacefully. I knew that evening in Mozart’s beautiful hometown, as a wonderful time was beginning for me, that things were about to go all wrong for lots of other people; those boots in the night were just an omen of its beginning.

The post Frederick Fennell: Lifetime Listener appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Pick Your Battles

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 04:27:02 +0000

One of the things I had to learn the quickest when my first child reached the terrible twos was that not every issue that arose was worth fighting over. This may seem like an easy concept, but emotionally it was difficult; there were times when I felt like an unmanly, powerless father because I could not win an argument with a toddler. I learned to accept the fact that she didn’t want me to break her Pop-Tart in half and would scream like crazy if she was not able to begin devouring it from its original rectangular shape. That battle, and others like it, I decided she could win. As for more important concerns like sitting in her car seat and going to bed at a decent hour, I insisted on winning those.

My experience working with others at school is similar. There are so many matters at school that can become points of contention that if I am not careful, each day becomes a long series of aggravations. I have learned to fight only for the things that matter to me the most, but I have to admit that there is an occasional unsettled feeling when I let up on some of the things I used to stress about. Choices on what to battle for will vary, and some people may find a number of the battles I’ve decided not to fight rather unsettling because priorities and philosophies differ based on past experiences.

For example, my high school band director emphasized punctuality to the point of embarrassing students who walked in seconds late. One summer I had car trouble on the way to practice. When I entered the rehearsal hall, he cut off the band, and I had to explain why I was late in front of 120 fellow band members. It was the only time I had ever been late. It seemed like such a negative way to start rehearsals. When I became a director, I decided to rarely make such a public issue of it, preferring to address the matter individually with repeat offenders. I have found that it is usually the same kids who are repeatedly late.

I used to give lectures on having a pencil in rehearsal. It got the point where I was turning into Commander Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) from The Caine Mutiny who annoyingly rolls a couple of steel ball bearings in his hands while obsessing over his missing strawberries. I have decided I am not going to have a stroke if someone does not have a pencil on their stand for rehearsal. I simply hand the student another one from my stash of new and pre-owned models and remind them to have a pencil in their instrument case.

One of our greatest battles as band directors is getting students to practice. There is no perfect solution, but I can tell you what hasn’t worked for me: nagging. Neither did practice sheets that were to be completed and signed by parents. That just gave me something extra to nag about. Plus, I had students who actually practiced but were not responsible enough to get the sheets signed by their parents, so they would get a bad grade even though they practiced. I also found it difficult to track honesty, and I am not even sure if the parents really knew exactly how much their children were practicing. There is a strong chance they just signed the sheet quickly as their child headed off to school.

When I began to reevaluate my approach to getting students to practice, I considered the types of kids in my band and adjusted accordingly. First, there were the precious few who loved playing their instrument so much that I only had to guide them on what and how to practice so that their practice time was filled with something besides pop tunes they still had partially memorized from marching season.

Then there were a large group in the middle that would practice depending on the circumstances. It is with these students that I decided to manipulate the circumstances to the point where they are actually practicing quite a bit. I scheduled extra sectionals and individual lessons until everyone learned whatever music I wanted them to. The sooner a student learned a part, the sooner the sectionals and lessons end. Basically I was assuming that they were not going to practice enough and provide sufficient rehearsals for them to learn it. That may seem like an unfair burden to me, but I can live with it if it means the music is being learned. Of course, I encourage students to practice, but I have found it more effective to encourage students individually or in small groups as opposed to chiding the full band all the time.

The third group is comprised of students whose parents haven’t seen their kid’s instrument in so long that they are not even sure their child is in band anymore. Sectionals and lessons are not enough to get these students to learn their music. I always hope to move as many of these students into the second category as possible, but when I cannot, I usually approach this problem individually. At this point, it is a battle that needs to be faced, and I explore several options with the student, varying from an instrument switch if they have lost interest in their instrument all the way to discontinuing band.

Picking the right battles is also important when working with administrators. There are some unpleasant tasks I do every year simply so that I can later fight for or against other things that are more important to me. Singeing my eyebrows at homecoming bonfires, performing rehearsal-interrupting hallway send-offs for athletic events, directing a pep band for basketball games, monitoring a testing room, driving the bus on some band trips that I’d rather not, and marching three parades rather than my preferred one are just a few examples. This gives me a clear conscience when I have to turn down other requests, defend my program in some other matter, or ask for permission to do something that benefits the band.

Or how about picking battles with coaches and other faculty members? Many times these battles center around “shared” students. I want to have my students at every performance, but there are often not enough days in the week to avoid a conflict in the spring with basketball, track, soccer, and baseball going full force. I had a softball player once who had a game at the same time as both a solo and ensemble event and our region assessment. It would have been more than fair for me to request that I have her both times since there are twenty softball games and she was on the junior varsity team. However, to battle for both dates would leave me looking less than willing to compromise. I readily agreed for her to miss the solo and ensemble event, but was adamant about the region assessment because she was second chair.

Here is a quick guide to help you in battles that occur daily:

Only fight about issues that are truly important. Do not argue for the sake of arguing. Consider a few simple questions: Is this worth addressing? Will I care about this tomorrow? Will I be burning bridges that will hurt me in the future?

Do not react immediately. Many times battles are thrust upon us at a moment’s notice. Walk away from a tense situation for a few minutes. Calm down and consider what an argument will accomplish. If you choose to fight every battle, you will be seen as stubborn or argumentative.

Make a plan. If you decide to battle, do not approach the situation haphazardly. Take a moment to calm down and think through the problem. Support your argument logically with facts and examples.

Choose the right time. Find a quiet place to vent your frustrations in private so you can have an honest conversation without outside pressure. Everyone involved is less defensive if matters are not being aired in full view of everyone else.

Talk, don’t yell. Both parties will likely become defensive if the fight becomes overly emotional.

Solve the problem together. It’s easy to dictate things to students, but often more long-standing success occurs when the student helps in finding a solution.

Preempt the problem. A little prevention goes a long way. Address the situation as soon as you see a problem arise. Be proactive in your approach. I often contact parents about a student problem before it becomes a major concern. With experience, I have been able to predict what is coming if something isn’t done sooner rather than later.

The old school my-way-or-the-highway approach may work for some; if that works for you, I envy you a little. For the rest of us, the world has changed, and a more give-and-take approach with carefully chosen battles seems to be the best course, whether it’s dealing with students, faculty, administrators, or Pop-Tart-eating toddlers.

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Stop Sax Squeaks

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 04:22:11 +0000

Squeaking is an all-too-common problem with some young saxophonists, and it can prove frustrating. There are several root causes, but they are all easily solved.

The first and most common culprit is the reed. If it is too soft or worn out it can close up under normal air or embouchure pressure, resulting in mistakes. While a 2 or 2.5 strength reed is entirely appropriate for a beginner, as soon as some modicum of embouchure strength is achieved, saxophonists should be moved to a strength 3 and should never move beyond a 3.5. Young saxophonists should perform on high-quality French-cut style reeds and should avoid thin-tipped American cut reeds until they acquire a separate jazz mouthpiece, for which those reeds are appropriate.

Dried out or warped reeds can also cause squeaks. Both of these will make it difficult for students to control the reed adequately. If a cane reed is used, an appropriate storage system that keeps the reed from completely drying out should be used. This will reduce the risk of warping. A high-quality synthetic reed can also be used, eliminating the potential for warping.

Another equipment concern is the mouthpiece. All students should perform on mouthpieces of moderate tip opening and lay. An extreme mouthpiece will result in many problems, including squeaking.

Keys accidentally opening can also cause squeaks. On the saxophone, the various side keys are often the culprit. This can be prevented by ensuring that students are playing the saxophone at an appropriate angle, without the saxophone tilting too far to either side while standing or sitting. The main keys should be more or less lined up vertically with the embouchure.

A final problem that could produce squeaking is incorrect embouchure placement on the mouthpiece. This often happens when switching to a new setup or a different member of the saxophone family. Numerous tips and techniques have been developed through the years to help guide students on embouchure placement, but many of them involve several complicated steps. The below method seems to be the simplest way of determining embouchure placement.

First the student should take in a small amount of mouthpiece. Regardless of the saxophone size, a written G#5 should be played at a beautiful fortissimo dynamic. This should be repeated, gradually taking in a tiny sliver more mouthpiece each time.

Eventually, the student will find the position at which the roundest, fullest tone is produced (at this point the lower lip will be at the point at which the reed meets the mouthpiece). If they go beyond that point by taking in more mouthpiece, the tone will harshen and the student will begin to squeak. Once the tone breaks down, the young saxophonist should return to the position on the mouthpiece that yielded the best tone with a full sound. The exercise should be repeated daily until the placement feels natural. This will help saxophonists be able to play more beautifully with fewer problems.

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Preserving First Trumpet Players During Marching Season

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 04:18:02 +0000

Being the first-chair trumpeter in a high school band program can be somewhat daunting. These students face many responsibilities that band directors may easily take for granted, including leadership, superhuman chop strength, limitless high range, and making time to practice All-State auditions. These are exaggerations, but many teachers really do want these things from our top trumpeters, even if they do not consciously realize it.

The physical chop stress of playing first chair all year can be eliminated by ensuring these students always have good warm-up and warm-down time, as well as using a daily maintenance routine. While the function of the warm-up is well-known, a good warm-down is equally important. Trumpeters’ muscles will tighten after a long workout, just like the muscles of a runner after a marathon. The warm-down gives these muscles a chance to stretch and loosen before the instrument goes back in the case.

It is tempting for students just to pack up and race out the door after a long rehearsal or practice session. They are usually mentally and physically tired and have other things to do, including homework. However the result of this is muscles that are tight, rigid, and unresponsive the next day. The few minutes of warm-down are well worth the trouble.

To avoid performance injuries and bad performing habits arising in marching band, I would approach marching band from a concert band perspective, as far as playing is concerned. They need to play with a beautiful, rich sound, little tension, proper breathing, appropriate dynamics, and good posture. Students should also maintain excellent self-care routines for warm-up, warm-down, strength training, and lip care.

During the Marching Season

Playing on tired lips.

Students must avoid pushing their lips past their limit; otherwise, bruising or injury can result. If their lips are tired, trumpet players should dial back their performance level by playing softer and less aggressively and taking high parts down an octave when feasible. Doing this for one rehearsal will help them regain strength and avoid injuries that could take them away from the trumpet for much longer than a day.

Ideally, students should not play on sore lips; they are not professionals in a job, and there is no reason to flirt with the risk of injury. Crucially, though, if students experience embouchure pain when beginning to warm up for the day, they should take that day off from playing and not play until the pain is gone. If the pain lingers after four days, the student should consult a professional and, if the problem is not resolved, a doctor.

Switching to a high-note mouthpiece.

If lead trumpeters are unable to play the high notes on a standard symphonic mouthpiece, they should feel comfortable requesting to move to a lower part. While switching to a shallow high-note mouthpiece is an option, this can result in sound and technique problems.

Students who want to try the high-note mouthpiece should work with a professional player to make sure technique remains solid and that they are able to adapt to whichever mouthpiece they are using at the moment.

Intonation.

The temperature difference between outside and inside can greatly affect the trumpet’s intonation. Students will need to adjust carefully with the tuning slide and listen to make sure they are in tune with the group.

Sweaty hands.

Sweat contains moisture and acids that can eat away the finish on a brass instrument. After each practice, but especially after outdoor rehearsals, students should wipe down their instrument, so that it stays looking good.

Dehydration or over-hydration.

Students need to drink enough water to avoid dehydration, heat exhaustion, and possibly passing out. However, if they drink too much water they can become sick from an imbalance of electrolytes.

Trumpet safety.

Students seem to think that their instrument will be safe wherever they put it – from the concrete field they are marching on to the grass. However, the only safe place for an instrument is in the case. Students should take cases with them to the field and return the instruments to the cases when they are on break and at the end of rehearsal.

Returning from Marching Band to Concert Playing

Trumpet angle.

Many times the high trumpet angle from marching band carries over into the concert band. Directors should watch for this and remind students to readjust their head and trumpet angle when returning to seated playing.

Hand position.

When on the field, students often change their hand position to balance the weight of the instrument or alleviate pressure problems. For example, some players adjust their left hand to hold the instrument with only the thumb and first two fingers and may put their pinky in the hook to add pressure on the high notes. When returning to the concert band setting, the traditional hand position is preferred. This position allows for greater ease of moving slides, healthy mouthpiece pressure, and increased agility in the right hand.

Over-playing the instrument.

Trying to fill the entire stadium with your sound can be a big job. When students move from the stadium to the concert hall they will often need to adjust their dynamic levels back.

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Creating an Environment for Improved Rehearsal Discipline

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 04:02:30 +0000

My first year of teaching began forty years ago in January as a long-term substitute for a band director who had taken ill. As I prepared for my first rehearsal, I remembered advice I had received from a music education professor – keep a journal. At the end of each day, I wrote a short reflection on the day’s events, identifying areas that needed improvement, both for me as a teacher and for the band program.

At the end of the last day of school, I began reading what I had written. As I reflected on the rehearsal challenges I had faced as a new teacher over the previous months, I happened to glance through my office window into the rehearsal room. The room was a mess with chairs in disarray, several music stands knocked over, and equipment laying about. It was at this moment that I realized that as a long-term substitute I had been employing many of the previous director’s management strategies, because that is what students knew. However, the previous director would not be returning, and I had been offered the job. It was now my band program, and every aspect of it needed to reflect me as an educator. I wanted my students to work toward achieving excellence in every endeavor and I wanted every aspect of the band program to reflect that. Thus, it was time for a makeover.

The strategies that I developed following my first few months of teaching included non-musical concepts often found in the structure of any successful enterprise, specifically principles of collaboration, cooperation, and organization. The results of my efforts were positive, and ten years later I applied the same approach when I moved to another high school. Whether a first-year or veteran teacher, a fresh start can put a music program on the path to greater success.

Evaluate, refresh and organize the physical environment.

During my high school teaching career, I taught at two schools, one small and rural, the other large and suburban. On both occasions, I inherited rehearsal rooms that were over twenty years old. Each had chipped wall paint, scarred and graffiti-covered wooden instrument storage shelves, bent music stands, and worn school-owned instrument cases. The rooms were definitely in need of a facelift. Although some music educators might scoff at the notion that they should concern themselves with fixing up the rehearsal room, it can be a great way to engage students, develop pride in the program, and ultimately improve rehearsal discipline.

Begin with a fresh paint job. Schedule a meeting with the school principal to explain your plan and seek approval and funding. I was never turned down with this request, as the prospect of free labor to paint a classroom space was always met with enthusiasm. Meet with student leaders and upperclassmen to discuss color schemes and enlist their assistance. It is important that they feel committed to the project. Develop a work schedule and assign students specific areas of responsibility. Use school colors as much as possible to help promote school spirit and pride in the facility. If you have students who have taken art classes, allow them to add a strategically placed school logo or motto. At my first school, the band was always publicly introduced as “The Pride of the Mustangs.” Students painted these words on the wall behind the conductor’s podium, and on another wall they painted the school logo, a giant rearing horse.

Be sure to extend the color scheme of the main rehearsal room into offices, practice rooms, music library, and uniform and instrument storage areas. In the instrument storage areas, sand away scratches and graffiti on wood surfaces before re-painting. Clean, repair, and paint music stands and school-owned instrument cases as appropriate. Create a paint stencil and spray-paint the school or band logo on every music stand. Also paint your logo or affix an adhesive logo sticker onto school-owned instrument cases.

Create a clean, organized environment that everyone can be proud of.

Chaos often breeds chaos, so the next step is to organize. Remove clutter by discarding or repurposing unnecessary items. Once everything is in an assigned location, take time to admire your efforts, then ask for student input on what finishing touches might be added to the facility to reflect pride in the band and its history. Celebrate the band’s history and those who contributed to it by hanging pictures of past bands at various locations around the rehearsal room, and consider adding an alumni bulletin board with news and pictures of graduates who played in college bands, chose careers in music, or achieved noteworthy accomplishments. Also, consider adding shelving around the walls or a cabinet to display past awards. For example, rather than having old trophies or plaques collecting dust in trophy cabinets in school hallways, move older awards to the rehearsal room as a reminder of past achievements. Leave the recent ones in the hallway cabinets for display to the student body and public.

The main goal of these efforts is to create an environment that makes a good impression on band participants the minute they walk through the door. I will never forget the smiles on my students’ faces as they entered their reborn rehearsal room for the first time, and the pride they took in caring for it. Strive to make it obvious to students that as a member of the band, they are part of a great tradition, a participant and contributor to something that transcends that particular moment in time. Impress upon them that their work will contribute to the band program’s legacy at the school and in the community, setting a standard of pride and dedication for all who follow.

Lay a firm foundation for music-making.

Prior to holding the first rehearsal of a new school year, schedule a meeting to unveil your band facility makeover and set forth guidelines for rehearsals. Be sure that details regarding rehearsal expectations and facility care are clearly stated in the band’s policies and procedures handbook. Stress that every aspect of the rehearsal process will be guided in part by four specific principles: efficiency, cooperation, respect, and collaboration.

For in-school rehearsals, give students an exact time that the rehearsal will begin following a class change. Allow them a reasonable amount of time to enter the room and assemble their instruments, but stress that every minute counts so there will not be time at the beginning of class to chat with friends, ask random questions, repair instruments, or purchase supplies. For rehearsals outside of the school day, explain to students how important it is that they arrive early and be ready at the announced start time.

I have occasionally heard directors comment, out of frustration with unruly or disrespectful students, that they are going to start cracking down on discipline. In my mind, improvement of discipline actually involves elevating the level of cooperation and developing respect for the task at hand. Students must understand that for large groups of people to attain a common goal efficiently, a high level of cooperation is required from every member. Directors must understand that cooperation is only an option when students have accepted discipline policies. Clearly explain every rule and procedure concerning the rehearsal process. Whenever possible while discussing the rationale behind various policies, make references to time efficiency. I always framed discussions concerning cooperation around the notion that the ensemble would not be able to achieve its full potential as a musical organization unless we made the most of the limited time we had together. Thus, individuals or groups who caused discipline problems were holding the rest of the ensemble back. This was unfair to the ensemble and could not be tolerated.

Engage ensemble leaders as you develop this culture of cooperation. Rules have little effect if there is not a degree of buy-in from students. A sense of cooperation and a willingness to proactively support and reinforce rehearsal policies should always be key parts of the criteria when selecting students for leadership positions.

Also challenge student leaders to embrace activities that help promote a cooperative spirit. Consider providing opportunities for your most talented musicians to mentor other students within their sections. One way to do this is by changing seating arrangements. Like most high school directors, I held auditions for seat placement in each section, but rather than have the section leader and other top musicians always sit at one end of the section, I occasionally interspersed the most talented students among the less talented. Although a roster posted on a bulletin board or in a concert program might list a four-person first clarinet section by name from first chair to fourth chair, the actual physical seating arrangement would be third, first, fourth, second. This gave the most accomplished musicians a chance to model various aspects of musicianship, such as correct tone, phrasing, and alternate fingerings. I also had section leaders of divided sections occasionally sit in the second or third sections during rehearsals, both to give these players additional opportunities to model and so they could learn every part in preparation for leading sectional rehearsals.

Another important principle in improving rehearsal discipline is respect – and often a byproduct of cooperation – is respect. Respect for authority and the opinions, rights, feelings, and property of others has long been a basic tenet of education. Strive to make it a key aspect of rehearsal discipline as well, but emphasize that members earn respect through their behavior and cooperative spirit. Recognize that respect not only involves how students’ treat one another or how they respond to you as an authority figure and accomplished musician, but how you interact with them. Make it a personal priority to demonstrate respectful leadership at all times. As an ensemble director, the culture of respect that you shape for your organization is a reflection of your personal and professional values. Avoid using abusive language, making inappropriate comments, being inconsistent concerning discipline, or showing favoritism. Maintain a consistently positive and pleasant attitude when in the company of students, regardless of other circumstances or challenges in your life. Always have high expectations for yourself, and routinely model respectful attributes that your students can emulate.

Be sure that your students understand the importance of self-respect as well. Having pride and confidence in their musical contributions, always being prepared to the best of their abilities for rehearsals and performances, demonstrating a true passion for the art of music, and behaving in a manner that conveys a sense of respect and dignity are all attributes that each member of the organization should strive to demonstrate on a regular basis.

Also impress upon students that respect applies to the rehearsal facility. A central message should always be to leave the facility as you found it, not only in preparation for the next rehearsal, but also for the next generation of band members who will someday use it. Extend this respect to the school’s custodial staff as well. My students and I always took pride in the appearance of our band room. Because of our efforts in caring for the room, we felt that the custodians made an extra effort to keep it in great shape. Students were required to pick up trash and organize the band room every day after rehearsal, placing every chair, music stand, and instrument in its proper place. At least once a week all chairs were stacked and stands placed in racks so floors could be thoroughly cleaned. Small gestures such as these were greatly appreciated by custodians. It allowed them to concentrate on their job, rather than picking up after us or moving our equipment. Ultimately, they took as much pride as we did in always having the space be presentable.

Much has been written about the long-term value of collaboration in education. In music, the instrumental ensemble continues to be one of the best examples of the significance of collaborative experiences. For the vast majority of young people, a key aspect of their ensemble participation is the enjoyment and exhilaration they gain from working with a group of like-minded individuals to achieve a common goal. For many, it is their first experience working in a large group setting in such an exciting and energetic way. The challenge for directors and students alike is to shape musical collaborations in a time-efficient manner while embracing concepts of cooperation and respect. Once this groundwork has been set in place, it is time for the rehearsal to begin.

Harness the energy in an organized, engaging, and fast-paced way.

Successful rehearsal discipline relies on the conductor having an organized approach to the rehearsal. Determine in advance the pieces you plan to rehearse and the amount of time you intend to spend on each piece. Also formulate strategies to deal with specific musical challenges your ensemble might encounter. Post the music rehearsal order on a marker board so students can put their music in the correct sequence. Prepare for a fast-paced rehearsal by memorizing the scores. Your ability to make comments and corrections about balance, blend, dynamics, intonation, and phrasing without looking down at the music will save time and help impress your students that they need to focus and learn their parts quickly. It is always obvious to students when a conductor is unprepared and learning the score along with them. Much like you did when taking conducting class in college, practice your conducting technique by standing in front of a mirror or recording yourself. It is important to be aware of what students see as you conduct. Show that you are ready to conduct a performance of a given piece right from the start.

Develop a communication strategy. Whenever possible, avoid beginning a rehearsal with announcements. Remember, students joined your ensemble to make music. I usually posted announcements on a marker board and referenced them briefly between pieces or at the end of rehearsal. I also occasionally typed out the announcements in advance and distributed them among student leaders. Between pieces I would call on one of them to stand and make the announcement. The benefit of this was threefold: leaders were engaged in the day-to-day operations of the band program, students often listened more intently to their student leaders, and those students making the announcements gained valuable public speaking experience. Also consider using social media to help keep your students informed of important dates.

Have a procedure in place for handling instruments needing repair and the sale of accessories such as reeds or valve oil. Never allow rehearsal time to be spent on these types of activities. Take care of these matters after rehearsal or before or after school.

Once it is time for class to begin, immediately set the tone for rehearsal by engaging the students as they enter the room. Consider standing at the door and greeting students by name as they arrive. I found that to be an excellent way to learn students’ names quickly, and more importantly, it was an excellent way to demonstrate to the students that you knew their names. As chairs begin to fill, move to the seating area. These few minutes can be an excellent time for small talk with your students, for example questions about jobs, college aspirations, other classes, or sports. At the previously announced start time, step on to the podium.

Stepping onto the podium should be the cue to students that it is time to begin rehearsal. Avoid standing on the podium for anything other than conducting and speaking about the music. Train your ensemble to remain quiet whenever you are on the podium or off the podium and still addressing them. Do not compromise concerning this expectation, and always avoid attempting to talk over students. Insist that when you speak, they listen.

The students are there to play, so after a simple greeting, begin conducting. Understand that a major cause of discipline problems is a conductor who talks too much. Strive to conduct more and talk less during rehearsals. Be sure that you are conducting the music, rather than simply beating time, and explain to students what musical aspects you are attempting to convey through your gestures. When it is necessary to stop, always have a reason, and impress upon students that when you stop conducting, they are to immediately stop playing and look directly at you while awaiting your comments. Be clear, concise, and motivational with your comments. Always employ a “say it and play it” approach by offering specific corrections and instructions in an enthusiastic, fast-paced manner followed by immediately playing of the passage or phrase again.

As a conductor, maintain a pleasant demeanor. Convey warmth, show personal interest in each student, and be quick to offer praise. Smile when appropriate and allow your facial expressions to convey your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what you are hearing. Facial expressions can also serve as a powerful time-saving discipline tool, as often a simple frown can convey displeasure regarding a student’s behavior in a more effective manner than calling them out by name.

Impress upon students that rehearsals are for playing and listening, not chatting. When rehearsing a problem area in one section, or a small number of sections, continue to engage the other students by asking questions regarding how to fix the problem you are working on. Teach them what to listen for when evaluating a performance. To maintain a quick pace and keep all students engaged, call students by name when asking questions rather than asking a question and waiting for someone to raise a hand. Leave the podium occasionally and walk through the ensemble while conducting or making corrections. Arrange the ensemble’s seating in a manner that creates access lanes, so you can quickly and easily move throughout the ensemble.

Understand that student interest in the music you are rehearsing can be increased when students feel intellectually and emotionally connected to it. Offer interesting comments or stories concerning the composer, historical period, compositional techniques, or the inspiration for the creation of the work at appropriate moments as you rehearse the piece. The more background information students have, the higher their level of engagement will be in both rehearsals and performance.

Make excellence a common theme of every rehearsal. Set high expectations for students and challenge them musically on a regular basis by adding new selections to the repertoire frequently. Add technical challenges as well by occasionally rehearsing music at a higher grade level than you may intend to perform. Be mindful that music repetition and lack of challenges can breed boredom, and boredom routinely breeds poor discipline. Maintain a sense of urgency in rehearsals by always having a performance to prepare for. Students participate in ensembles due in large part to the enjoyment they get from performing. Craft your ensemble’s schedule so there is always a performance on the horizon, be it a football game, competition, concert, parade, or community event.

Always manage rehearsal time efficiently so you can end rehearsals in an inspiring manner. Save a few minutes to offer praise where appropriate and reflect on the day’s accomplishments. Also use the end of rehearsal to plant seeds concerning the next rehearsal. In addition to practice expectations on specific pieces you are rehearsing, do not hesitate to give listening and research assignments as an effort to keep students engaged in listening and exploring music. Also be sure to leave adequate time for students to put away instruments and equipment in a careful, organized manner. Similar to the way that you greeted them at the beginning of rehearsal, send them off with a smile and a sincere sense of anticipation and enthusiasm for the next opportunity you will have to work with them.

Conclusion

Now that both your rehearsal room and rehearsal strategy makeovers are complete, there is one final ingredient required for improved rehearsal discipline, and it is perhaps the most important consideration. I was reminded of this a few years ago when I received an email from a former student who I had last seen when she graduated from high school some 25 years earlier. She told me that she was now an elementary school principal and had recently received an award in recognition of her achievements as an educator and leader. She further stated that her reason for contacting me was to offer gratitude for inspiring her to pursue something she loved as a career, and to tell me that I was the first person she had encountered who had impressed her as being truly passionate about his work.

This former student’s kind words illustrate just one of the many ways that music educators can have a positive effect on their students’ futures. Use your passion for teaching music as the glue for all endeavors and display your passion on a regular basis. This, combined with your musical skills, enthusiasm, and determination in creating an environment for musical success, is what will improve rehearsal discipline the most. Be persistent, honest, and authentic with your students and soon they will follow your lead, as they too will want to experience music in the emotional way that you obviously do. When discipline problems occur, never allow those challenges to alter the passionate way in which you approach sharing music. It is always important to remember that the rehearsal room is one of the best environments for young musicians to pursue artistry, experience beauty, and make memories that will last a lifetime. Witnessing a group of young people working together to achieve a common goal of musical excellence is one of the greatest joys of work as a music educator and truly a sight and sound to behold.

The post Creating an Environment for Improved Rehearsal Discipline appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

The First Six Weeks, A Beginning Band Curriculum (Part 2)

theinstrumenta — Mon, 30 May 2016 03:37:25 +0000

Part one of this article may be found .

With three weeks of band class under their belts, students turn toward a much heavier focus on playing their instruments, all while continuing to review the fundamentals they learned in the first three weeks.

Week Four

This is a continuation of the same fundamentals and procedures from week three; we practice the same material until it is habitual. We teach fundamentals as steps that must be mastered before we can go on, like progressing in karate. If a student has not mastered breathing he will never make a steady sound, and he will never master breathing if he hasn’t mastered posture.

Articulating

So far we have avoided talking about the tongue, having students start sounds using air. Usually by week four students can hold single notes steady, and then we work on articulations. We have students say “Teeny tiny tater tots tiptoed to town” and feel where their tongue touches. The mental image we give is to say the phrase using only one taste bud. Stressing that the air should be continuous, I have students play a note for eight to ten counts, and every time I snap my fingers, they raise the front part of their tongue to where the gums touch the back of the top teeth and then immediately return it flat to the bottom of there mouth. The tongue moves up and down, not forward and back. Single reed instruments are taught “The top of the tip of the tongue touches the top of the tip of the reed.”

During this exercise I make sure that students do not stop or slow the air as the tongue approaches. This is one of the biggest errors beginners make. To counteract this, I teach them a few phrases:

Lungs are dumb. Lungs think every note is single ten-count note
Tongue is smart. The tongue knows to cut up the long pieces of air into rhythms.
Lips are lazy. When asked to change notes, lips will always take the easiest route unless they are made to work correctly by airspeed and embouchure. An example I give for trumpet is “The lips think, ‘Why go up to the second space A when I have a perfectly good E I can play with the same fingering?’”
Foot is boring. No matter what the tongue and fingers do, the foot just goes up and down like a machine. I am a huge believer in using foot tapping and a strong metronome during the first few years of playing. Both are constant in my beginning rehearsals. After middle school students can transition to toe tapping and non-tapping.

I find that most of the tonguing errors young students make are consistent. When they tongue students must freeze the face, tongue at the same spot in your mouth (or on the reed) with the same firmness every time, and use one taste bud. In addition there should be continuous air through the articulation. These ideas will solve many tonguing problems.

I use the picture of an oscillating sprinkler head. The water comes out strong and uninterrupted, and the little metal bar that bounces off the water stream is exactly what the tongue should be doing inside the mouth.

Week four is also when we focus on learning concert F and going down through, Eb, D, C, and Bb, especially with brass players. We pay close attention to how their sound is when moving from note to note and make sure that they are adhering to all the fundamentals we have worked on. For brass we stress opening up the teeth when going down, telling them “The lips decide what note you hit, but the teeth decide how the note will sound.” After we can change the notes on the beat with a good, steady sound then we are ready to explore the band method book.

The sequence I always use – count, say, buzz, play – when learning a book line takes some time but is effective. Students first count the line while tapping the foot to the metronome. I count along with the students, but I count at a mezzo-piano volume, and the students have to count louder than me or we stop and do it again. After this, we say note names with the metronome while fingering and tapping. For the first week or so we just say the note names in time, and from then on we sing the note names on pitch. At this point brass players buzz the line on BERPs, then we play the line.

Once students start, they are committed to finishing the line no matter what goes wrong. Students must learn to not pause or give up when they play. By using this process you avoid students only learning to play a little of a line and then crashing and burning.

Week Five

We spend a great deal of time making sure all the students can play the first few lines before moving on to more songs. This is a very difficult time for the students who are struggling a bit. Think about what we are asking these 11 year olds to do at the same time to play a song: sit a certain way, hold instruments a certain way, move fingers a certain way, breathe in and out a certain way, set the face a certain way, tongue a certain way, tap a foot, and read music – and we have not even started to add slurs or dynamics.

Students have an online homework assignment to learn note reading faster. This week students are to visit www.8notes.com and complete 100 correct notes names with no more than two mistakes or they have to restart. We give extra credit for correct answers over 100, but students still cannot get more than two percent of their answers wrong. Some students make a game of it and do hundreds. We only do this assignment once, but later in the fall we add a time test website, www.musicracer.com, for note recognition. In December, once the students know more fingerings, we go back for one last assignment at www.musicracer.com, where they have to pick fingerings for their instruments as a time test. This website even has a hall of fame for the quickest times. Students get quite competitive with this.

Weeks four and five are also when student ability levels become apparent. We ask struggling students to come in before or after school to get help, especially if they are not in private lessons.

As we start putting everything together I teach students the four Ts: Tongue, Toe, and Tinger, with the Ticker. “Tinger” means finger; I changed the first letter so I could have four Ts. It is so silly that students remember it easily.

It is essential to play close attention to fundamentals when students play book lines. Usually fundamentals are forgotten because students are concentrating so hard on the note name and correct fingering. The instrument level drops, feet start curling around the leg of the chair, and sound stops between notes. We simply correct the problem and have students play the whole line again, as many times as it takes.

Week Six

By the sixth week we do the Alphabet Master only once or twice a week and breathing exercises a few times a week. Students continue learning book lines, but these are supplemented with exercises and music we write, including more rhythm work. We play half a page of rhythm charts several times a week. Brass players start basic lip slurs, and woodwinds learn many more notes.

We build a repertoire of melodies to use when students learn enough notes. The binder of everything I need for teaching each of my instrument classes includes a wealth of simple tunes. My friend and co-worker Jonathan Adamo arranged a collection of beautiful tunes, such as Auld Lang Syne and Loch Lomond. We use these to talk about phrasing and intonation.

Any time I find something fun I put it in my binder. I even have bugle calls to teach trumpet players in the spring. If any of my colleagues find melodic tunes, we share these with each other. I had a beginning tuba player find a melody from Lord of the Rings online. Some students even try to arrange (with our help) pop songs they hear on the radio. The aim is to use anything that will get the kids playing more often and make them hungry for more music.

General Comments

We only have one beginner concert in the fall. In November there is a demonstration concert for each section of the beginning band. My friend John Timpani at Clark Middle School in Frisco used Garage Band to write amazing accompaniment tracks for a few of the method book songs, and each section plays a few one-line songs out of the method book with the accompaniment track in loud speakers. Students also play a song that we arrange for them. This might be Star Wars for trumpets or The Empire Strikes Back for tubas. After our finale, Hard Rock Blues, the top band performs two songs at the end of the beginner concert to get the kids excited about what they will be able to do a year from now.

In November we teach the Remington warmup to all sections. This extends the range and teaches chromatic notes and the alternate woodwind fingerings. We also begin work on the F chromatic scale this month. There is a heavy emphasis on scales and arpeggios in the spring, and we have an elaborate pass-off system for learning all the major scales and a full-range chromatic by the end of the school year.

Beginners do not have a holiday concert, as we are just starting to learn and pass off a few scales in December. However, after Thanksgiving we learn 14-15 unison holiday tunes and walk around the neighborhood one night and perform with the seventh and eighth graders. It is a great way for beginners to feel like they are real musicians, and our older kids are very kind and supportive of them. We use these holiday tunes in their beginning band year to teach skills like first and second endings, accidentals, dotted rhythms, and syncopated rhythms.

Spring is when all the time spent on fundamentals pays off, as students can learn new songs quickly. We give the students a song like Jurassic Park at the end of class on a Friday and and mention that they could practice it this weekend if they wanted to. The next Friday I might drop Pirates of the Caribbean on them before they leave. Each Friday there is anticipation from students about what I will give them for the weekend.

We have excellent seventh and eighth grade bands with dozens of students making All-Region Band, and it is entirely because of the work done when they start in sixth grade. This is not just what we do technically, but the culture we develop. Any fundamental problem present in your older students means something should be changed or added to the beginning band curriculum. I love teaching beginning band this way because when beginners advance to seventh and eighth grade, rehearsing the advanced band is like getting to drive a Ferrari every day.

If I can answer any questions about what we do or be of any help with your program, do not hesitate to contact me at DunhamD@friscoisd.org.

The post The First Six Weeks, A Beginning Band Curriculum (Part 2) appeared first on The Instrumentalist.