Making Music Together Across the Miles

BY DEBBIE MARCHIONE

AT 7:00 P.M. IN SCOTLAND AND 12:00

P.M. IN WASHINGTON, the band conductors’ batons go up. Forty young musicians watch expectantly. On the downbeat, students from The Bear Creek School begin playing, in unison, with their counterpoints in the Riverside Youth Band in Inverclyde, Scotland. Through technology, the students are able to play together despite being separated by thousands of miles and seven time zones.

The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions made playing a musical instrument in a group nearly impossible this year. Undaunted, Kelsey Thompson, Bear Creek’s band director, drew on a long-time friendship with musician friends in Scotland to forge long-distance relationships between their students and ours. Band is not offered in school in the UK, so the students practice on Friday evenings in a private program.

The Thompsons and Goods enjoy a Mariners game. Mark and Laura Good traveled to Washington to play music at Brady and Kelsey Thompson’s wedding.

Kelsey met Laura Good, wife of band director Mark Good, many years earlier when she studied in Scotland. Together, Mark and Laura run the Riverside Youth Band. Kelsey and the Goods have maintained a close long-distance friendship, even performing the music for one another’s weddings.

The opportunity to connect the two bands, while arising out of adversity, blessed students on both

Bear Creek Upper School band performs Valiants Arise with the Riverside Youth Band in Scotland.

sides of the Atlantic. Their joint rehearsal and performance of Valiants Arise by Paul Lovatt-Cooper proved to be one of the highlights of the year for Bear Creek band students.

Thompson notes, “I’ve been thinking for a long time about how we could somehow connect the students, through some sort of travel or exchange. The ability to do it remotely through Microsoft Teams was a perfect, though unexpected, opportunity.” She hopes to continue this connection in the future, giving Bear Creek students a chance to forge relationships with other musicians that like hers, could last a lifetime. To watch the joint performance of Valiants Arise, go to tbcs.org/arts/authors-artists-2021/us then select the Spring Band Concert on the Performing Arts tab. This piece begins at 9:47 on the video.