Directory Flute Summer Programs

If your program was not included in the February listing, you may still submit using the form or by emailing advertising@theinstrumentalist.com and we will be updating the online listings and printing an addendum in the April issue.

Photo above courtesy of Smith Walbridge Clinics

Thumbnail picture courtesy of Iowa Summer Music Camp

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In 2008, after 23 years in the Paragould School District, I accepted the position of director of bands at Riverview High School in Searcy, Arkansas. Since it was the school’s first year fielding a varsity football team, starting a marching band was one of my responsibilities. When interviewing for the job, I found it an intriguing thought to start a marching program from scratch.

The summer practices were sporadically attended. Most of the contact numbers I had were incorrect, and there was a great deal of uncertainty about which students would participate. It became obvious that we wouldn’t really get started until the first day of school when I finally met everyone.
The behavior of the kids who showed up during the summer left a lot to be desired. After one rehearsal, I commented to a student that we were going to have to be a lot more disciplined and focused if we wanted to succeed. To which the student responded, “Wait until Davion gets here. You’ll never be able to control him.”

They weren’t far from wrong. Davion, a freshman, was disagreeable, sullen, and smart-mouthed with no filter that I could detect. I tolerated his behavior and that of others because I was the third director the band had had in four years; I was like the step-father they didn’t want in the first place. Quite a few quit.

Yet Davion remained, as disrespectful as ever. I seriously considered kicking him out several times, but one thing kept going through my mind – he was still there. He could have quit like the others, but he stayed. There was something that kept him there even though I didn’t have the foggiest idea what it was. Not only that, he gave his best effort when learning and memorizing his trumpet music – which I didn’t understand given his demeanor. I decided to ride the Davion wave for as long as I could and see what happened.

Amazingly enough, a painfully slow but steady transformation began to take place in Davion over the next few months. The sullen and disagreeable young man became more positive and cooperative. One Friday on game night, he introduced me to the youth pastor at his church. It became evident that the people from his church had a positive and profound influence on him. Our daily interactions and conversations gradually turned from confrontational to pleasant and entertaining. Davion’s great personality became more evident, particularly when he was sharing his opinionated yet hilarious takes on things. Over the next three years, Davion became a rock solid band member who always gave his best and set a great example for others in a program that was just in its infancy. He became one of my favorite students of all time.

After his graduation, Davion visited me on campus from time to time, always smiling and full of positivity despite serious health struggles that hampered his college pursuits and life in general. In the summer of 2023, we had lunch together; it was great to catch up more fully on the years since his graduation. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in November of 2024. Many of his dreams were unrealized due to circumstances beyond his control.

But what he did realize was amazing – a unique and loving bond with so many different people. As with many of my former students, I only saw a small slice of his life. His funeral was a pew-packed, racially-diverse collection of people all touched by his life of faith. To see his impact on others was enlightening and inspirational. There were tears, there were laughs, and many nods from the audience as speakers recounted their Davion stories.

During the funeral, I recalled my most memorable moment with Davion. One day during his freshman year, after the months of butting heads had abated, he said to me, “We like each other now, don’t we?” Taken aback a little, I smiled and responded, “Yes, we do, Davion. Yes, we do.” I’m still not sure if he believed he had changed or that I had changed to make this transformation in our relationship possible. I suppose we were both looking for changes in each other and over time found what we wanted. And what we found made all the difference.

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We rediscovered some intriguing interviews by composers in our pages over the past 80 years. Here are their perspectives on composing, interpreting, and performing great music, and the journey that led to composing their own music.

Claude T. Smith
Claude T. Smith completed over 110 compositions for band, 12 orchestral works, and 15 choral pieces.

What makes for a great musical interpretation is often elusive. I always like to work for the correct and most musical interpolation. At times I feel I’m very good at it, and at other times I know I have missed completely.

When I was teaching in high school, I entered a brass choir in the state music festival/contest. We had prepared a work in great detail and were confident of our performance. The day came for us to be judged, so we have it our best. We felt sure that we had our I, the Superior rating. About an hour later, one of the members of the ensemble came flying down the hall with an incredulous look on his face. He said he had seen our rating, a II. I couldn’t believe it, so I went to the festival headquarters to review the rating sheet. For sure, our rating was a II. In reading down the adjudication sheet, I saw that all areas of the performance were graded I, except interpretation. A comment at the bottom of the sheet read: “Fine brass choir and good choice of music, but I didn’t care for your interpretation.” The fact that the judge didn’t like my interpretation was a real shock, for the selection performed was one of my compositions. (November 1982)

Libby Larsen
Libby Larsen is a Grammy award-winning American composer with a catalog of over 500 works in virtually every genre, ranging from intimate chamber pieces to large orchestra and opera.

“Early in my career, when I wrote the double barline at the end of a work, I considered the compositional pro-cess to be 100% complete. After gaining greater experience, when I finish this step, I consider the work to be about 93% complete.” When the piece is rehearsed for the first time, she often adjusts parts for better balance or transitions. “I do not consider the composition to be complete until the work has been presented to an audience.” (September 2010)

H. Owen Reed
H. Owen Reed was on the composition faculty at Michigan State University for nearly four decades. He lived to age 103 and is best known for La Fiesta Mexicana.

As you developed as a composer, were others much of an influence on you?
I learned much from the composers with whom I studied, including Helen Gunderson, Howard Hanson, Bohuslav Martinu, and Roy Harris. I studied 16th-century counterpoint with Gustav Soderland, and contemporary styles with Burrill Phillips, Aaron Copland, Stanley Chapple, and Leonard Bernstein. Even when our individual philosophies differed, each of those people greatly influenced my writing. During a long private session, Arnold Schoenberg convinced me to write my scores in C, a practice I continue today. Finally, I think most composition teachers would agree with me when I say that students are always a fertile source of inspiration.

What are the greatest challenges as you work to develop a piece?
I strive to write music that is strong in all five basic parameters: harmony, melody, rhythm, form, and color. The main challenge for any composer writing in any style is to maintain good balance between unity and variety. Even if these prerequisites are met, not everyone will like our opus.

After a fine performance of my For the Unfortunate at Michigan State University, one of my graduate composers commented that an older lady turned to her friend and said, “The only thing unfortunate about this piece is that it was ever written. Although this particular work features a free type of serial writing, tone clusters, an improvisatory percussion ensemble, and non-measured sections, most comments have been complimentary, and I still consider this work equal in quality to the well-received La Fiesta Mexicana. You win some and you lose some. (September 1998)

Martin Mailman
Martin Mailman taught for 34 years at the University of North Texas in Denton as Coordinator of Composition, Regents Professor of Music, and Composer in Residence.

How did your interest in writing music develop?
In high school I played trumpet and always sought the creative aspects of music. In a Literature of Materials class at Juilliard, the professor gave an assignment to write a little piece. The first class after we turned in the assignment, he asked, “Who’s Mail-man? I thought he wanted to usher me out the door, but he said my work was very good. I enrolled at the Eastman School as a trumpet major the following fall and later switched to composition.

How much is composing an innate ability or a skill that can be learned?
As a composition teacher of 40 years now, I’m still not sure I can answer that. I have been surprised by students so many times. As with a garden that blooms at different times, sometimes a person who I have great expectations for is later a great disappointment. Some others, I didn’t expect to be very good, but they turned out to be excellent composers. Everybody has a creative side to them – how much of this they have and how creative they are and committed to composing are variables.

A teacher can influence a student by being an example of someone who is creative and showing enthusiasm for their work. There have been students who really wanted to be composers, but I have had to explain that I didn’t think they should.

In working with students, I have been able to maintain a youthful vigor and a love for teaching. This is the only way I could repay what my teachers did for me when I was a novice composer.

How can high school or middle school directors encourage students to compose?
A splendid opportunity for them is to write something for just solo clarinet without accompaniment or a short little piece for two trumpets. If directors take a few minutes out of a rehearsal to let them perform the work for the band, this is a great way to get started. Writing a piece for full band is far beyond the skills of most people. Most of my early pieces were solos or songs and not for big ensembles. As I started having my pieces played or performed, composing became a vicious little habit. I became addicted to this for life. (October 1999)

Frank Ticheli
Frank Ticheli was Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music for more than 30 years.

How did band composition figure into your training at the University of Michigan?
Michigan has a strong legacy of band music, and one of my main teachers, Leslie Bassett, composed many works for wind ensemble. At some schools band music may be discouraged, but not at Michigan. I petitioned to write a dissertation composition for wind ensemble instead of orchestra, and it was granted without any fuss at all. Robert Reynolds conducted the premiere of the work.

I grew up playing trumpet in bands and orchestras in public schools in Louisiana and Texas and have always been part of always been a part of the band culture. As an undergraduate and master’s student, I didn’t write any band works because I wanted to branch out. I came back to band music midway through my doctorate, and in my late 20s, I composed a work for trombone and band, Concertino, and Music for Winds and Percussion for my dissertation.

After the doctorate, what prompted you to compose for young people?
After writing several band works that were extremely difficult, my first attempt at an educational piece, Fortress, was uncommonly successful. When bands started to invite me to guest conduct, I became hooked on working with young people and decided that this is part of what I wanted to do. I do not view writing music for young bands as an artistic compromise. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but I believe that composers can contribute to society. If writing this music for students helps band directors to keep children off the streets, I’m proud of that. (June 2001)

Elliot Del Borgo
Elliot Del Borgo taught instrumental music in the Philadelphia public schools and was professor of music at the Crane School of Music, where he held teaching and administrative positions from 1966 to 1995. He wrote more than 600 compositions.

How did your studies with Vincent Persichetti help to shape you as a composer?
It was wonderful to learn from a musician of that stature. Persichetti was one of the first composers to treat bands as more than just orchestras without strings. His ability to write percussively without using a great deal of percussion has influenced many other band composers, and his scores typically call for smaller percussion sections than many contemporary pieces do.

The percussion parts are busy, though.
Yes, but they are so appropriate. He can provide a wonderful setting with just a few strokes on a wood block. His harmonic sense is also magnificent. I was fortunate enough to be a student of Persichetti’s when he completed his book on 20th-century harmony. We went through the whole text while it was still in manuscript form.

As a guide, that book is almost unequaled.
It contains so many logical concepts about 20th-century harmony, even though people will not be able to speak definitively on the subject for several more decades. His concepts of structure, tension, release, and harmony are never very far from me when I write. Persichetti’s band compositions did more to lift his recognition than anything else he wrote because so many band directors were hungry for new works. I remember playing his music for the first time as a student. It was so vital and fresh that people were drawn to it and wanted to hear more. (January 2002)

James Barnes
After studying composition and music theory at the University of Kansas, James Barnes had a long teaching career at the school. He has twice received the ABA Ostwald Award.

How would you program the perfect band concert?
First of all, the concert would be shorter than most I have sat through lately. Richard Bowles, retired Director of Bands at the University of Florida, gave me a great piece of advice about programming: set the program just the way you want it, then eliminate two of the pieces and shorten the concert. I have been to few band concerts that were too short. Fritz Reiner said that the perfect program includes a piece that you believe in, such as a new work or an older work that should be played more often; a piece that the ensemble enjoys; and a piece the audience wants to hear. This is excellent advice.

I regret that effective programming is quickly becoming a lost art among wind ensembles. It is an effort to sit through three or four college band concerts at a CBDNA convention. Poor programming is the reason that there are more people in the band that in the audience at many college band concerts. What a travesty. While I do not advocate a return to the concerts of 100 years ago, I do suggest that bands learn a wider variety of musical styles so students can play a broader scope of repertoire. A concert should include some music that the audience will enjoy. Symphony orchestras are careful to do this because they sell tickets to stay in business.

In my 25 years of conducting college bands, every program we played included at least one new piece, one band classic, almost always a featured soloist, and one good transcription. The band never played a concert without at least one march, even if only as an encore. Audiences will sit through anything if they know a march is coming later. I used to follow a contemporary work with a Sousa march as a sort of apology. The march is the only genre of music in which bands have a superior repertoire to any other ensemble. (November 2002)

William Schuman
In additional to his distinguished composing career, William Schuman served as president of the Juilliard School and the first president of Lincoln Center. He won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1943.

His Compositional Style
The most important element is form. I do not have form in mind before I write, a priori. Form is what happens next. What happens next must seem inevitable and at the same time it must be fresh. With Mozart, for example, when we just expect a plain recapitulation, he often gives us another development section. The form emerges as the material emerges. One section grows out of another, not in a preconceived way but in a natural way, just as the characters in a novel sometimes develop in the most logical way and other times, we feel the author has imposed his view of the way the characters developed.

Similarly, in music, the composer invents musical characters, such as a phrase, harmony, rhythm, orchestral device, timber, texture, indeed all the elements; these things take on a life of their own. What is required of a composer, is that when the work is finished, all of these combined things be brought to fruition in a way that makes unified sense.

Getting Started
When you ask me how I start a work, I can give you an example. I am working on a piece now that is exceedingly difficult. I set myself the goal of writing a duet for violin, which I have never done before. I was commissioned to do anything for clarinet: a concerto, a chamber work, anything. I suddenly fell in love with the idea of writing for these two instruments. Harmony is completely out except for implied harmony between the two instruments or when the violin uses double stops. In a sense there is implied harmony, but obviously, harmony is of very little use in that kind of composition.

Everything else has to be there: how to exploit the highs and lows in the instruments, or what contrast there will be. For example, if you just start off and go all over the place with the clarinet, you have not saved yourself. If you start in the chalumeau register, have dark colorings, have little movement, and the violin does something above, you have room to go someplace. I am purposely using an example with two instruments because with those two instruments, there are all the opportunities that exist with a symphony orchestra, only reduced to an absurdly simple level.

I do not know what I think of first when approaching a composition, but the single most thing to think of is the aural ambiance. This is only to say, what mood is this music trying to create? Is it an introduction? If so, what is it trying to introduce? In New England Triptych there is an introduction to the first movement that leads into a fast section. I wrote the fast section first, then realized that it needed an introduction and wrote the introduction. I usually write chronologically, but in that work I didn’t.

A composer should write with certainty. If the opening leaves the listener not knowing if the work is fast or slow, agitated or calm, or loud or soft, there is confusion. All music must be certain as to the atmosphere it creates. To me, that is the most important thing in composing. In the creative process for orchestral work, I might think of a theme or an instrumental combination, such as a brass choir or a brass choir with violins coming in above the brass, or I might start with the cellos above the violins. The emotion or feeling a composer tries to create is the essence of this aural ambiance.

I think in emotional terms and technical terms at the same time. I can give you no more of an answer than this. The reason I cannot give you a more definitive answer is that I cannot give myself a more definite answer. I only know that you are no better a composer than you are critic. The music that you issue is the music that does not go in the ash can. The more music you throw in the ash can, the more selective you are. The more selective you are, the stronger a composer you will be. (April 1986, published November 1993)

Morton Gould
Morton Gould’s prolific and admired works include Broadway scores, commissions by symphonic orchestras, and various musical honors.

When Mills Music took me on as a composer in the 30s and suggested that I write some band music, I must confess I turned up my nose at the idea. I said, “Why do I want to write for band? I’m having enough problems with the professional orchestras.” I was very young and was a little more volatile than I am now. I’d gotten into hassles as a young conductor, conducting men older than I was, arguing with them about intonation and tuning and so on – violent confrontations. And so I thought: I’m having enough problems right here, why should I have to deal with music for kids? But the general manager of Mills Music, Max Stark, convinced me to do part of a concert and introduce my Cowboy Rhapsody. I remember saying to Max Stark: “Max, why am I doing this?” And he said, “You’re going to be surprised, very surprised.”

I remember all this so clearly. I walked into Hill Auditorium and met Bill Revelli and he said, “Why don’t you go and sit in the auditorium. Let me warm the band up for you.” I sat down very skeptically and saw this huge band tuning up, which impressed me because they were obviously tuning. There was no horsing around about that. I had never heard a professional orchestra tune that way. Then Bill gave a down beat and this beautiful sound came out – a Wagner transcription. I fell right out of my chair because I had heard something that was equivalent in quality to the finest professional orchestras of that time. Within one minute, I was a convert. I realized what an important medium this was. I felt that I, the so-called serious or symphonic composer, wanted to be part of this. It stimulated me. From then on, as you know, I wrote a considerable amount of music in both large and small forms, and many of my orchestral works were transcribed by other people for band. Yes, I wrote for band, and to this day I find it a fascinating medium. (October 1978)

Clare Grundman
Clare Grundman studied composition with Paul Hindemith and also earned degrees at Ohio State University. In addition to his original compositions and arrangements for band, he wrote for Broadway, films, radio and television.

Advice for High School Students
To be good in any field, whether it may be art, literature, sports, or any else, you’ve got to start with the basics. For a composer, the basics are an understanding of harmony, theory, and counterpoint. Later, if you want to get away from the traditional framework, you can. But at least you have something to start writing from.

Then if you’re going to write for a certain medium, such as the band, you should really get into that medium. It’s hard for people to write or arrange for band when they haven’t played in it and don’t really know how it sounds. If they’ve only heard the band from the audience, sitting up front, they never learn what can and can’t be done, and exactly what combination of instruments sounds good or bad. Probably the best composition lesson is to listen to the colors and sounds of music while you’re sitting right in the middle of it all. (September 1982)

Jennifer Higdon
Jennifer Higdon has received commissions by major symphony orchestras and soloists. Her most popular work, blue cathedral, has been performed more than 400 orchestras around the world.

I first wrote for flute because my friends were flutists, and we played in flute choirs together. They were the people who were asking me for music. I am so thankful that I played an instrument. When composing, I seriously consider what it is like to be on the other side of the music stand and what performers are experiencing as they look at the page. My earliest successes were because flute players were so enthusiastic about new music.

In June 2002, the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered my Concerto for Orchestra, which had been commissioned in 1998, to celebrate the orchestra’s centennial in the newly built Kimmel Center. My life started to change almost overnight after that premiere, and I only played flute for a couple more years. I could tell that composition was the direction my life was supposed to go, and it felt like putting on an extremely comfortable pair of shoes. I was never aware that composers could have one concert that would actually change their lives. I had heard of that with conductors and performers, but never with a composer. It was completely terrifying. (November 2017)

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A Vision
It took an enthusiastic champion of American composers to tell us repeatedly that there were artists who could create, envision and embody the essence of America. For many years Andre Kostelanitz conducted the New York Philharmonic in pops concerts and recordings featuring American music ranging from musical comedy and film scores to symphonic works. In addition, he commissioned works from American composers William Schuman, Paul Creston, Virgil Thompson, and others, to convey the spirit of the country through music. He also believed that specific individuals and certain aspects of the American scene be chosen as subjects for these works including locations such as the Frontier, the Hudson River, and New England, and individuals such as author Mark Twain, journalist Dorothy Thompson, and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. These places and people were to exemplify the courage, dignity, strength, simplicity, and humor so characteristic of the American spirit.

Background
Aaron Copland was one of the commissioned composers and after first considering a work inspired by Walt Whitman, he ultimately chose Abraham Lincoln as the best subject for a musical portrait. He immediately realized, however, that no composer could possibly match through music so eminent a figure as Lincoln. As a result, he decided to call on Mr. Lincoln himself for assistance by using a narrator reading selections from his letters and speeches.

Since its premiere by the Cincinnati Orchestra in 1942 with radio actor William Adams as narrator, it has become a beloved piece in what is called the American style. In 1951, Walter Beeler, Ithaca concert band conductor and author of some 200 method books and transcriptions, arranged the piece for concert band. Since then, it has become a significant piece of repertoire not only for orchestra but for wind band as well.

Structure and Themes
Lincoln Portrait is neither program music nor a musical interpretation of a text, but rather a genuine portrait with a narrator as soloist. The composition is divided basically into three main parts. The first section is an evocative preamble suggesting Lincoln’s simplicity, gentle spirit, and humble personality. The middle section depicts the lively times in which he lived. The concluding part frames the immortal words of Lincoln himself.

Marked lento, the piece begins slowly and softly with a call or arch-like rising and descending motif that seems to come from nowhere, just as Lincoln did – mysteriously out of the wilderness. (In fact, a song heard during the 1860 presidential campaign was titled Old Abe Lincoln Came Out of the Wilderness). This original Copland material builds in volume and intensity to introduce the period 1840 folk song The Pesky Serpent, better known today as On Springfield’s Mountain (as recorded in 1949 by Burl Ives), treated freely rather than literally. With simple expression, this theme movingly expresses the feelings of majesty, strength, and sadness of heavy burden.

The lively middle section marked allegro begins suddenly, based on the perky tune Camptown Races and recreating the distinctive sound of a hoedown:

Gwine to run all night, gwine to run all day,
I’ll bet my money on a bobtailed nag,
somebody bet on the bay

This then becomes a more complex development treated as a round using On Springfield’s Mountain combined with Camptown Races as an obbligato.

As the tempo slows to poco largamente, the final section opens quietly as the narrator speaks the words of Lincoln, and we cannot escape history. The music neither interprets the words nor serves as background for them. Rather, there is an interplay of equals between the ensemble and speaker. There is an ongoing dialogue of words and music that frames them simply and impressively. At the conclusion, Copland provides music that towers with a majesty matching Lincoln’s vision – “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Performance and Rehearsal Suggestions
The Beeler concert band transcription of Lincoln Portrait is 13 to 15 minutes in duration and is challenging rhythmically with exposed solo passages requiring a strong brass section. It is playable by the finest high school, university, professional, and military bands. The narration has been distributed worldwide, translated into eighteen languages. The luminaries who have delivered the text include Carl Sandburg, Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Earl Jones, and William Warfield, who with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic on their European U.S. tour during the 1976 American Bicentennial, spoke the words in flawless French, German, and Italian to tremendous ovations.
Preparation with younger students will benefit from careful rehearsal time and management including individual instruction and sectional practice due to the challenging rhythmical and solo demands. Of special note is the importance of securing a narrator who can pace delivery of the text within the musical framework. Listening to recordings can be helpful. Also, ample rehearsal is essential with the narrator and ensemble to ensure that the pacing of both music and recitation aspects align. Videos are also helpful for the conductor and narrator to get a sense of essential cueing and appropriate staging, setting, dress, and overall presentation.

Lincoln Portrait is in a class by itself. Copland himself thought of it simply as a portrait of Lincoln meant for a large audience and special occasion. His choice of Lincoln was based on the aura, time and history associated with him, and more importantly, his humanity and empathy.

This enduring and popular work provides an educational experience for students on several levels. Performances allow Copland’s brilliant music and the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln to continue echoing down the halls of time.

Article artwork by Thomas Trimborn

Tom Trimborn has conducted Lincoln Portrait numerous times most notably with Dr. William Warfield as narrator including a performance taped in California and telecast throughout Europe.

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Grip
Ames: I recommend the matched grip for students because of its versatility. Once you become a multiple percussionist; you’ll be expected to play everything. Because many of the mallet instruments require that you use a matched grip, it’s a lot easier to stay with that grip overall than to switch back and forth from one method to the other.

Peters: The controversy of matched grip versus rudimental grip can be resolved only by the individual percussion player, according to his specific needs. It is good to be familiar with both grips, but what really matters is what ultimately works best for you. For either grip, the most important thing is that it be firm but relaxed. Gripping the stick should feel natural and there should be no tension in the wrist or arm. If you feel comfortable with your present grip and can achieve good sound on the instrument, I recommend that you keep it.

Wickstrom: In playing snare drum I use mostly the traditional grip. I’ve played it since I was five years old and still seem to get more power from it than from matched grip, which I’ve only played for about 12 years. However, I find myself switching to matched grip for softer playing and when I play the snare drum as part of a drumset or another multiple percussion setup.

Rolls
Ames: I’ve developed what I believe is a “foolproof” method for learning rolls. It’s amazing. Some students can master a good-sounding roll in only a month. Since we have learned that smooth rolls are made up of triplets, the best way to learn a roll is to practice triplets with the sticks bouncing three times for every hand movement.

Starting slowly, let the sticks bounce three times just to get the feel of it. Then increase the speed gradually. Work for clarity and precision, but stay relaxed. Once you become tense, all anyone will hear are the strokes – and you will strain your wrists as well. To master the technique, you can build all sorts of little exercises for yourself using three strokes per stick.

Peters: The function of a roll on any percussion instrument is to sustain the sound of the initial stroke If one hand does not match exactly what the other hand does – such as lifting one stick higher, or moving one wrist faster – the result will be an uneven sound.

To help eliminate any inconsistency, first isolate the problem and then exaggerate it in both hands, one at a time. In this way you will become more conscious of executing identical motions in both hands. Also, your ear should tell you if your roll is producing an even sound or not, and for this reason a tape recorder can be extremely helpful in evaluating your practicing and in detecting unevenness of sound in rolls.

Ames: To improve your rhythm, always subdivide beats. When you play eighth notes, count sixteenths. It is very helpful and makes for great precision in all your playing. It noticeably improves accuracy in ritards and accelerandos. Sometimes students aren’t convinced that there is any difference between “almost right” and “absolutely right.” But there is a difference, and the problems created by “almost right” rhythm become painfully obvious in a group where each player is a little bit inaccurate.

Wickstrom: I like to use the metronome for instruction and practice. It can be used in many different ways, such as tapping quarter, eighth, or sixteenth notes. To develop an internal rhythmic pulse, set the metronome to only the downbeat of each measure. For jazz I’ll use the metronome clicking two beats to a measure, the second and fourth. I ask the student to think of it as a drummer’s high hat. Learning to read rhythmic notation is important, right from the beginning.

Versatility
Ames: I strongly urge getting plenty of experience playing many different instruments in a variety of styles because the percussion field is currently highly competitive. The more you play, the better your chances will be.

Peters: You’ve got to be absolutely first class on all the percussion instruments if you want more doors open to you in the professional music business. I was accepted into the band at West Point even though they had too many drummers – not because I was a superstar drummer, but because I was versatile. They gave me the job because they needed a percussionist who could also play marimba and timpani. If you limit yourself to only those instruments you can play well, you also limit yourself to fewer job opportunities in the percussion field.

Wickstrom: A percussionist today can be either a musician capable of performing on a wide variety of instruments in divergent areas or a virtuoso on one instrument in one field. The choice is ultimately each performer’s; background in all areas of percussion as a young player will give you the basis to make intelligent choices and to re-direct goals in performance throughout your life. I personally believe every percussionist should have some knowledge of snare drum, timpani, mallet keyboard percussion, and drumset.

Timpani
Peters: A good ear is essential for the timpanist. In fact, the ability to hear true harmonic intervals is the primary requisite for playing timpani because the intonation of the drums must be exact. The timpanist should learn to tune the drum with one reference pitch (from a tuning fork or from the tuning note of a band or orchestra) and then change pitches intervallically from that initial pitch. To check the exactness of your tuning, hum the desired pitch into the drum: when it resonates back the loudest, the intonation is as good as you can get it. I don’t approve of electronic tuning devices because they become a crutch for the ear.

The best playing area on the timpani head is generally about one-third of the distance from the rim of the drum to the center of the head. While playing, I prefer to sit on a stool because pitch changes can be made more efficiently.

Wickstrom: I began playing timpani by using the flat-handed matched grip identical to what I use on snare drum – referred to by many as the German style. Gradually, I changed to a thumbs-up or thumbs-almost up position, often called the French grip. I find that in playing timpani with this thumbs-up position, the stick comes up off the head as far as with the flat grip, and in addition there’s a certain wrist snap on impact that actually helps you take the stick off the drum.

I divide timpani lessons into technique, reading, repertoire (solo and ensemble), and of course, tuning Tuning is a big part of timpani playing. Mallet study, piano study, and singing all help with timpani tuning and help develop musicianship.

Mechanical knowledge of the instrument is invaluable. I play timpani in the Florida Philharmonic, and I try to get to every concert a half-hour early to check the drums. I make sure they haven’t been jarred, the posts are all in tune, and everything is functioning.

Snare Drum
Wickstrom: I believe there are two ways to develop technique on the snare drum: through work on rudi-ments and rudimental solos, and through using multiple bounce methods, such as Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone. I start a beginning student with a multiple bounce roll: I use it 99 percent of the time I play. But I won’t neglect the double-bounce rudimental roll, either.

Playing the snare drum is important for developing your hands for all percussion playing. Practice pads are helpful for working on your hands, but you can’t develop a snare drum sound with a pad, so it’s important to practice on the drum as well.

Mallet Percussion
Ames: For four-mallet percussion, work on broken chords in all keys with four mallets starting slowly and gradually increasing speed when possible, but without sacrificing accuracy. You can make up all sorts of exercises. For example, in C major, play C and G in the left hand with E and C in the right. Roll the chord, playing in a 1-2-3-4 pattern. Then try 1-3-2-1 or 1-4-2-3, and so forth. Proceed through all keys, major and minor.

After practicing the exercises, play easy keyboard music such as simple Bach chorales and other pieces that highlight the vertical quality of four-mallet playing. In really difficult technical passages, you can use two mallets and then return to the four when you can.

It’s important to learn about chords and harmonic progressions for improvising on vibes and marimba. Also, I recommend using a good etude book written for any instrument to help increase your musicality along with your technique.

Peters: Technical studies are important for the mallet player. When you play scales and arpeggios in practice, not only do you develop your technique but you also learn to recognize their occurrence in the music you play. Mallet players should have a balance between technique and sightreading ability. Weak sightreading can be strengthened only by doing a lot of it. When I was a student, playing duets with someone who read better than I did was an invaluable aid in improving my sightreading. A book I recommend to mallet players is Pasquale Bona’s Rhythmical Articulation (Carl Fischer), an excellent collection of studies to improve your phrasing and basic musicianship.

Wickstrom: There are many ways to hold mallets when playing marimba, bells, vibes, and xylophone. Fundamentally, in holding four mallets there are three principal techniques: the traditional or scissors grip, the Musser grip, and the Burton grip. I use the Burton grip in most of my playing but teach all three. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of these grips are in front of Volume II of my Keyboard Mastery for Mallet Percussion.

I start a mallet lesson with technical exercises, including traditional scales and arpeggios. Next we work on reading, including sightreading and re-reading for speed and accuracy. Taking a simple thing and playing it very fast is a good way to improve your sight-reading. Morris Goldenberg’s book Modern School for Xylophone, Marimba, and Vibraphone is good for a student past the beginning stages. Also, Bartok’s Mikrokosmos for piano are excellent. Because they’re written for young pianists, there are no large stretches for the hand and therefore no big leaps on the marimba. A good follow-up to that book is the Louis Moyse Little Songs for Beginning Flutists. The piano accompaniment gives the percussionist a chance to work with another instrument. “Music Minus One” records are also good for this purpose.
Another suggestion is to learn to read in all clefs, not just the treble clef. It will facilitate your reading and later “on the job” transpositions.

Double-stop playing is another important part of the lesson plan. One of the best books on this subject is Al Payson’s Double Stops for Mallet Instruments.

I think every part of the lesson should use all four mallets, even if it’s only for striking and rolling triads and other easy things. Creative Music Publishing has some good books by Bobby Christian and the Rubank Intermediate Method for marimba is good. Guitar music and two-part Bach piano music works well. Other good books that demonstrate this mallet technique are David Friedman’s Vibraphone Technique and The Solo Marimbist, Vols. I and II by James L. Moore and Linda Pimental.

Peters: The accessory instruments are probably the most neglected area of percussion playing. Inexperienced players often assume that they can play a bass drum, tambourine, triangle, and similar instruments if they can simply read the part. But it takes as much practice to play a cymbal crash correctly as it does to play a snare drum roll evenly. Take the time to experiment with each of the accessory instruments, playing as many articulations (staccato, legato, roll, etc.) as possible, pianissimo to fortissimo. Look to your percussion teacher and/or band director for advice. Two books that can be very useful in strengthening your playing on accessory instruments are Al Payson’s Techniques of Playing Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories (Payson Products) and Morris Goldenberg’s Modern School for the Snare Drum (Chappell).

Additional Books
Ames: Two helpful background works that I recommend for every percussionist are James Blades’ Percussion Instruments and Their History (Praeger) and Emil Richards’ The World of Percussion (Gwyn Publications). Two exercise books I suggest are John Bergamo’s Style Studies (Music for Percussion) and Delecluse’s Complete Method for Vibraphone (2 vols., Leduc).

Wickstrom: A good rudimental book for snare drum is Odd-Meter Rudimental Studies by Mitch Peters; I especially like one piece, “The Downfall of Paris,” which is written in 58. For reading notation, Teaching Rhythm by Joel Rothman is very good and more thorough than any other book I’ve used with beginners. The book goes through all combinations of quarter and eighth notes and rests before moving on to anything else.

Final Advice
Ames: Playing with others will build your confidence and prepare you for different situations. And if you’re at ease, others will feel comfortable with you. Try to do as much ensemble playing as you can – there’s no substitute for it.

Listen to other musicians perform things you are working on. For example, if you’re playing a Bach violin partita with mallets, listen to some violinists play it and compare phrasing. Or if you’re doing a keyboard work by Bach, listen to Glenn Gould at the piano and compare interpretation. Those are the things that distinguish a really good musician from an ordinary one.

Peters: Listening is the single most important aspect of musicianship. The ear must be the ultimate guide. Whether practicing or performing, a player must listen to himself and constantly evaluate the sound he hears.

Wickstrom: I think piano study is basic for anybody going into a music school. You need it for theory and harmony classes and it’s required as a secondary instrument. The more proficient you can become in high school, the better off you’ll be in college. In general, the best type of experience for us all is playing, and it’s playing with other people that counts. The most successful people coming into the university are those who played in everything in high school. They were in marching band, concert band, jazz band, and symphony orchestra.

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My first exposure to note grouping came from Frances Blaisdell. In one of my first lessons, she asked me to play by memory a two-octave scale, with four sixteenth notes per pulse, slurred. Like most band-trained students, I accented the first note of each of the four sixteenth notes staying exactly in time with the metronome. My scale sounded plodding at best.

After I played, she sang a two-octave scale with these words: “I, am going home, to take a bath, to wash the car, to eat some food, to watch T-V, to feed the bird, to walk the dog.” Then she had me play the scale while she sang these words. We continued this duet until we had circled through all of the major scales using this note-grouping concept. Of course, when singing, she made octave adjustments here and there so the notes of the scale fit the range of her lovely voice.

Next, Blaisdell wrote out a two-octave scale on a piece of manuscript paper. She told me that the first note was called a solitaire, and the next notes were called 2,3,4,1. Above these notes she wrote a small bracket. She said these brackets were think marks and did not affect the articulation or rhythms of the printed music.

To help me master note grouping, she played the solitaire note. Then I played the 2341. We continued alternating throughout the scale with her playing one group of 2341 and me playing the following 2341. She encouraged me to be as sing songy as possible in order to learn to feel the notes leading into the 1.

At the time, I was also working on vibrato control, so she had me repeat this exercise and place a HAH on each of the printed notes and five HAHs on all the 1s. The HAHs were to be done in the larynx or vocal folds, and I was to have no movement in the abdomen or chest. If I sensed any movement other than in the larynx, I was playing too loud as HAHs were to be executed pianissimo. She reminded me that as I ascended up the scale, the aperture (opening in the lips) was to become smaller, and as I descended down the scale, the aperture was to become larger. In my future lessons, she placed brackets in my solo repertoire and instructed me to blow or send my energy to the 1.

She said that she had learned this technique from her studies with William Kincaid, the father of the school of American flute playing, professor of flute at the Curtis Institute, and principal flute of the Philadelphia Orchestra. While Blaisdell had been principally a Georges Barrère student, she told me she always played for Kincaid several times a year to be sure that everything in her playing was going well.

A couple of years later, I began my own studies with William Kincaid. My lessons (and I think my student colleagues’ too) began with whistle tones from a low C and then a C#. Once I was able to play up and down the harmonic series in whistle tones, I was to isolate one of the higher pitches and sustain it for as long as possible. This exercise was to warm up the small muscles surrounding the aperture and work on playing with a very slow air stream. Next I played an exercise that he sometimes called the Praeludium, the V7 warmup, or vocalise.

I was to play the vocalise with the 1, 2341, 2341, 2341 note-grouping pattern that I had previously learned from Blaisdell. Kincaid always had me start this on a low G which is the root of the V7 chord in the key of C major. I then proceeded to play the vocalise on each of the ascending chromatic steps until I ran out of notes in the fourth octave. He reminded me that note grouping was a mental exercise and should not affect any articulation marks or written rhythms. Rather than the clever set of words that Blaisdell had taught, I was to mentally think 1, 2341, 2341 etc.

Kincaid loved etudes as did his students Joseph Mariano and Julius Baker. He was especially fond of the ones by Joachim Andersen (1847-1909, Danish flutist, conductor and composer). These books each have 24 exercises that progress through all of the major and minor keys around the circle of fifths. Kincaid taught the exercise books in the following order: Op. 33, 30, 63, 15, and 60. Even though I had studied several of these books before, Kincaid had me begin with Op. 33. Kincaid assigned six etudes for the next lesson (which was two days in the future). He marked the grouping pattern on the first notes of each etude.

Music marked Kincaid’s grouping pattern.

Since I had previously studied note-grouping with Blaisdell and remembered how she had also had me practice the HAH exercise on the scales, I used this technique in learning and perfecting the exercises. Not only did I practice HAHs, but repeated the process using T, K, and TK. I adapted this exercise so that I could practice counted or measured vibrato by placing five vibrato cycles on all the ones. I played this exercise tennis or ping pong style (alternating playing the 2341 groups with another flutist.) By the time of my next lesson, I knew these exercises quite well. My articulation and vibrato skills were improved too.

Unfortunately for Kincaid, but fortunately for me, I had already begun to have questions about the 2341 or “forward flow” concept. (In the 1980s for the sake of ease and clarity in teaching, I named the 2341 concept forward flow.) I had been studying during the school year with Joseph Mariano at the Eastman School of Music. Mariano told me about an interview with the world-famous cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973). The interviewer had asked Casals how he started his day. Casals replied that he got a cup of coffee and then retreated to his practice shack to play one of the Bach cello suites. The interviewer remarked that Casals had recorded these six suites several times already and had also performed them numerous times around the world, so what was there left to practice? Casals responded, “Oh, but I see something new in them every day.” Then Mariano asked me the big question “What do you think Casals meant?” Immediately I understood that my early experiences with note grouping were just the beginning, and as I grew and matured as a musician, I would see new ways of grouping the notes in continually varying patterns.

Mariano often mentioned that flutists should phrase as if the music was bowed (as in string technique). He told me that when playing in orchestra, I should pay attention to the concertmaster’s bowings. I realized that I knew little about string bowing, so I enrolled in a year-long MusEd violin methods class taught by David van Hoesen, an author of several string method books.

I soon learned how the bow moves in two ways – down bow and up bow. A down bow starts with the right hand close to the player’s nose, and the up bow starts at the tip with the right hand away from the player. Generally notes to be taken down bow start on the beat and notes to be taken up bow start off the beat. Parts were marked with a ≥ for down bow and a ≤ for up bow. Due to the construction of the modern bow, down bow notes naturally become softer as the right hand moves farther away from the player, and up bow notes naturally become louder as the right hand comes closer to the player.

After taking this course and discussing my findings with Mariano, I began to mark my music with the down and up bow icons. From my violin studies, I realized that I could take many notes on a down or up bow, not just 2341. So for my lesson with Kincaid, I marked the bowings as shown in the following example.

After four bars, Kincaid stopped and asked me what I was doing. I had obviously begun with the 1, 2341, concept, but in bar 3 had changed to a 12345678, 12345678 grouping pattern, followed by a 1234, 1234, 12345, 6781 pattern. I explained (not very well) that I did not feel the sixteenths in measure 4 as going by in the 2341 patterns. After asking me about my phrasing in the Andersen Op. 33, No 1 study, Kincaid tried my bowings. He sounded great as always, but, he turned to me and said, “Think about it some more.” After some contemplation, I found that adding an F or a B after the up bow icon reminded me whether I should go forward (F) or back (B) on the up bow.

John Krell’s brilliant book Kincaidiana discusses Kincaid’s theories at length. Looking back I now realize that most of the music played during Kincaid’s tenure in the Philadelphia Orchestra was from the Romantic period. If the orchestra ever played anything from the Baroque era, it was one of Leopold Stokowski’s Romantic transcriptions of a Prelude and Fugue. If music of the Baroque or Classic eras were programmed, it was played in the Romantic singing style. Based on the repertoire Kincaid was performing, his 2341 worked well for him.

Performers today are cognizant of the research into early music and aware that dancing music primarily incorporates 1234 groupings. All music uses some of each, but Romantic music predominately uses the 2341 grouping. Musicians should be able to quickly and easily shift from the 2341 to 1234, with understanding of which is appropriate.

Each of my teachers taught some variant of these basic ideas. Julius Baker referred to the first note as “the note that sets tonality” rather than as a solitaire. Rather than using brackets, Joseph Mariano used a curvy line between the groups. I predominately use the curvy line too (as can be seen below) because I think it subconsciously helps me remember to keep the air stream going.

As you work with these ideas personally or with your students, remember two wonderful quotations from cellist Pablo Casals, “the art of interpretation is not to play what is written” and “the heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.”

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Every conversation I have ever had with composer Quincy Hilliard has included heavy doses of laughter. While working on the Midwest preview issue, I called him to talk about his composition teacher and mentor, Jared Spears, who passed away in September. The mission was more somber than usual, but there were still plenty of laughs during the call.

You can read Hilliard’s memories of his composition teacher as part of a tribute to Spears. Before we started, I reminded Hilliard of a story he shared in the magazine about a Midwest Clinic years ago. No matter who you are and what you have accomplished, we have all run into people who seem far too famous to talk to us. Here is what Hilliard remembers from a terrifying day at the convention.

My greatest memory of Midwest was meeting Francis McBeth. His work Masque inspired me to become a composer. My composition teacher, Jared Spears, introduced me to the work and spoke of Francis often in our private lessons. I knew that they were great friends. The first time I ever saw Francis, he was walking down one of the aisles at the convention visiting other booths and talking to people. I decided to stalk him. After about the third aisle, I was afraid that he might see me and think that I was trying to rob him so I stopped. I was so excited that I called home to tell my wife that I saw Mr. McBeth.

She asked, “Did you talk to him?” I said no, he would not have time for me. He is too important. She said, “Why don’t you go up and introduce yourself?” I was so excited that I did not sleep that night. I was planning how I would approach him. Finally, the next day I went up and introduced myself and told him that I was one of Jared Spears’s students. He laughed and said, “I am sorry you did not have a better composition teacher, young man.”

He talked to me for about an hour, and every time I saw him after that, he would come up and talk with me. On one occasion when I was in Arkansas, he invited me to his home and showed me his woodworking workshop and his classic car collection. He was a great composer and an awesome person. I will never forget the talks we had about composers, conductors, and composition.

After hanging up the phone with Quincy Hilliard, I started thinking about all of the amazing people I have met on the convention floor. On my first visit to the Instrumentalist booth as a high school student, I didn’t know what to expect as I walked down to the exhibitor floor at the Hilton. Within the first five minutes, I was shaking hands with Frederick Fennell. He asked to shake hands left-handed because his right hand was worn out from greeting countless directors. With barely enough time to take off my coat, I had already been initiated. I can’t wait to see who is at Midwest this year. We will see you in Chicago.

– James M. Rohner, Publisher

Stop by and see us at Midwest – Booth #806

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Composer and educator Jared Spears passed away on September 18, 2025. He published more than 300 works and was a frequent guest conductor. He taught at Arkansas State University from 1967 until retirement in 1999. The interview below was conducted by Andrew Balent and first published in the September 1987 issue of The Instrumentalist. We reprint it in tribute and remembrance of Jared Spears’ distinguished musical legacy.

September 1987

An Interview with Jared Spears
By Andrew Balent

Jared Spears is a composer with the unique ability to write music for bands on all levels, from elementary to college. He is professor of music at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, teaching composition, orchestration, theory, and history. As resident composer at the university, Spears received its Outstanding Faculty Member Award in 1980.

Spears’s best-known works include Momentations, Wind River Portrait, Alleluias, The Kimberly Overture, Meditation and Festiva, and Canticles. In addition to a busy composing schedule, he appears at other universities as a guest lecturer and conducts band festivals, camps, and clinics in the United States, Canada, and Norway. At the 1986 Midwest Clinic, I talked with Spears about his background, his career, and his musical philosophy.

Did you come from a musical family?
My mother’s people were hardworking German immigrant farmers, not necessarily musically inclined. On the other hand, my father’s family was very involved in music and other areas of show business. My father was in radio years before I was born; he was involved in writing for The Shadow and other programs. His sister was a light opera singer who appeared in shows with Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby, and Jack Benny. Another sister was an opera singer in New York, and my grandfather was one of the best tenors in Boston. My father told me that Caruso used to come to my grandfather’s home and sing duets with him.

How did you get started in music?
When I was in the eighth grade, a man from Lyon and Healy came to our school in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and asked for volunteers to study music and form a band. Everyone paid 25 cents for a weekly lesson. I started playing drums, and by the end of the year, I had formed a little jazz group. All I had was a snare drum and a cymbal, but slowly I acquired more instruments until I eventually wound up with a complete set. I joined the concert band in high school and was just what we called a Bb drummer until one day, when I was playing cymbals, the director, Fred Schmoyer, suggested that I raise and flip them around at the audience. Being gutsy, I let the cymbals fly on a solo and twirled them a little. Afterwards, some people in the audience told me it was really great.

My whole personality changed as a result of that: I became outgoing – aggressive you might say. I liked the idea of being a writer, perhaps a novelist or a songwriter. My young mind figured that it would take a year to write a novel but only a week to write a song, so I decided to become a composer. I started writing some simple dance band arrangements. I didn’t know that you had to transpose for certain instruments; it wasn’t necessary for snare drums! The arrangements sounded horrendous.

Did you have any lessons in composing, or did you learn it on your own?
I took theory in high school, with the goal of writing music for dance and concert bands. After studying four-part harmony, I attempted a piece, but I made the mistake of attaching a different chord to every note of the melody – even the eighth and sixteenth notes. We played it, and it was really horrible. After that episode, I was frustrated, but eventually I started studying on my own what other composers had done. There were no full scores available then for most dance band music, so I took the parts and wrote out scores. If there was a recorded tune I liked, I would take it off the record, producing a score and parts. In this way, I learned a lot about orchestration, voicing, and form.

I continued writing for dance band and eventually decided to become a band director. As a senior, I wrote a simple march for the concert band. Fortunately, it no longer exists, but it did sound much better than my earlier attempts, and it gave me the confidence to continue writing.

Were there any teachers or other musicians who were particularly important in your own musical development?
Fred Schmoyer, the band director at Arlington Heights High School actually got me to write my first piece for band. Later, at Northern Illinois University, Maurice Weed got me interested in the music of Debussy, Roy Harris, Stravinsky, and other 20th-century composers. Blythe Owen, my composition teacher at the Cosmopolitan School of Music in Chicago, grounded me in basic forms and developed my perspective of the craft. When I arrived at Northwestern University to work on a doctorate, I had just scratched the surface of the possibilities of sound and form.

I was fortunate to have two different composition teachers there. Anthony Donato made me write in the style of the time – twelve-tone, free atonality, and so on, but he always kept me thinking within practical, not outlandish limits, for which I am grateful. My other teacher was Alan Stout, who introduced me to the music of Penderecki, Ligeti, and Lutoslawski. From Stout, I learned to explore the unknown and search for sounds and shapes I had never known before.

Who among your colleagues has influenced you as a composer?
Several years ago, Alfred Reed and I spent two weeks together working at a band camp in Saskatchewan. Being still somewhat green in the profession, I was awed by this fine composer and his astounding storehouse of experiences, concepts, information, and solutions.

During the evenings and weekends we would wander through the hills surrounding the camp, and I would ask him questions about music and for advice on my career. He unselfishly shared his knowledge, and I soaked up every word. He greatly influenced my attitudes about composition, orchestration, and music in general.

How did you begin writing music for the young band?
In my first few years of teaching at Maine Township High School in suburban Chicago, I found very little concert music available for the young band, except for the excellent works of Frank Erickson and John Kinyon. If there was a Hall of Fame for composers of elementary band music, Kinyon would probably be on top. I’ve studied his works and recommended them to my students.

Though I was happy writing more difficult music, I started composing for my beginning band: some short overtures, little marches, things like that for musical variety. I continued to learn by looking at scores, studying how the textures were formed, noting how other composers voiced their ideas, and so on. Eventually, I wrote a march of medium difficulty called March for Moderns. I sent it to several publishers, and they all said it was too modern. Finally, C.L. Barnhouse had some faith in it and published it. I was in seventh heaven. My career as a band composer had begun.

Several years ago I was in Atlanta with Bill Strohm, then the band director at Babb Junior High School. They were going to play my Momentations, a work of medium difficulty at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, so I flew down to work with the band. During lunch one day, Bill recommended that I start writing for even younger bands. He suggested that I compose more varied and interesting music than was then available for the beginning and intermediate players. I went home and played around with some ideas and sketches and came up with a piece for Barnhouse called Adventures. That was followed about a year later by Sansketch. Now I’m writing as many pieces on this level as I am music of greater difficulty.

Do you enjoy working with younger players?
I’ve conducted some elementary honor bands, and the students at that age are super. I walk into the band room and say, That is a beautiful purple sky today! They say, “Yeah!” They all want to go outside and see it. They’re excited about playing, and they’re open to suggestions and new ideas. It’s an exciting age to work with.

What do you think makes a successful piece for a young band?
A piece that is musical, interesting, and somewhat unpredictable, but still within the limits of the performers’ technique, will usually succeed. When I compose music for the elementary band, or for any band, I think about the group I’m writing for and what they can do. I like to write something that will bring out the students’ musicianship as well as provide technical challenges. If there is an alto clarinet player, there should be something interesting to play, rather than just doubling the bass line.

I like to write a singable melody because it is easier for the kids to play. They can hear it more naturally than a jagged melody that jumps around like the fourth tenor sax part of an old jazz band arrangement. I like varying the sounds and colors in an unpredictable way. If you can write a piece that the musicians can get involved with and enjoy, and that the conductor can also enjoy (lots of dynamic, tempo, and expression changes), then you’re automatically going to excite the audience. If you can raise one goosebump in the rehearsal with the musicians, or in the audience at the concert, you have done your job as a composer. You have communicated the beauty, the joy, and the excitement of music.

Has the high school band movement changed much in your experience?
Yes, quite a bit, and I think a lot of it has been healthy. The most far-reaching recent change is perhaps in the marching band. The corps style has become quite popular among band directors and students. Some schools do a great job with corps style and still have great jazz and concert bands, too.

That’s what I like to see – a well-balanced menu for the kids. Some schools are going into the marching too heavily, however, and I think it is harmful. I know that many of the woodwind players around the country are in trouble. A lot of these students are spending too much time twirling flags instead of playing music on their instruments. Still, I have nothing against marching band, because it’s a valid medium of expression in music just like other media. There are more people at one football game than will probably be in your concert hall in a whole year. So it’s good for PR, and it exposes kids to a large, enthusiastic audience.

Do you think jazz has a place in the band curriculum?
The jazz band movement has grown from a seed to a full-blooming bush during my career, and I’m glad for this growth because that type of music is vital. It is one of the major styles of the 20th century. It offers the youth in our schools a tremendous informal outlet for individual expression. I have a feeling that the concert band is going to be getting back into the proper focus again, though, because it is still the center of all instrumental activity. All of these organizations within a well-balanced program constitute the ideal for which we should strive. I think the band program should include wind ensemble, concert band, jazz band, and marching band so students experience all of them.

I’m excited because I think that something new is going to happen in bands. It may be in connection with computers and synthesizers. I’m ready. That’s what composers are all about: supplying people with good music times during both stable and changing.

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Set-Up to Warm-Up: The Nuts and Bolts of a Jazz Program

Bethany Robinson
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Bethany Robinson is excited for her role in a unique jazz clinic at the 2025 Midwest Clinic. She describes her session as hands-on and interactive. “I think people will leave feeling really inspired, really encouraged, and also connected to other directors who are doing the same thing. I think there is a lot of safety in numbers and reassurance that comes when you meet people who are sharing the same journey.”

What is the new jazz intensive that you have helped develop this year?
The event is broken into three sessions. The first covers the nuts and bolts of running a jazz program. The second part covers the transition from directing a concert band to leading a jazz band because so many directors face that situation. The third session focuses on jazz rehearsal techniques. I am excited that the rehearsal session will be a hands-on, bring-your-instrument clinic. We will have a rhythm section ready, and the amazing directors who attend the session will be the students in the band. In addition to experiencing jazz ensemble as a student, there will be plenty of time for questions and answers.

Who else is involved in making these sessions happen?
This is a collaboration between the Midwest and the Jazz Education Network. José Diaz, Midwest board member and President of JEN, and Kelly Bell, Executive Director of the Midwest Clinic, have been instrumental in developing this session. Besides me, the clinicians include Roosevelt Griffin, Director and Professor of Jazz Studies at Northern Illinois, and Mary Jo Papich, a legend in jazz education and a founder of JEN.

What provided the inspiration to schedule these sessions now?
This project came out of conversations at the Jazz Education Network conference, as we discussed ways to help a broad range of jazz educators at every level. Some directors think of JEN as just for college educators or professionals. The Jazz Education Network has education as part of its name, so we were looking to partner with the Midwest Clinic because it was the perfect way to reach even more directors at various levels of experience.

With my background as a bassist who played in jazz bands, you would think I would have been very well-equipped to teach jazz. Even though I had jazz experience from middle school all the way through college, I didn’t receive one pedagogy class through my music education degree. I thought that I was ready to teach jazz because I had played and listened to the music for years. When I went out and taught a big band, it was a disaster at first. Ironically, I took my band to jazz fest at Purdue University, where I am now the Director of Jazz. After we performed, I thought it was quite a success. When the adjudicator came up after, he just shook his head and looked disappointed. He said, “I guess we could talk about how to swing?” This comment was devastating to me. I realized how important it is to have that foundation in jazz pedagogy to get your students started.

Over the years, I have learned from conferences and attending clinics from amazing mentors who understand best practices for teaching jazz and building a strong jazz culture. Having worked hard to gain this information over a long time, it feels like a life mission to share what I have learned. This is true whether I am mentoring someone or inviting people into my high school classroom or at Purdue. These sessions at Midwest will give other directors the specific ways to show students what to do and how to get started.

What are some tips that directors will learn from these sessions?
Always have music playing when students enter your classroom. It might be arrangements you will play that day or anything that puts a professional sound into their ears as they put their instruments together. I always love playing a tune that makes them stand up and want to dance. Daily I’ll play a Joe Williams and Count Basie tune, which makes the players feel the time together. My other tip is to make sure that the hi-hat on two and four is really crispy. You want students to keep that heel up and really lay into the hi-hat. Make sure every student in the band is tapping their heel into the ground and feeling the time as well.

Finally, avoid playing the comparison game. If we are excellent at one subject, we can’t always compare it to a new subject we are just starting to learn. We must give ourselves some grace. Using our voice or our instrument, we might sit down and play along with the students. This can be really beautiful and collaborative as teacher and students learn the genre together, make mistakes, and try again. We can model what messy learning looks like.

Bethany Robinson is the Director of Jazz at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She previously taught in the Noblesville (IN) School District where she expanded the jazz program from one to six bands. The top jazz ensemble was a two-time Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington Finalist and Indiana ISSMA Jazz State Honor Band in 2023.

Solo to Ensemble: Harnessing Peer Power for Program Growth

Heather Henson & Randall Coleman
Wednesday, December, 17, 2025
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Heather Henson will share her experiences as the instrumental and choral director at American Christian Academy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her session with conductor Randall Coleman, Director of Bands at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, will discuss the challenges of leading a small program and the many benefits of utilizing mentors. “Many people get into our field when they’re young and feel so overwhelmed with responsibilities and expectations. I would feel that way if I was just starting. The only way to survive that is to have these outside mentors and support.” Henson’s band from ACA will appear as the demonstration band for this clinic.

What was your path to becoming a director?
I am the product of a school in South Florida that had a program similar to the one I lead now. It was already developed and successful when I was a student. It had the typical levels of band and choirs and a thriving musical theater department, which we finally just added at my school last year, the next step in our long-term vision for fine arts.

I attended Samford University in Birmingham, a smaller university with a smaller music program. While completing my degree at Samford, I student-taught with Mike Tucker at the Pittman Junior High School program (now called Hueytown Middle School).

Mike Tucker is one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen or worked with. He had a larger program with 120 beginners broken into two classes. In my program, I am thrilled to get 12 beginners each year. Although most people think of me as having small groups, I do have experience with large programs, including helping with all-state bands every year.

When I began at American Christian Academy, in 2008, the elementary music classes were mostly comprised of singing. I wanted to develop a program that included comprehensive education on note reading, rhythm, and style. With the support of my headmaster, the band program began that year with five students after school. We slowly added to the program and created a vision for fine arts over a 10-year period.

I have been here for 18 years now, and we have beginning and intermediate symphonic band, marching band, and choirs. About 10 years ago, they hired a second director to take over the elementary classes and help me with the band and choirs. We added a third position just this summer. It is so helpful to have our former percussion tech teaching full-time with me. All programs have challenges, particularly the smaller ones, so we have to be flexible and never quit. After 30 years in the field, anticipating small school obstacles and problems is one of my strengths.

What grades participate in your marching band and concert band festival group?
That is currently grades 8-12. We start them in 6th grade, have an intermediate band with 7th graders, and march with grades 8-12. Our goal is to have the 7th and 8th grades in an Intermediate Band, and then 9th-12th be our Symphonic/Marching Band. Requiring 8th graders to participate in marching is a struggle, which anyone in a program like this understands. We have 45 students in the top ensemble right now, 8th through 12th. The largest top group we have ever had at ACA is 63. We are still recovering from an administrative decision that restructured our middle school grades. This caused us to lose an entire grade of beginners, and then shortly after that were the pandemic years.

Your marching band recently competed for the first time in several years. What led to the decision?
We stopped competing for several reasons, but mainly because we only have four days a week to rehearse and one field on campus. Marching practice happens before school and during first period. We start at 7:40, and students have to be ready for a downbeat inside or to do breathing gym and stretching on the field. I have to let them go at 8:45 so they can clean up before their first class. It adds up to about 4-1/2 hours over four days each week.

The program really began to grow when I convinced the administration that band should meet first period. When making the pitch for band during first period, I reminded them that the football team practices more than 2 hours a day, five days a week. With less than half that time, we teach marching band, give concerts, appear in parades, and participate in a variety of community events. I didn’t have to convince families that marching practice before school was normal because they had never known any other way here. The parents trust me a lot here, thankfully. I told them, “You’re going to miss all the traffic if you arrive to school at 7:40.”

The decision to compete again was driven by my great senior class. They said, “Could we please go to a contest?” I explained the necessary commitment, and we added sectionals twice a week. Two different groups come at 7:15, a half an hour before the regular start time. The contest provided some additional motivation for students beyond the usual football games.

What was your initial motivation to apply for Midwest?
Midwest was never on my radar except to attend, and I had only gone twice because when I got back into band directing, I was a single mom raising three kids at stepping stone ages. I went to Midwest once with the Hillcrest band directors years ago and then when the Alabama Winds performed in 2017. Our band was ready for new challenges, and I wanted the program to keep growing musically and experience more than typical honor bands. They were ready for a higher level of performance.

How has this invitation motivated students?
When I told my adminstration that I was applying, they were all for it. Thankfully, my current headmaster has a bit of a band history. He supports the fine arts wonderfully across the board, so he was enthusiastic about applying to Midwest. I told him this probably isn’t going to happen the first year. He said, “Let’s figure out a way, if you get accepted, to get them there.” That statement made me feel confident.

My students had no idea what Midwest was. They get excited about traveling to a theme park, but inspiring them for this big conference took some explaining. When I told my headmaster we were accepted, he said, “I want the announcement to be big. I want balloons falling from the ceiling.”
There were no balloons, but we made a video and announced it in front of the school in the chapel. Everyone was very receptive. As for funding, we go on a trip almost every year. We alternate between bigger (and more expensive) trips and smaller ones. We wanted to take a bigger trip this year because of our great group of seniors, but flying to Chicago made it more expensive. Some of our families have taken on the fundraising challenges of this trip.

I normally am not too concerned with who decides to go on a trip, but we want correct instrumentation for any performance. For the Midwest appearance, I paid even closer attention to that. There were students who were not signed up, and the reason was definitely financial. We have had some small donors help out, and recently received a very large contribution from a family outside the band program for which we are very grateful.

For our clinic, I am pleased that we will demonstrate student mentoring by featuring our tuba section. I have never had to worry about having tubas at ACA, which is abnormal for a small school director. Years ago, I sent a young tuba player on a mission to connect with a beginning tuba student. They were probably five years apart in age, and the goal was to make a personal connection, not necessarily a musical one. Now we have a tuba family stretching over several years. They have long-standing communication groups, and they always ensure that the newest, youngest tuba player is brought into that shortly after they begin!

I am going to have the tubas demonstrate a scripted mentoring session to show what happens in my classroom when older students work with younger players. Then we are playing Robert W. Smith’s By Loch and Mountain, which has a great tuba solo and will pay tribute to Smith’s Alabama roots.

Our second piece is White Light by Phillip Sparke. It’s an oboe feature, and I have invited a former student, now in college, to play with us as part of a smaller ensemble.

The last piece we will play will be more poignant. We will talk about professional mentoring, colleague to colleague, professional and personal. I have had many mentors, but two of the most important are Randall Coleman and Leslie Welker, who is retired now, but she taught in this area. I got back into band directing after several years of staying at home with my kids. It was a very hard time, but it needed to happen. Leslie mentored me professionally as a band director, but also woman to woman. Our personalities are very different, but she motivated me to keep reaching for excellence even on the hard days. This is what band directors do.

I was talking with Randall back when I was first considering applying to appear at Midwest. He said, “you’re never going to know if you will make it unless you actually apply. You have to handle hearing the answer no once in a while.” That’s what we teach our students.

Heather Henson has been the instrumental and choral director at American Christian Academy since 2008. She graduated from Samford University with a Bachelor of Music in Music Education. She began teaching. She began her teaching career in the Jefferson County School System as the Assistant Director of Bands and Choral Director at Oak Grove High School and Alliance Elementary School, and then as Director of Bands at Pittman Middle School in Hueytown, Alabama. She is a clarinet player and was a charter member of the Alabama Winds.

– Interview by Becky Rodgers Warren

It’s A Small Band World After All

Roger A. Dekind
Friday, December, 19, 2025
3:45 PM – 4:45 PM

How did you get started at the Disney II Magnet School?
I was hired in 2018 just two weeks before school started. I did one round of interviews with the AP to the principal, took a tour of the school, and was offered the job in a couple of hours. They gave me a roster of 200+ kids, and they took me to a little closet in the main auditorium with 38 or 42 instruments. I had to figure things out on my own during the first year.

As a Chicago Public School alumnus, I came in with my roots in concert band and experiences at Lincoln Park High School and also as a student at the Merit School of Music. Merit is an outside program for music, but I call it the Hogwarts School of Music. That gave me the experience to go somewhere and build a more intense and focused training method for music.

I take everything that I have experienced and try to give my students great musical experiences. Our appearance as a clinic band at Midwest is an experience that has been years in the making. It’s a full circle moment for me, and I am excited for the kids most of all.

What grade levels do you teach?
For the last seven years I have taught grades 9 through 12. This year they mixed in some eight graders with the high schoolers. We have an opportunity to keep some of those eighth graders if they continue in band at the school. It is recruitment for our program and the school.
Describe the group you are taking to Midwest.

The group for the clinic is our Disney II advanced band. It is the top group in the school, but most of the students have only been with me for one to three years. I have never had a full classroom/group of students to start from Beginning Band and stay on the trajectory of Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Band. Students come into band at any grade point and any musical experience. You almost always see students with very little to no musical experience and have a small window to work with to help them grow into the best musicians and humans as possible. The Chicago Public Schools have no feeder system. A neighboring district, for example, has two powerhouse high school schools that draw students from nearby middle schools with bands. We don’t have that in CPS.

So, when you start your school year, you really don’t know who’s going to walk through the door.
Correct. I’m the only band instructor. So we just offer the three sections of band: beginning, intermediate, advanced. Maddy Marino, who is also a Roosevelt alum, teaches choir at the school. We share the same challenges of having a freshman class with little experience. As students in band or chorus make progress, we may bump them up to a higher level. We are assessing students throughout the year. We have been fortunate that the school secretary or scheduling coordinator works with us to make these ensemble changes possible. It is so important to have those relationships.

What was your first experience with the Midwest Clinic?
I was blessed enough to be a senior at Lincoln Park High School in a selective enrollment music program that was one of the top programs in the Chicago Public Schools. A clinician came in, and our jazz band played some jazz techniques. As a result, our band was selected to go to Midwest. We worked with some top jazzers in front of an audience at Midwest, similar to what we are doing this year. It was thrilling to play in a place where every famous composer and conductor was in the building. That was such a huge moment because CPS is rarely featured at such a prestigious clinic, even though it has been held in the same city for almost 80 years.

How will Midwest impact your students?
This has been the driving force since the day I got hired. I knew what Midwest is, and the impact it has. It didn’t just change my life; it changed every person in band with me. At the convention, students will have a chance to try a professional instrument and to hear top-notch musicianship from everywhere. Everyone deserves to get that experience and cherish that moment. I continue to preach to my kids that there are so many great experiences outside the walls of our school.

In the last couple of years, I have attended for two days and have brought my students along for a day. This year, they will spend two days at the conference. We will check out performances and explore the exhibit hall. I have told them, “Every university is here at your fingertips. All of the big schools are coming to you. It is a chance to think about your future and what you want to do.”

What will directors see at your clinic?
The first half of the clinic will focus on thriving as a small band program in the fourth largest school district in America. We are a magnet school but also tied to a neighborhood school. We do not have the benefit of selective enrollment in our district. I am going to tell the story of how we got organized and jump started a program just two weeks after being hired. The second half will demonstrate our approach to teaching music and our rehearsal process.

Since we first received this invitation at the start of the year, my message has been: You are representing something bigger than CPS, bigger than yourselves. We are here to highlight those beautiful things that happen in our program and represent the school and city. We are here to serve.

Roger A. Dekind is the Band Director/Music Instructor at Disney II Magnet High School, where he has taught for nearly eight years. He is a graduate of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University with a major in music education. He has studied clarinet under Dr. Bonnie Campbell and Charlene Zimmerman. He describes the Disney II band community as united, supportive, energetic, and dedicated and credits his students for pushing him to become an even better director and teacher.

– Interview by Becky Rodgers Warren

Day Two: Next Steps for Success with Your Beginning Jazz Band

Antonio J. García
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
1:30-2:30 PM

At The Midwest Clinic, we have had a real interest in presenting the attending educators with information they can grab onto and use day one in rehearsal. There are a high percentage of workshops to help them when they march into the band room on the first day of the semester. We set up a jazz track to focus on day one for a beginning jazz band at any level from middle school up to a college. What could you do on day one, week one?

There will be demonstrations with a hands-on pair of workshops where clinicians work with a demonstration middle school jazz band for two hours of a three-hour presentation. The third hour, held on a separate day will have a pair of clinicians discussing how to make the decisions behind the desk before you get to your first rehearsal. These choices might range from budgets to repertoire to amps.

The clinicians for day one, José Diaz and Dick Dunscomb, will demonstrate strategies that focus on getting a swing groove across the band because swing is the most amorphous of all our grooves for many people. There will be discussion on jazz articulations and listening to some recordings.
After a 15-minute break, Don Zentz, also a Midwest board member, and I will lead the day two session. We will demonstrate strategies for using call and response vocals, teaching improv, and layering in things for performance. The demonstration band, from Old Quarry Middle School, directed by Frank Alongi, will perform at the end of that second hour of rehearsal.

The next day, two great in the trenches educators, George Andrikokus and Matthew Johnson, will give a session called Before Rehearsal: Planning for Your Beginning Jazz Ensemble. They will walk through the decisions that directors make regarding stage setup, literature choices, lesson plan, and emphasizing what might be called ensemble-ship partnering with musicianship.

What led to this deep focus on jazz this year?
It was just a confluence of great things. The Pre-Conference Intensive is a cooperative effort between the Jazz Education Network and Midwest, and all of the jazz members of the Midwest Board are members of JEN. We’re actually giving a workshop at JEN from our Midwest standpoint. We call it A Prescription for Success and offer suggestions to help jazz directors take their ensembles to the next level. There’s always a need to help foster the next generation of jazz bands. It’s important continually to fertilize the ground and water it and make sure that we are constantly bringing up stronger ensemble experiences and band and orchestra directors who have the information they need to grow with the confidence to experiment.

For many band directors, jazz is an experiment. We know that most music education degrees don’t include any jazz requirements. Most music educators who graduate from great programs have no experience putting together a jazz curriculum or teaching improvisation. There are also other great musicians who are running jazz bands who are hungry for more information. We try to provide that.
At some point, jazz comes up for most school directors. They may have a holiday concert or swing or pops music for a concert. Having the proper interpretation is important to them in their regular job, if that regular job isn’t jazz. They want to sound as authentic as they are with Mozart or Persichetti or anything else that crosses the desk. They don’t want to play a tune by Duke Ellington and have it feel uncomfortable. The notes for jazz charts are the same black and white shades as the notes for classical charts. The only thing that changes them is the interpretation which comes from listening. It sounds simplistic, but it is true.

If someone is hungry to learn about jazz, the educators who have deep experience are happy to help. We can tell directors what to listen to start students off on a bossa nova, a swing tune, or a blues. We want to help younger directors build that foundation and could explode the amount of informed music educators. The Midwest Learning Channel is another valuable resource for directors. It is a growing archive of videos of various workshops that can be accessed at .

I want to emphasize to anyone reading this that they can contact me or any established educator who might be helpful. The secret sauce is listening to the music we want to emulate. Singing along with the music is also essential. If you can sing along with the phrasing of the Basie band or sing along with Ella, you will figure out how to articulate that with your instrument and band.

Antonio J. García is Secretary for the Midwest Clinic and has served on the board for three decades. He is former Director of Jazz Studies at Virginia Common-wealth University and an alumnus of the Eastman School of Music and Loyola University of the South. He is active as a performer, composer/arranger, producer, clinician, educator, and author in instrumental and vocal genres.

– Interview by Kevin Schoenbach

You Cannot Teach an Empty Chair: An Affirmational Approach to Recruitment, Retention, and Representation

Chandran J. Daniel
Thursday, December 18, 2025
1:30-2:30 PM

I’m in my 18th year of teaching. I’ve taught in urban schools, parochial schools, small schools, and large schools. It is easy to get hung up on all of the resources you are missing, but teaching at a small school has taught me that the greatest resource is the students in the room. You can’t teach an empty seat to cover a tuba part.

There are a handful of concrete steps that anyone can take, regardless what their program looks like to increase recruitment and retention. Start by taking a look at your total population demographics and think about how to use that to direct your efforts. It’s really important to examine all of the data available to see who is in the room, who is missing, and reflect on the challenges students are facing and what you can do to assist them.

Students
Find ways to connect with students quickly and affirm why you want them in your program. They need to have a reason to sign up. For some, it’s just a love for playing instruments, and they already have this appreciation for music. However, for students who haven’t connected with music yet, you have to find ways to bridge that gap for them. All of your great pedagogical tools have zero impact on students who are not in the program.

At a previous job, I was a K-12 music teacher at a small school and oversaw the band and choir programs. The total student population was about 180 kids from kindergarten through 12th grade with only 55 high school students. During one of my first classes with the high school choir, there were a couple of boys who were disruptive and just would not pay attention. I reached this point of great exhaustion and frustration and thought, “They are new to this program, and this is not a good fit. I need to have a conversation about them finding something else to do with their class period.” Then, I just had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach; if I kick them out, where does it stop? I realized that with so few kids in the building, I needed to change my mentality and attitude. How many kids would lose out on the opportunity to experience music, if I kicked them out because our personalities did not agree. I needed to think about how could I serve these kids. That was the moment when I came up with the phrase, “You cannot teach an empty chair.”

I had to find a better way to connect with them, meet them where they were, and keep them in the room, which ultimately did happen. One of them was the captain of the basketball team, and the next semester he recruited six or seven more boys to join choir in this tiny school.

Equipment
When I worked in low SES (socioeconomic status) schools, getting instruments was often the biggest challenge. I taught at a charter school on the west side of Chicago for six years in an under-resourced community, so a lot of my research and presentations in the early part of my career were focused on building band programs in low SES situations.

A few years ago, Dr. Ken Elpis was presenting at IMEC, and he made this brilliant point that really stuck with me. When schools were transitioning towards computers, one of the biggest challenges they found was that many families could not afford to have a personal computer at home. The most effective solution was often for schools to just buy computers and make sure that everyone had the equipment they needed. They didn’t allow the resource gap to be an insurmountable challenge that would keep students away from these necessary 21st century skills.

For instrumental music programs, the cost of entry often comes down to whether students can afford instruments. Sometimes the most effective strategy is to just “buy the computers,” to get the equipment kids need and eliminate as many barriers as possible so students can have access to a high-quality music education. Sometimes we just have to take a deep breath and figure out how we can find more resources. The great thing I have found, however, is that when you invest in breaking down barriers towards access, it tends to create long-term instead of short-term solutions.

As you gain equipment, you gain personnel. As you gain personnel, you tend to gain monetary resources to reinvest. If you can start to increase your enrollment, you are also increasing your fundraising base. Every student that you bring in is another person to help with the fundraising burden. It becomes a positive cycle. As you start adding equipment, you add more bodies, and you very quickly have a positive curve to your fundraising and resource building outcomes. It also becomes easier to make your pitch to administrators and the community when they see positive growth in quality and the number of students who are impacted by the program.

There are lots of small steps to take to begin building an equipment inventory. You might start with small fundraisers to buy inexpensive instruments from Facebook Marketplace, local pawn shops, garage sales, or flea markets. Something that was really effective for me was working with local music stores to get multi-year leases for 30 instruments that we would pay off over three or four years. This gave us equipment in hand and a specific fundraising goal every year to pay for those instruments. At my school in Chicago we did this and were able to quickly build the band program up from 8 students to 50 after three years. By the time I left, there were 85 students in the band program.

At the school I’m at right now, Thompson Junior High School, there were about 140 kids enrolled in the band when I was hired four years ago. Today, we have a little over 240. Students are the lifeblood of a program, and you need a well-planned approach to recruitment to keep your program vibrant and growing.

Chandran J. Daniel is the director of bands at Thompson Jr. High School for SD 308 in Oswego, Illinois. This year marks Daniel’s 17th year of teaching. His previous positions (all in Illinois) include K-12 music director at the Hinsdale Adventist Academy, K-8 music director at the Alain Locke Charter School in Chicago, and band director at Lincoln Middle School and Edwardsville Community High School in Edwardsville. Daniel received his Bachelors of Music Education from Illinois State University and Masters of Music in Music Education from Anderson University in Anderson, SC. Daniel was named as a 2017 Emerging Leader by the Illinois Music Education Association Board of Directors.

– Interview by Kevin Schoenbach

Join Us For This Historic Meeting!

NASSB: National Association of Small School Bands

In 2015, it became apparent that there was a large contingency of attendees at The Midwest Clinic who taught at small schools. Richard Crain, president of the Clinic’s board of directors arranged for a session featuring four small school directors. An attendee at this session stated that she had been coming to Midwest for 25 years, and this was the first clinic whose subject matter was dedicated to addressing challenges unique to small school band programs. Later, Frank Troyka presented a marching band clinic for small band programs and it was SRO.

Over the years, most clinic sessions at The Midwest Clinic have been directed toward larger band programs, often those with significant resources. Even though many doubted the wisdom of creating special tracks directed toward a specific audience, the Small School Band Track was created. By any standard of measurement, these sessions have attracted full audiences. In a 2024 survey, this overall subject received the most requests.

Richard Crain, president of The Midwest Clinic Board of Directors from 2009 until 2021, grew up in a small school band program with a high school enrollment of 75 students, and he was a major influence in campaigning for these special tracks. According to Crain, “The opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument and experience the joy of making music together literally changed my life.”

In 2002, the Holiday High School Band from Holiday, Texas auditioned to perform on the main stage and received an invitation to present a concert at the 56th Annual Midwest Clinic, Chicago Hilton and Towers. Since that first performance, 12 small school programs have been invited to present a concert or clinic at Midwest.

In 2024-25, the thought of creating a national organization to formalize and organize information to provide tangible assistance to small school programs was developed. This organization would exist as a resource center, a platform to exchange ideas, and a tangible effort to address the unique needs of this special classification of schools nationwide. This endeavor is not about dues or generating revenue. It is a genuine effort to address the needs unique to rural and other school programs with small enrollments. All students deserve to learn to play a musical instrument!

We are grateful to The Midwest Clinic for providing the room (Prairie Room, Thursday, 8:30 PM) and advertisement of this meeting. Gratitude is expressed to Rebecca Warren (North Dakota) and Stan Mauldin (Texas) for their leadership in the development process for the establishment of the NASSB. Our appreciation goes to The Instrumentalist for featuring the NASSB as the 79th Midwest Clinic approaches!

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