SBO April 2010

APRIL 2010 $5.00

Ted Scalzo of Bay Shore High School New Tools of the Trade Upfront: Choosing Repertoire Survey: Recruitment and Retention

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Contents 10

April 2010

Features 10

UPFRONT: CHOOSING REPERTOIRE Eastern Kentucky University’s Joe Allison highlights some of the critical factors one must take into consideration when selecting repertoire for school ensembles.

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UPFRONT Q&A: FELICE MANCINI In this recent interview, Felice Mancini, director of the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, speaks about charitable giving and the power of music education.

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GUEST EDITORIAL: CHAMBER MUSIC Dr. Gregg Gausline outlines a step-by-step plan for kick-starting a chamber music program.

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UPCLOSE: TED SCALZO Ted Scalzo is both a technology teacher and music educator at Bay Shore (N.Y.) High School. In a recent SBO interview, Ted elaborates on how new technological tools are changing the way music should be taught – and why it’s for the better.

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COMMENTARY: END OF YEAR SURVIVAL TIPS Contributor Paul Schilf provides a few handy tips for finishing the school year on a high note.

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SURVEY: RECRUITMENT & RETENTION SBO readers report on trends in the ongoing battle of recruitment and retention.

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TECHNOLOGY: TECH WINNERS FOR MUSIC ED John Kuzmich reviews three products the he describes as winners for music education.

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Columns 4 6 45

Perspective Headlines New Products

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Playing Tip Classifieds Ad Index

Cover photo by Rachel Brightman, Bay Shore, N.Y. SB&O School Band and Orchestra® (ISSN 1098-3694) is published monthly by Symphony Publishing, LLC, 21 Highland Circle, Suite 1, Needham, MA 02494 (781) 453-9310, publisher of Musical Merchandise Review, Choral Director, Music Parents America and JAZZed. All titles are federally registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Symphony Publishing, LLC. Subscription Rates: one year $24; two years $40. Rates outside U.S.A. available upon request. Single issues $5 each.

February Resource Guide $15. Periodical-Rate Postage Paid at Boston, MA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER/ SUBSCRIBERS: Send address change to School Band and Orchestra, P.O. Box 8548, Lowell, MA 01853. No portion of this issue may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. The publishers of this magazine do not accept responsibility for statements made by their advertisers in business competition. Copyright © 2010 by Symphony Publishing, LLC, all rights reserved. Printed in USA.

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Perspective

Phoning in the Music

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isualize a marching band parading down the street, only they don’t have instruments. Instead, the musicians carry iPhones networked wirelessly to a PA system being towed behind them. Far-fetched? Perhaps; however, there seem to be more and more “apps” for iPhones that are focused on simulating real instruments and which could conceivably be used to make this unlikely vision a reality. For example, a company called SonicMule says it “is pleased to introduce you to Leaf Trombone World Stage, an instrument, a game, and a huge global social experience.

You can blow into your iPhone, or use touch mode with iPod touch to make beautiful music. You can practice your favorite songs as much as you like. Then, when you feel ready, strut your stuff by performing on the World Stage, our revolutionary new platform where Leaf Trombone lovers around the world can listen to and score your playing.” Another trombone app, according to intomobile.com, is made by a company called Spoonjack. They recently launched iBone – a “Pocket Trombone for iPhone and iPod Touch.” The application allows users to play along with music from their iTunes library, and also with songs from the iBone Songbook.

For trumpet players, the Pocket Trumpet allows you to “Will the iPhone actually “press valves” on your iPod Touch screen and then eventually become a change the pitch of the so-called embouchure by tilting the replacement for real iPod or iPhone. You can even jump octaves by pressing a speinstruments?” cial point on the screen. There are also similar apps for flute, violin and almost every instrument in the orchestra. Most of these instrumental apps are essentially “toys” that are really designed more for frivolous fun than for replicating the performance of an actual instrument. However, they could provide a bit of understanding to a student who might have a further interest in pursuing an education in the real instrument.

There are more practical apps that are great tools for musicians, one of which was developed by Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. This app, Clarinet in Reach, is useful for all levels of clarinetists, and includes a wealth of useful tools such as fingering charts, audio files of clarinet etudes, a music dictionary, and video practice guides. Similarly, according to the Web site contactplus. com, “French Horn Pro was designed to help all levels of French horn players master the craft of playing the French horn. French Horn Pro enables French horn players to master scales, intervals, chromatic exercises and difficult music passages such as ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.”

There are apps for tuners, metronomes, scales and modes, guitar chords, composition, recording, and much more. Will the iPhone eventually become a replacement for real instruments? I seriously doubt it, but it is certainly becoming a universe-expanding tool and a “must have” technology for any music student or serious pro that is interested in improving their skills – while playing with their iPhone, of course!

Read on for more exciting stories in this technology-focused issue...

®

April 2010 Volume 13, Number 4

GROUP PUBLISHER Sidney L. Davis sdavis@symphonypublishing.com PUBLISHER Richard E. Kessel rkessel@symphonypublishing.com Editorial Staff

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Member 2010

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HeadLines NAMM Foundation Accepting Applications for Tuition Scholarships

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he NAMM Foundation is now accepting applications for Music Products Industry Scholarships for the 2010 fall semester. The program supports individuals enrolled in college and university music education or music business programs who are preparing for careers in the music products industry. The deadline for submitting an application for the fall 2010 semester is June 1.

Recipients will be notified of their awards by August 1. Interested parties can view scholarship guidelines and submit an electronic scholarship application on the NAMM Foundation’s Web site.

NAMM Foundation Music Products Industry Scholarships offer tuition scholarships of $2,500 to $5,000 to support fulltime music business and music education college students who demonstrate unique qualifications and proven interest in pursuing careers in the music products industry. Funds will be administered by the student’s university. Students can also apply in September 2010 for the President’s Innovation Award to support travel costs to attend the 2011 NAMM Show in Anaheim, Calif., Jan. 13-16, 2011. Information about the President’s Innovation Award will be available in the fall on the NAMM Foundation’s Web site.

For more detailed information about the programs that the NAMM Foundation’s initiatives support and to access funding guidelines and details, visit www.nammfoundation.org.

Soundscapes After-School Program Receives Donation

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irginia-based musical instrument retailer, Music & Arts, recently donated 100 string instruments to support the first Soundscapes pilot program in Newport News, Virginia.

Co-founded by Newport News resident Anne Henry and musician and educator Rey Ramirez, Soundscapes is modeled after similar programs created by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Venezuela’s El Sistema youth orchestral training program.

Students participating in the Soundscapes after-school music education and social change program meet for two hours, three days each week. During the first year, students explore different musical instruments, starting with bucket-drums and their own voices. Over the year, they also will work with recorders, stringed instruments, and horns.

To find out more, visit www.musicarts.com.

Online Survey Results Do you utilize technological tools during band & orchestra rehearsals?

yes 86% no 14%

Visit www.sbomagazine.com and let your voice be heard in the current online poll – results to be published in the next issue of SBO.

Midwest Clinic Announces New Officers

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he Midwest Clinic board of directors has announced its new officers: Richard C. Crain, president; Dorothy A. Straub and John L. Whitwell, vice presidents; and Mark N. Kjos, treasurer. David C. McCormick continues to serve as secretary. The officers bring a wealth of knowledge to their roles, drawn from careers in music education and the music industry.

For more information, visit www.midwestclinic.org.

MENC Members Choose National President-Elect The members of MENC: The National Association for Music Education elected Nancy Ditmer National President-Elect for 2010-2012. Ditmer, director of Bands and professor of Music Education at The College of Wooster (Ohio) since 1984, will assume the office on July 1, 2010 and become National President on July 1, 2012. Previously, Ditmer served as MENC North Central Division president (2002-2004) and president of the Ohio Music Education Association (1996-1998). A nationally-known clinician and notable educator, she was designated a 2008 Lowell Mason Fellow by MENC and received the 2006 Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio Music Education Association, among many other honors during her career.

For a complete biography, visit www.menc.org.

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Keepin’ HeadLines Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music Advocacy Program Online

T Travel with the country’s top student travel planner.

Performance Tours s Festivals Parades s Cruises s Bowl Games Clinics s International Disney©

he Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Dream Out Loud Music Education Advocacy Campaign utilizes the individual stories of Chicago Symphony Orchestra members to inspire young musicians to continue their musical studies and to stick with it during periods of challenge or frustration.

Dream Out Loud is built on an understanding of the challenges that music educators face in their classrooms every day – specifically retaining students in their school music programs. Dream Out Loud offers a set of colorful posters, print, and video profiles telling each musician’s story.

Dream Out Loud is appropriate for classroom use with middle school through high school students, including beginning and advanced instrumentalists, parents, and music educators. Dream Out Loud materials are free to music educators and other music organizations.

For more information, visit www.cso.org.

Benedictine University Now Offers BA in Music

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enedictine University has announced that it will offer a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education beginning in the fall of 2010. The goal of the program is to educate future music educators. Successful graduates will earn a Type 10 K-12 Certificate in the state of Illinois.

Students will learn the basics of voice production, piano, conducting and most of the instruments in the band and orchestra. Additionally, the Music Education majors will have observation hours in elementary, junior high, and high school – along with an extra semester of student teaching – to obtain the Type 10 K-12 Certificate.

Any student interested in this degree should contact Luis Loubriel at LLoubriel@ben.edu for further information.

Labels for Education Partners with Grammy Foundation

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ampbell Soup Company’s Labels for Education program joined the Grammy Foundation to bring artist ambassador and contemporary jazz saxophonist Mindi Abair to Alcott Elementary School in Chicago to promote the importance of music education in schools.

Abair’s appearance was the first of four that will be sponsored by Labels for Education and the Grammy Foundation. Each event will be held in select schools across the country and will feature a different artist ambassador sharing a personal experience of music discovery with students.

Participating artist ambassadors will include Kate & Kacey, Dave Koz, and Crosby Loggins. During each event, schools receive 100,000 Bonus Labels for Education Points, which can then be used to secure additional educational equipment and resources, including musical instruments.

For more information, visit www.labelsforeducation.com.

Official Sponsor of

email: info@bobrogerstravel.com

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© News

To share News of your own, e-mail editor Eliahu Sussman @ esussman@symphonypublishing.com

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SBOUpfront: Choosing Repertoire

Choosing Repertoire:

A Balanced Diet

BY JOE ALLISON

n the my last article, “What Is It?” (SBO March, 2010),

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I pondered the challenges of programming for the contemporary marching ensemble. One of the conclusions drawn was that it is a considerable challenge to choose

study or performance materials for any educational ensemble, indoors or out. It appears that a discussion of basic programming rationale would be germane to all conductor/teachers in search of an optimal musical experience for both performers and audience. Just what makes such a basic task so difficult to perform?

As mentioned in the previous installment, I recently asked a class of undergraduate music education majors to identify the targets of their ensemble programming strategy. Their responses included various sub-groups of a typical audience: parents, casual spectators, administrators, peers, etc. It took some time before one brave soul actually considered the performers themselves! Given that a “typical” school audience usually attends concerts to support the performers as much as they are motivated by the actual musical selections, this was a noteworthy response. Upon reflection,

surely few would contest a programming philosophy that considers the curricular needs of the students first and foremost in choosing literature to be studied and performed. One can only hope that the selected “works of merit” are also of interest (and maybe even entertaining) to the spectators.

The discernment and discretion involved in selecting literature for educational ensembles has long been a topic of frequent and intense discussion among educators. Of late, it seems that other interested parties have joined in the conversation.

In fact, history may very well record the date Sunday, January 30, 2005 as a landmark in this ongoing dialogue.

On this date, a seemingly innocuous article by an American military historian appeared in the Washington Post.

Stephen Budiansky has written 12 books about military and intelligence history, science, and the natural world.

Budiansky graduated from Yale University in 1978 and received a master’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1979. In 198586 he was a Congressional Fellow at

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the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, where he co-authored a classified study on the future role of “smart” weapons technology in warfare. And as of 1/30/05, he is a published music critic.

Entitled “The Kids Play Great, But That Music…” Budiansky’s initial music submission was highly critical of the quality of literature presented at local school concerts he attended. Speaking from the perspective of a band parent, he began his Post piece with statements like “I kept my face rigid through the most trying of musical ordeals,” and “my jaw muscles still hurt from one fourth-grade chorus concert.” Hyperbole, anyone? Budiansky even quoted the noted musical expert Groucho Marx in his introduction.

His inspiration for all this invective with middle schoolers? Budiansky says: “the problem is not how they play, it’s what they play.” He goes on to coin “The Piece,” which is defined as “not being written by any composer you have ever heard of… you’ve never heard it on the radio… it in fact exists nowhere in the known musical universe.” Further, “The Piece” is “written by someone who (a) is alive and collecting royalties, and (b) has a master’s degree in musical education.” One must be encouraged from this to assume from that both royalties and music education are to be avoided. A great deal of literary effort was then expended to describe obscure and somewhat outlandish programmatic ideas and ethereal compositional allusions as the standard for newer original works. Objectivity (or tact) was apparently not a requisite for his description of contemporary educational instrumental ensemble music. Nevertheless, the historical novelist goes on to assert that these new works of “great mediocrity” have “completely supplanted the real music” which he himself humbly defines by listing all of three (3) genres and two (2) specific composers. An exclusively elite repertory, to be sure! Perhaps his edict (“Budianskian Analysis?”) finally puts to rest the need for time–consuming literature courses in the undergraduate and graduate music curricula.

After a couple of questionably analogous comparisons to other areas

of school curricula, the piece-de-resistance finale describes how a studentled ensemble showed infinitely superior musical insights than their adult leaders by choosing to perform Mozart, rather than something from the morass of contemporary dreck readily available to them. Just as in Steven Speilberg’s early cinematic world, innocent children must overcome the insensitive ignorance of their guardian adults in order to succeed.

As a postscript for his followup article in the Washington Post, Mr. Budiansky expressed surprise: “nothing I have written in 25 years of journalism has generated such an outpouring of passionate responses.” Yes, you read that correctly: the words “surprised” and “journalism” were actually used.

In all sincerity, although I would protest some aspects of Budiansky’s writing (such as his sarcastic tone and his spurious analogies and examples), I am ready to admit that there is a greater point to be made. At the core of the article he calls into question the appropriateness of the literature selected for study and performance by the “normal” school instrumental ensemble. And there may very well be a significant problem.

Let us then begin an examination of these choices by establishing that no single compositional technique, style,

effective selection and analysis of ensemble literature. After all, the musical selections are the majority of a courseof-study for most any group, if not the total curriculum! A standard literature checklist should include: • Composer – A background knowledge of the composer, including “other” works, stylistic tendencies, range of difficulty level, and so on.

• Structural Elements – Obviously the type of composition (march, overture, suite, et cetera) is of great importance in the selection process.

Period and compositional techniques are also essential attributes to be considered.

• Historical Perspective – Knowledge of the background of a particular work gives its study a needed perspective for both form and function, contributing to the total curriculum of literature.

• Cultural Perspective – The cultural and social elements of band music have traditionally been ignored, but have now become more important with the current general educational focus on multiculturalism.

There is a wealth of literature with direct and indirect cultural implications, and exploration in this area can enrich students well beyond the “boundaries” of traditional music study. Diversity and variety have al-

“A ‘balanced diet’ that takes into consideration these aspects of musical works should give students a well-rounded experience as performers and consumers of music.” genre, medium, or composer is inherently “evil” or an “unfit exposure” for study. To paraphrase the tune “Ebony and Ivory,” there is good and bad in everything. One might be tempted to add: “some more than others!” Maybe an effective way of approaching this dilemma is to consider the students’ “musical diet” – they need a variety of healthy, nourishing musical nutrients, not only to survive, but also to flourish! If this is so, what “food groups” provide a balanced musical diet?

Any number of articles, workshops, classes, and books are devoted to the

ways been valued as artistic musical characteristics.

• Theoretical Elements – The organizational components of a work are of prime importance to consider when developing a curriculum of literature. Form and structure, harmonic and melodic vocabulary, and other theoretical attributes are fundamental considerations to be examined in study, and shared with the performers. A representative variety of compositional techniques is a requisite for a comprehensive experience.

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• Technical Demands – The difficulty of a piece for the individual performers is usually a prime consideration. Even within a “grade level” of literature, the demands for the individual instruments/ sections may be significantly inconsistent. Veteran conductors pride themselves on knowledge of a specific instrument’s responsibilities within a particular grade of music – ranges, techniques, in-

dividual solos, featured sections, et cetera.

• Musical Demands – Unfortunately, this is less often considered than technical demand, at least in many cases. Some literature that “looks easy” on paper has great demand for individual and collective expressive techniques. Transparency of texture, pitch exposures, and soloistic responsibilities all may be less evident on the individual parts or printed score.

• “Hit Lists” – Just like the “daily special” at a restaurant, featured titles recommended by publishers or retailers may or may not be the best choices for programming. Festival programs that list performed repertoire (and assessment results) are generally a good source of “what works” (or what doesn’t). Internet forums and “open” sites not controlled by commercial organizations are an effective new source of information in this area. Printed sources of standardized repertory lists are plentiful, but consider the source.

A “balanced diet” that takes into consideration these aspects of musical works will give students a wellrounded experience as performers and consumers of music. Accountability to such an extensive list of considerations requires more time and effort on the part of teacher-conductors, but the results should easily justify the effort for all concerned, including a concert audience.

Joseph Allison is a professor of Music and serves as the director of Bands and coordinator of Conducting Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, where he conducts the Wind Ensembles and Wind Symphony.

Prior to this position, Dr. Allison was the director of Bands and Orchestras at Sumter (S.C.) High School, where his program became the first internationally to be honored by the John Philip Sousa Foundation as laureates of both the Sudler Flag of Honor for concert excellence and the Sudler Shield for marching achievement.

Allison maintains an active international schedule of clinics and adjudications in the concert, marching, and jazz activities. He can be reached at joe.allison@eku.edu.

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SBOUpfrontQ&A: Felice Mancini

Feliceof Mr.Mancini Holland’s Opus Foundation In the February, 2010 issue, SBO’s sister publication covering the music products industry, Musical Merchandise Review (MMR), ran an interview with Felice Mancini, director of the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, as they presented her with the Don Johnson Industry Service Award. Don Johnson was the longtime editor of both MMR and SBO, and the award honoring individuals dedicated to promoting music and bearing his name was established after his death in 2008. Following is a reprint of that interview. - Ed.

BY GENE SCULATTI xamples of life imitating art

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abound. Rarer still are those occasions when a piece of art inspires real-world ac-

tions that literally change lives.

But that’s what occurred in 1996, when Michael Kamen undertook a press tour with actor Richard Dreyfuss and director Stephen Herek to promote the film Kamen had just scored, Mr. Holland’s Opus, about a high-school music teacher whose efforts help nurture a generation of aspiring young musicians. On a stop at his alma mater, New York’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Kamen noticed a cage full of broken musical instruments the school didn’t have the funds to repair. He decided, on the spot, to start the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, dedicated to providing students of the nation’s neediest schools with instruments.

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MMR: Let’s start with how you became involved with foundation.

When did you join?

Felice Mancini: Michael started the foundation in 1996, and I came here in 1998. There were just two people prior to me. Michael, when he decided to start the foundation, just went to his manager and said, “Do this.” He was a creative type, and that’s how they do it – “Let’s get this going” – but they didn’t really know what it took to start a non-profit organization: You’ve got to raise money.

Michael wrote a lot of checks, but you can’t be the sole sustainer of something like this. I’d had some background in fundraising and non-profit, so I was brought in to sort of lead the show. The job took to me and I took to it.

The operation has certainly grown; there are four of us, three full-time. Because we’re small and so focused, we’re effective at getting the instruments where they have to be. And, over the years, we’ve really tried to refine our grant process, partly because we get so many people applying. The actual application is on paper, so we have to determine how much of the information they give us can be translated into real life. In the last year, we’ve been doing site visits to all the schools we want to give grants to, to determine their eligibility. We couldn’t really do that before because we didn’t have the budget. Now we can go out and see how what’s on the application matches up; a teacher may ask for something and you look at the rest of the

and considered, and we wind up working with about 50 schools per year. Our goal is to give to all the qualified schools we can.

MMR: It must be heartbreaking to have to reject a school.

FM: Yes, it is. I write a lot of the grants myself and they don’t all get accepted, but as long as you know why, that’s important. And we try to answer everyone.

Someone will say, “Well, why didn’t my school get it?” There’s always an answer, and it’s not because we don’t have the money. It’s just that it’s very competitive and some schools’ people have greater needs. And people can always reapply, too. Right now we work only with Title 1 schools, which are those that have the highest amount of students who qualify to receive free lunch from the government. It’s kids from low-income families; we serve those kids whose parents can’t afford to rent their instruments.

MMR: The schools all have to have existing music programs, right?

FM: Yes, the programs have to be at

least three years old. As you know, instruments are really expensive, and we can’t give them to a music program that hasn’t proven itself or doesn’t have the support base built up to get enough kids into it. We like to see programs that are already thriving but that just don’t have the budgets, that aren’t given the money to repair instruments or buy new ones.

And everyone wants different things: band orchestras, mariachi bands, drum lines, jazz bands, so we’ve given to all sorts “It’s great to make people happy, to work of programs. The goal isn’t necessarily to have toward a good purpose.” kids come out of school as musicians; we just want to give them opportunity. information on the application and you say, “Hmm, does this really make sense?

MMR: As explained on the foundaWell, why do you [the teacher] want this tion’s site, the idea is to keep kids involved in school, to help at-risk instead of this?” We really take a look kids stay out of trouble… at what they’re trying to accomplish and what they need for that. Teachers first FM: Yes. Here in L.A., every other contact us online [at www.mhopus.org kid who starts school eventually drops ] and go through a qualification process; out. It’s very bad in urban places, and based on their answers to a few quesso a lot of the principals in these artions, we tell them, “OK, you can go eas realize that music is one thing that ahead and do the application.” We get could keep the kids engaged enough about 2,000 application requests a year, to stay in school, so it is a tool and it which leads to about 1,000 applications definitely helps. They just did a study, in actually submitted. They’re then read New York, specifically about this, and

Luther Students, March 2009.

the graduation rates of students in music and arts programs are higher than for other students.

MMR: Explain a little bit about your fundraising.

FM: Well, we’re doing it all yearround, but seasonally the end of the year is our busiest time because you go for people who might want to get a tax break from donating. There are a lot of businesses that have their own charitable foundations; right now we’re working with Fidelity Investments in Boston, so they have a division that does corporate initiatives and they decided to do some things to get schools involved in music.

We also go to corporations in general, and to individual donors. Your goal is a support base of regular people who just write cheeks for $50 or $100; they’re the ones with the real passion for giving.

MMR: What effect has the current bad economy had on fundraising efforts?

FM: I’ve been told it’s having a bad

effect elsewhere, but that hasn’t been the case here. The amount we’ve raised from donations hasn’t increased, but it’s been steady, and we haven’t had to cut staff or anything. People continue to make contributions – maybe in smaller amounts, but they’re still sending in checks.

MMR: The grants are not in cash.

They’re strictly for instruments, both new and repaired, right?

FM: Yeah. We have a room for instrument inventory, and we also have a bunch of stuff that’s stored. We just got in a huge donation from one arts high school – like 12 pallets of stringed instruments. These were rental instruments that were very gently used, or maybe seconds. They’re playable and School Band and Orchestra, April 2010 15

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We have people who repair instruments for us; for those who donate, their instrument is appraised and we learn the story behind the instrument. Some of the donated instruments we can’t give to a school, so we’ll put them on eBay; we have a whole page on eBay, and with the money we get from that we buy new instruments.

MMR: Presumably, you must have given instruments to schools in some pretty impoverished neighborhoods.

The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation Award recipients, MHOF Staff and Board join William H. Macy and conductor Martin Yates in the renowned Maestro Suite backstage at Carnegie Hall, April 2009.

presentable. Maybe a quarter of the instruments we give out have been donated and we’ve repaired them, so by and large they’re new. We make sure

they look good. I mean, kids don’t want to play on something that looks bad, and we won’t give them that! [laughs].

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FM: Well, there was one school, when we worked with the Compton [California] district a couple of years ago, that’s in a pretty gnarly area. But they’re convinced, at the very top level of their district, that music is crucial for their programs, so they’re determined, no matter what their budget constraints, to keep music – because it’s a way of keeping a kids coming to school. There are a lot of kids who are afraid to come to school. At one school near there, Washington Prep in South L.A., one of the teachers said, “I don’t even want to learn the kids’ first names, because I go to too many funerals and I don’t want to get close to them.” On their campus there are eight gangs, which makes even going to school a challenge.

Usually when there’s a music department, the kids in the program are like a club, they protect each other. A good teacher is important too. You can go to a bad music class and not want to even be there. The teacher is, for the most part, the one who fills out the application, because it’s their class, and they know what they need. We do have to have a buy-in, too, from the principal. It helps to know that the administration, the parents and all these people are invested in the music program, because then it’s going to survive.

MMR: Who are the other members of your staff, and what are their responsibilities?

FM: Tricia Steel, our programs director, has been here 10 years. She works hands-on with all the teachers, the retailers and manufacturers we get our instruments from. She went to Berklee, was a percussion major, and came here part-time, then full-time. Tricia is very knowledgeable about music products,

16 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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and we’re very tight with NAMM. I think all the retailers we work with are NAMM members. We order a lot of instruments, and it feels good that we can invigorate the industry. It works out all the way around. Deanna Sanchez is our programs assistant, and she works with Tricia. And Natalia Hernandez is our part-time administrator. And I do fundraising.

MMR: What part of the foundation’s mission is unfulfilled? What else might you hope to do someday – say, provide more grants?

FM: Well, we don’t really want to expand the program, or perhaps maybe only a little. Marty Albertson, who’s on our board and is the CEO of Guitar Center, has a real passion for teachers. So one of the things he’s done is, through Guitar Center, fund a teachers award that we do every year. We select five of the best teachers from five different schools, and we do an extra site visit with them – we have a committee that does this – and then we fly them and their spouses to New York, where they get a check for $10,000 from Guitar Center, presented onstage at Carnegie Hall. It’s not really our core mission, but we think it’s important to acknowledge the contributions of teachers, especially the ones who hang in there and kind of sacrifice and rise to the occasion. They engage the kids. You can walk into a music class and you’ll know right away if that teacher is good,

Lawrence Intermediate, November 2009.

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just by how the kids are, the looks on their faces, even the way they play. A good teacher can take the same kids and get them to play much better than a weaker teacher. You can draw things out of a kid.

We also have a smaller program, a solo program, the Michael Kamen Solo Award. We don’t offer it all the time.

It’s for students who want to pursue music as a career, who really have a gift but can’t afford to buy an instrument

Introducing

to get them to the next level. We’ve given instruments to more than 70 kids through the years with this award.

We have to cut back on it sometimes because these are professional or preprofessional instruments that are more expensive than the student model. Let’s say a solo kid who we gave a saxophone to, a professional model, we could buy 10 student-model saxes for that money.

So whom do we really want to serve?

It really depends; if we’re flush and

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there’s someone who just wants to donate to the Solo Award program, then we can do it. And these kids we keep track of; they tend to stay in touch, they’ll e-mail us and say, “Guess what I’m doing now?” If you’ve been to our Web site, you may have seen a picture of this kid with a great story: Jermaine, who plays euphonium. He’s this big kid who’s also captain of the school football team, and he just wrote to us and said, “I want to teach music,” and he picked up an instrument that suits him – he’s as big as it is – and he applied because he’d heard about the Solo Award.

MMR: The job sounds like a rewarding one. What’s life like outside the foundation? Are you involved with music there?

FM: Ha, this is my life! [laughs]. Like my [twin] sister Monica, I did a lot of background singing at one time. My mom was a studio singer, and we got our voice from her, not my dad [Henry].

He didn’t sing very well – but he was brilliant otherwise. For some reason, at some point in my life I got tired of the professional singing and I really wanted to do something else. I got involved as a volunteer with another organization, really liked it and got into the whole non-profit world. UCLA has a certification program in non-profit management that I went through. It was a world I loved to be in, so when this opportunity came around, how perfect was this? It was music, which I loved, and it was non-profit, so I could combine both.

I’m so lucky that I found this. It is very full-time: I think it, I breathe it. I dream it… If people could find something like this to do, I think the world would be a better place. It’s great to make people happy, to work toward a good purpose.

My dad had already passed away when I started this job. He died in 1994.

I started here in ’98. He did a video one year that I didn’t happen to see until after he passed away. I turned it on, and there he is, waxing rhapsodic about music education and how the arts are so important in school. This isn’t stuff we ever talked about, so I didn’t know it until I saw this video, and I thought, “Wow, this was really important to him.” So now the connection to music education feels even better to me.

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SBOGuest Editorial: Chamber Music

Kick-Start Your Chamber Music Program BY

DR. GREGG GAUSLINE

s music educators, we have a responsibility to develop the independent

A

musician as well as our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ensemble skills. An extremely effective way to nuture independence is through an active chamber music program. Often, we ask students to participate if they are interested,

but this may not be enough. Requiring one ensemble performance at solo and ensemble festivals is a wonderful way to quickly build a level of student musicianship that is not dependent on the masses.

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Starting a chamber music program is a rewarding project, and one which will vastly improve individual musicianship while also building leadership skills among students. Initially, we as directors will start the rehearsal process. As the ensembles develop consistency, the students will take over with feedback from the director. Every instrumentalist will have his or her own respective choir to perform in. Small to medium sized programs may have one choir per instrument, while larger programs may have several.

Repertoire Selection Building the confidence of individual students is the first priority at the beginning stages of a chamber music program. Consult the state solo and ensemble list to select pieces that are appropriate for the students’ performing level. Often, for the high school program, a music level of medium-easy or medium is an effective level to start.

A slightly lower degree of difficulty encourages students and increases the likelihood of success, rather than overwhelming them too early in the process. For middle school, a music level of easy is an effective starting point.

Certain states’criteria allow each part of a quartet to be doubled. This is an effective way to start building confidence and momentum.

Quartets offer the opportunity for the musicians to gain practice as a solo voice, yet still feel comfortable and secure with a larger ensemble. Also, there is a large amount of repertoire available for quartets. Once students have a achieved a satisfactory level of performance and confidence with the quartet, then they are ready to move on to chamber pieces written specifically for their respective instrument, for example, a clarinet choir with Eb Clarinet, Bb Soprano Clarinets, Bb Bass Clarinets, and Contrabass Clarinet.

Rehearsal Structure The time commitment a chamber music program requires can be overwhelming for a director. However, with careful planning and pacing, the rehearsal process should actually be

Repertoire Here is a list of effective quartets for the initiation of a chamber music program:

Medium-easy:

Medium-advanced:

Flute Butts – Quartet for Flutes Butts – Song for Flutes McKay – Lyric Poem Solomon – Quatro Giocoso

Flute Adler – Madrigals Amos – Nursery Rhyme Suite Kreines – Chorale and Toccata

Clarinet Tchaikovsky/Johnson – Chanson Triste Bach/Dishinger – Musette Handel/Dishinger – Allegro Dillon – Rhythmic Dance Saxophone Purcell/Vedeski – Gavotte from Harpsichord Suite No. 5 Byrd/Frackenpohl – The Earl of Salisbury Dishinger – Americana Suite No. 1 Dishinger – English Madrigal Suite No. 1 Trumpet Bach/Johnson – Five Bach Chorales Fitzgerald – Prelude Fitzgerald – Scherzino Lully/Post – Gavotte En Rondeau Horn Schuman/Smith – Lotus Flower Cofield – Winter Sunset Ostling – Quarto for Horns Poole – Hunters Delight Trombone Tanner – Nuages Bach/Dishinger – Menuet in G Buckner/Barnes – Two Preludes Ostransky – Two Episodes Tuba Quartet Faure/Drobank – Canticle of Jean Racine Gray – Contrast for Brass (Low Brass) Puccini/Sherman – Turndot: Two Chorales Schumann/Shoop – Suite Percussion Quartet Benson – Scherzino 3 Pieces Britton – One Over There Ostling – Gavotte for Percussion Colgrass – Percussion Music

Clarinet Jacob – Introduction and Rondo Frackenpohl – Prelude and Allegro Young – Northern Legend Saxophone Ostransky – Poem and Dance Schmaltz – Strictly for Saxes Stack – Scherzo Trumpet Hervig – Alla Marcia Scheidt – Canzona from Padvana Lo Presti – Suite for Five Trumpets Horn Scarmolin – Album Leaf Arnell – Music for Horns Lo Presti – Second Suite Trombone Smith – In Dulci Jubilo Bassett – Quartet Chapman – Suite of Three Cities Tuba Quartet Vasconi – Promenade Danburg – Chorale and Gigue Goble – Toad Patrol Percussion Quartet Williams – African Sketches Cirone – 4/4 for Four Delp – Announcement Woodwind Quintet Whear – Quintet for Woodwinds Cowell – Suite Mozart/Waln – Divertimento #14 Brass Quintet Pezel – Sonata No. 1 Scheidt – Centone No. 5 Adler – Five Movements Chamber Winds Hovhaness – Tower Music Jacob – Old Wind in New Bottles Tull – Scherzino School Band and Orchestra, April 2010 21

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enjoyable. Following is a suggested rehearsal structure for a small- or medium-sized program in which rehearsals will take place after school:

Monday 2:30 – 3:00 3:00 – 3:30

Flute Choir Clarinet Choir

Tuesday 2:30 – 3:30 3:30 – 4:00

Symphonic Band Saxophone Choir

Wednesday 2:30 – 3:00 3:00 – 3:30

Trumpet Choir Horn Choir

Thursday 2:30 – 3:00 3:00 – 3:30

Trombone Choir Tuba/Euphonium Choirs or Tuba Quartet

Friday 2:30 – 3:15

Percussion Ensemble

Everyone in the program should follow this timetable. If the size of the band is too large for each of these ensembles, then have smaller student-run groups of your most advanced musicians rehearsing concurrently with the respective ensemble rehearsal time.

Also, if the percussion section meets in a separate class time, then the Percussion Ensemble can be rehearsed at that time. This will create more rehearsal time on Friday afternoons for other ensembles.

Performance Opportunities

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A thriving chamber music program will provide a variety of performance opportunities throughout the community. While solo and ensemble festivals are wonderful events, performing at special occasions in the area will quickly raise the visibility of the music program and school. Schedule a concert to bring all of the ensembles together and combine these performances with accompanied solos. This will give students the opportunity to become stronger performers and independent musicians. Consider placing the piano in the center of the performing facility

22 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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and have chamber ensembles placed in several areas. This will assist with the flow of the performance. If available, incorporate lighting changes to direct attention to specific ensembles. Lowering lighting before and after each performance will present a professional staging appearance and remove any distractions to the audience.

There are many opportunities to perform away from campus as well.

Offer chamber ensemble performances at art galleries, bookstores, coffee shops, hospitals, and nursing homes.

Resorts and country clubs are also outstanding venues for performance.

Another very effective chamber music opportunity is to perform at civic meetings. Typically, an ensemble will be asked to perform at the start of the meeting and will be officially recognized by the hosting body.

Dr. Gregg Gausline is associate director of Bands and assistant professor of Music at the University of Georgia.

At UGA, he is the conductor of the Wind Symphony and teaches courses within the music education curriculum. Gregg received the Doctor of Musical Arts in Instrumental Conducting from the University of Miami and has taught in the public schools of Florida.

Instrumentation Substitution Developing a chamber music program can be challenging in terms of instrumentation. Because of this, instrumental substitution is completely acceptable. Lack of specific instruments should not discourage the director from initiating this valuable opportunity. Common substitutions include flute for oboe, trombone with straight mute for bassoon, alto saxophone for horn, trumpet with straight mute for oboe, and tenor saxophone for bassoon. Any substitution is acceptable if it means the group will function.

An active chamber music program is a part of the band program the students will quickly look forward to. It may take a few years to establish, but once the students experience success, performing in chamber groups often becomes favorite activity with student musicians. Playing in chamber groups also helps students become more motivated to develop their own trios, quartet, and quintets rehearsing on their own time. By following a few simple steps, any school band program can implement successful chamber music groups that will develop the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; individual musicianship and vastly improve the large ensembles of the entire program.

School Band and Orchestra, April 2010 23

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UpClose

Ted Scalzo of Bay Shore High School

New Tools of

24 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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th

f the Trade

By Eliahu Sussman

L

ong Island, New York’s Bay Shore High School is at the forefront of the technological revolution in arts education. The school has been honored with a myriad of distinctions in regards to their arts programs, including being named a four-time Grammy Signature School/Finalist, and Bay Shore has been singled out five times in the past eight years as one of the 100 best communities in America for music education by the American Music Conference.

Although the district has a long and rich history of supporting the arts, from the Superintendent and Board of Education to the community at large, one of the driving forces behind the school’s technological innovation has been band director Ted Scalzo, who is in his 32nd year in the Bay Shore school system, currently completing his 25th at the high school. These days, he directs the wind ensemble, does the arrangements for the marching band, and also teaches technology courses at Bay Shore High School. Recently named an Apple Distinguished Educator, Ted hasn’t been shy about fusing technology and music, to the point where he even has his wind ensemble play along with pre-arranged parts on a laptop during both rehearsals and live performances.

While some latecomers to the digital uprising might question the need for such technology in a performing ensemble, Ted sees these tools as facilitating efficiency in the brief amount of time he has with his students. And the results, he attests, speak for themselves.

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In a recent conversation with School Band & Orchestra, Ted describes in detail how the cutting edge tools he uses help him pass an understanding and appreciation of music on to his students.

School Band & Orchestra: Tell me about your interest in technology. When did you first start heading down this path?

Ted Scalzo: I did my grad work at NYU. One of the requirements for a music education degree there, at the time, was that everyone had to take some kind of computer course. They actually suggested that you learn a little bit of programming. I took a course that was a combination of educational uses of music technology and some basic programming. Once I started doing that, I realized that it was pretty cool and I jumped on the bandwagon. This was in 1983.

SBO: It’s safe to say that we’ve seen some significant changes in technology since then. What do you use in your classroom these days?

TS: Well, I wear several hats. I teach a multimedia class in desktop studio production. We use Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio to create videos and podcasts. All of the examples on our Web site were produced by my students. The piece on wind ensemble and technology was a project by one of my students.

We produce things for our community; we have an annual summit every year where people from the area gather and we talk about what needs to get fixed in our town. And the kids always produce something – a DVD, usually – that community members can take home with them. We’ve covered the history of Bay Shore, health and human services, and this year we’re focusing

on our downtown commerce. The class has won a few awards, and it’s through this project that I, along with our director of Cultural Arts, Mr. Terry Nigrelli, was named an Apple Distinguished Educator. Speaking of, I should mention that I am completely grateful to Terry for his constant support and inspiration; he is crucial to all that goes on here.

I also teach Music Theory & Composition. That class takes place in a lab that I actually had the privilege of helping to design. It has 23 stations with Korg Control 49 keyboards. It’s meant to truly be a multimedia studio – you can record audio or video, and do both if you choose. We also have an actual recording studio that’s attached to it, so I’ll have students going in there during the middle of the class while I’m teaching. The way we have it set up, I can still see into that room and monitor what’s going on. It’s a very teacher-friendly workspace. I monitor all of the computers through Apple’s Remote Desktop.

We use a GEC controller for communication back and forth between the students, and we have a high-def television in the room for group demonstrations. It’s a great place.

The lab has grown so much so that we had to take Ed Schaefer, one of the middle school band directors, out of the middle school and he’s up here teaching music composition and technology courses for seven periods each day: Music Theory I, II, and III, and now we have an IB Music Theory class, as well.

“What these tools do is make it efficient time spent, and the result is exponential. The students are able to get more done in less time.”

SBO: In simple terms, what do these technological resources provide your students?

TS: Basically, you’ve got a compositional suite so that anyone who’s interested in composition – whether they’re in our performance program or not – now has a conduit through which they can come in here and ex26 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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press themselves. It’s grown tremendously. The state of New York has an electronic music festival, and I’ve had a winner there every year since 1995, or whenever the first one was. Last year, we had eight winners: four honorable mentions, and four students who had their music played up at the New York state music education conference. That’s how much it’s grown, and the caliber of the students now, as a result of building the music technology side of it, is such that these kids are composing pieces that are pretty sophisticated. All of the soundtracks on our podcasts are backed by student compositions.

maintain our own recording library. I’m using Logic Pro to record our group, and we also use it in our performances.

I have a laptop in the ensemble, and we use an Apogee Duet interface that goes into a PA system at the back of the room, and we use this in our performances, as well as in our rehearsal space.

A lot of this is based on a concept that was taught to me by a composer named Stephen Melillo. He attends a lot of state festivals, and his music is incredible. It appeals to students. He does a lot of “good versus evil” stuff; it’s romantic and very cinematic. His basic concept is that by providing an electronic source in the en-

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SBO: And how about in the more traditional music performance ensembles?

TS: In the Wind Ensemble, we use technology immensely.

We use it in every lesson group, every day.

SBO: Do your rehearsals differ from the typical bandroom set up?

TS: We have a SmartBoard with a projector at the front of the room, and it is attached to an iMac. On the iMac, the software that we are using every day is SmartMusic [www.smartmusic.com] by the company MakeMusic. I would put that at the head of the list.

It’s an incredible tool, and every one of my students has a copy of SmartMusic at home.

We utilize the iTunes application for our database of songs, to demonstrate concepts and

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Bay Shore High School At a Glance Location: 155 3rd Avenue, Bay Shore, N.Y. On the Web: www.bayshore.k12.ny.us Number of Students: 1,800 Students in Music Program: 500 Students in Music Tech Classes: 110

Notable Awards & Distinctions 2009 NYSAAE Board Recognition Award for support of the arts: Bay Shore Board of Education 2008 NYSAAE Superintendent Recognition Award: Superintendent, Dr. Evelyn Holman Grammy Signature School/Finalist: Bay Shore High School –1999, 2001, 2009, 2010 Best 100 Communities for Music Education: Bay Shore – 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009 Apple Distinguished Educators: Director of Cultural Arts, Terry Nigrelli Bay Shore High School Band Director, Ted Scalzo

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semble – mainly a pad base – you now have that subsonic structure that you would have in a symphony orchestra.

And by providing a fixed pitch, now you have the kids able to tune on top of that.

SBO: This is an accompaniment?

TS: Right, the students play along with it. It’s part of the ensemble, both in rehearsals and concerts. On our Web site, I have a demonstration of us playing a piece that Steve wrote for my group called “The Universe Below.”

What was cool is that he came here expecting to write a piece for us, but when he saw how we were utilizing technology, he changed his whole spin on it and wrote it for a laptop, all kinds of electronic sources, pre-recorded sources, and it turned out to be a really interesting work for us. It became another springboard in terms of where we’ve gone with the ensemble and with technology.

SBO: Are your students generally prepared for all of these tech-infused angles to the music program?

TS: Here’s how I get them ready. Let’s say a student wants to be in wind ensemble, auditions, and is accepted into the program. Then, like all new wind ensemble students, he or she will have to take an introduction to wind ensemble class that meets once a week for 5 weeks in our summer music program. In that summer music program, I really introduce them to tone quality and intonation

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training. I do it through SmartMusic and a system called Intonation Trainer by Steven Colley. I’ll be honest: the students don’t say, “Wow, this is a lot of fun!” But it gets their ears fine-tuned to what I’m going to expect them to do the following fall. Then, when they come in and get going, they are ready.

SBO: And as far as such a tech-heavy influence in the music itself, that isn’t a hard sell?

TS: Not at all. The students are having a ball. I’m getting more practice time out of my students with SmartMusic than I’ve had at any point in my entire career.

I don’t own any stock in the company and I don’t work for them, but I can’t say enough good things about that program. There are definitely a few areas that could be improved in the product,

for example the intonation acceptance is a little too forgiving, but it’s a great tool because it’s not just the accompaniment; there’s exercises in there, method books that we all use in our teaching, simple folk songs that kids can work on, things that are easy to play, but that you really have to work at to make it sound beautiful. We also use it for recording ourselves and playing it back. Just that simple act is changing the way that the ensemble sounds and the music it produces.

I’m doing my most difficult music one concert earlier than I used to be able to. For example, I’m able to do level VI music at the winter concert, and I wasn’t able to do that before.

SBO: It’s a sophisticated tool, no doubt. For band directors interested in implementing technology into their classes and ensembles, where would you recommend they start?

TS: The minimum tools that every band director in America, at least at the high school level, should have are a computer at the front of the rehearsal space and some kind of playback system, even if you only use it for the simple idea of modeling. If you get a Mac, and those come with GarageBand, then you can record your group. I’m able to do it instantly in our rehearsals because I have these tablets so that the kids can interface with the SmartBoard.

What I do is pick three kids and train them: one of them handles Logic; one of them handles the Intonation Trainer;

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and one of them handles the SmartMusic. I have hand signals, so I could be conducting or playing along and I might point to a student, who will then initiate Logic to start recording us.

Then Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll cut the band off and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll listen to it, so we can hear how sharp one group of instruments might be on a particular part, for example. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s instant feedback where the students can say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh, I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t aware of that. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s see if we can fix it this time.â&#x20AC;?

A simple set-up would be at least some kind of computer and playback system. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need the best sequencing program to get started. I will say that the reason I use Logic in our performances is that I have total control over how that sound comes out in the concert hall. It is software with which we can go in and tweak the settings to fit the particular piece or to fit the particular hall weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s similar to playing at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, which is that new concert hall where panels in the wall structure and the shape of the hall literally change and shift configuration based on whichever pieces are being played. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all computerized. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing the same kind of thing using a laptop and Logic. For example, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing a piece by Mark Camphouse called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Watchman, Tell us of the Night,â&#x20AC;? and it has a piano part in it that needs to have a little bit of a darker sound to it; it needs to sound like a Bosendorfer. So we take the Bosendorfer piano sound that is in Logic Pro, EQ it and mess around with the sound settings, which is all very easy to do on the fly, until we get the exact sound that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking for (that matches the performance space we are in). The Apogee Duet interface is the only thing Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been able to use that gives me absolutely no hiss. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a firewire interface that comes right off the laptop.

The other reason why a computer is a great tool is because of the rich resource of YouTube. I make references to YouTube at least a few times a week.

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TS: Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll give you an example. The jazz band is doing a Count Basie chart.

I tell the guitar player that he needs to play more like Freddy Green. I play the recording for him, and he hears it and is emulating it pretty well. Then I find on YouTube that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actually a video of the performance and the camera zooms in on Freddy Green! When I show that to my student guitar player, the switch flips, and he gets it totally.

I could have been verbalizing how the part should be played for weeks; instead, I was able to show it to him in an instant.

SBO: How about your own performances â&#x20AC;&#x201C; do you put those up on YouTube or MySpace?

$IOL1?;MIHM 2IOLM =IG Y

TS: We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do that because of copyright issues. If we put that stuff

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up, we’re legally supposed to get license to do so. It’s possible to do, but it’s time consuming and, to be frank, I have not pursued it.

the level of the kids’ performances rising higher and higher. I don’t have a lot of kids studying privately. We have a diverse community, and a healthy com-

“I’m not really training kids to go out and be professional musicians; I’m just training them to be better musicians and to understand how the musical world really works.”

I do, however, make the recordings of our performances available for students to evaluate.

SBO: What gives you the most satisfaction working with all of these cutting edge processes and tools?

TS: I would say just the students’

interaction with it. I’m getting a much more concentrated, interested desire from them to be better at the music and the performance. The kids I have are doing everything in the school. They physically don’t have time to really put in hours and hours of practice. What these tools do is make it efficient time spent, and the result is exponential.

The students are able to get more done in less time, and that to me is the most exciting part of the whole thing right now.

SBO: Where do you think all of this might go? Is there a limit to how much you can do with these tools?

TS: [laughs] No, there’s no limit. I honestly think that the more this kind of thing is used, you’re just going to see

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munity, with some of the poorest kids and some of the richest, but everyone has a great opportunity to learn with the technology we use in our arts and media courses.

SBO: Some people might say that there’s no substitute for putting in the hours learning scales, fingerings, and other basic musical elements.

Are there downsides to the shortcuts to learning music through the use of hi-tech tools?

TS: I absolutely agree that the more

time in your face, the better you’re going to be. The more time you spend playing, the better you are going to be.

But I’m not really training kids to go out and be professional musicians; I’m just training them to be better musicians and to understand how the musical world really works. I want to provide them with enough of a background so that when they do have the opportunity to hear the New York Philharmonic and they get that chill up their spine, they can say, “Wow, I understand what’s going on there.”

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SBOCommentary: End-of-Year Tips

End of the School Year Survival Tips

BY PAUL R. SCHILF, PH.D. s daylight grows longer in April and May, so often the endurance level of young directors

A

begins to shrink. This however, is not the case with our ensemble members. In fact, we often witness an energy surge and, at times, discipline issues arise. Students have their focus on summertime activities and their thoughts of cooperative music making are waning.

With increased distractions, it becomes necessary for the instrumental music educator to redirect attention and keep the student’s focus to make it through the last performances of the year with as much energy and enthusiasm as they had during the first day of rehearsal in the fall. While this list is not exhaustive, these following four distinct positive steps serve as assistance for the director who may need a boost at the end of a long school year.

If It Wasn’t Done in September, Don’t Try It Now All too often, teachers tend to forget what got them this far into the school year. The music that has been programmed, the consistency of classroom policies and procedures has helped the most veteran instructors make it through the toughest of times. However, as the weather gets nicer, somehow the daily rules and procedures often change. The best thing that can happen in a quality music program is consistency. Not only consistency from student to student and day to day, but from ensemble to ensemble and month to month. Furthermore, coordinate with departmental 32 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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and school-wide colleagues; be consistent from educator to educator. By all means, coordinate with other members of your department. Understand their needs for consistency, too: it’s always better to work with people than against them. The end of the year should be

The old adage of “talking less and playing more” may never be truer than at the end of the year. no different in terms of the procedures that have produced the quality that you have achieved to this point in the school year.

Above all, work with the administration to follow through on detailed procedures, discipline practices, and communication difficulties. They, too, want the highest quality educational experiences for the students until the very last moment of the year. The administration may be your biggest and most assertive ally when challenges may arise toward the end of the school year.

Irrelevant Information Creates Apathy Keep both your and the students’ eyes focused on the tasks at hand. There is really no need to provide them information and music that may not be needed during the last month of the year.

Frequently, problems arise when summer plans are discussed, even if those plans are musical in nature. The old adage of “talking less and playing more” may never be truer than at the end of the year.

Typical students have a need to live in the now. They strive for instantaneous gratification and tend not to plan too far ahead. If we give students more information than they need for the moment, we directors are actually providing a distraction. These types of distractions often create apathy for the tasks at hand.

While we may need to keep our students informed on certain relevant points all year long, don’t make the end of the year the information dumping time. Too much information about summer camps, next year’s marching show, travel plans, and so on just gives them

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reasons to not focus on what you want to accomplish in your spring concert.

It might fit into your lesson plans to have several days of sight reading, but if you choose to do this, have the parts organized in advance. Potentially have a second set of folders just for sight reading. Have these organized on the stands when the band arrives for class. Focused and on-task rehearsals will maintain the quality that has been produced thus far into the year.

Quality Music Initiates Quality and Sustains Energy It’s never the focus of a director to rehearse or perform bad or weak music.

However, the chances of this happening at the end of the year always seem to be greater than at the opening of the school year. Whether it’s because we want to program “fun” music or “pops” music or just want to let our hair down, the observed tendency in many schools is to

program fewer, if not easier and lower quality, musical selections. The converse of these programming choices needs to be the norm, especially at the end of the academic year.

Solid, quality, challenging music brought us to this point in the school year.

It should go without explanation that the same will carry us through the final weeks of the school year. Students want a musical challenge. In most cases, that is why they aspire to be in our ensembles.

Directors who program, rehearse, and perform quality literature year round often have fewer discipline concerns at the end of the school year. The key therefore is to find appropriate material for the last weeks of the year’s end.

Your Greatest Allies The phrase, “there is strength in numbers,” may never be more important to a young director than in the spring of their first few years of teaching. Students who have been the mainstays of your program up to the end of the year want

and need the responsibility of assisting you with the attitude of the whole ensemble. Many times, the students who have been in the program longer than the first year teacher have a well-established allegiance to the program and want quality and success right up to the last note of the last concert. It is the task of the younger director to lean on each and every one of these student leaders.

Without relinquishing your leadership on and off the podium, work toward securing the student leadership allies that exist and attempt to gain the support of new senior-membership leaders.

However, always keep in mind that you can be friendly toward the students, but you can’t be their friends. Becoming too chummy with your students can adversely affect the positive leadership relationships that you have worked to cultivate.

Especially at the end of the year, student leadership can be a tremendous asset to your program.

Have a Great End of the School Year!

The end of the school year frequently provides even more new and unique challenges for the young director than the veteran. Still, it is the attitude of the musical leader that determines the successes and or failures of the last months of the school year. Positive and proactive approaches on the above points can assist any director in completing a successful year to the last cutoff of the last note of the last selection of the year.

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SBOSurvey: Recruitment & Retention

The Continuous Battle

ne could examine all of the varied components that

O

successful school music programs share and come up with a broad list that might range from instruments to community support; but one must not overlook the

most fundamental element of all â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the kids. No music program will succeed without student interest. In schools big and small, urban and rural, and across all other demographics, music programs must appeal to, and be accessible to, the general student population. Often, this means that music faculty must make a concerted effort to raise awareness of their programs by visiting feeder schools, scheduling student performances in public places, and doing a host of other activities simply to ensure that incoming students are aware of the great possibilities that exist in the band room.

Of course, as reader Margaret Delligatti of Northwood Junior High School in Highland Park, Ill. notes, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Getting the kids there is only half the battle. Keeping them is the other [half of the battle].â&#x20AC;?

Once the instrumental music director has achieved the task of filling up his or her band room with a host of eager students, he or she must then create an atmosphere that will keep them wanting to be there. Up against formidable challenges like scheduling, core curriculum requirements, and financial concerns, band and orchestra directors must constantly keep both recruitment of new and retention of current students in mind. This latest SBO survey will hopefully shed some light on how band and orchestra directors around the country are faring in this continuous battle.

36 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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Relative to last year, how many students are in your music program?

We have more students

If yes, which recruitment strategies have you found to be most successful?

Visiting feeder schools

32% We have fewer students

33% About the same

38% Community outreach/public concerts

24% Hyping up travel opportunities

35%

14% Other

12% Social networking media

7%

Do you actively recruit potential music students?

PTA involvement

5%

No

16%

Yes

84%

“There have been many issues with our feeder middle school – students constantly are pulled from ‘connections/ exploratory’ classes, creating a culture that these types of class are not important. This is our largest battle. We have also had three middle school directors in the past four years, hurting the consistency needed at our feeder. We have greatly increased our recruiting of 8th grade to attempt to battle these problems.”

Scott Stanton Rockdale County High School Conyers, Ga. “I stress to the potential beginning band students that they will have ‘bragging rights for the rest of your life’ for just trying band for a year. Making sure to talk directly to the kids – not just to the parents – helps me a great deal.

Parents tell me this seems to work well because meeting me takes away some of the fears of the unknown for the child who is already headed into such a new school environment.

Humor also helps a lot!”

Windy Fullagar Lake Norman Charter School Huntersville, N.C.

“Make individual connections with every music student.

Play good quality literature. Be positive!”

Bruce Weinberger Sierra High School Tollhouse, Calif..

“Communicate, communicate, communicate! We send a lot of information home to parents, in small, frequent bites. We have high school students talk to the 5th graders in their classrooms.”

Craig McKenzie Clyde High School Clyde, Ohio “Visit your feeder schools. Work with the students there.

Say hi to the students you see in the halls. Let them see that you are a person who cares about them and not some scary guy in the new school. Our school population has dropped by 40 percent, but the number of music students has remained about the same.”

John Mueller Incline Middle School Incline Village, Nev. “I take current band members to ‘visit’ with the potential incoming 9th graders. Have a mix of students from each grade level and different interests to show that it is possible to be involved multiple activities/areas of study at the high school level.”

Eric Anderson Keene High School Keene, N.H.

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When are you most active in recruiting for your program?

Spring

47% Summer

1%

“It is essential to the success and survival of all music programs these days to have as much advocacy on the part of the parents, students, and community as possible.”

James Iacketta Stillwater Central School Stillwater, N.Y. “’If you build it, they will come.’ If you have a quality product, students will flock to it. We all know the benefits of band and should be great advocates for our program, but that will not get the school’s best students to want to join the band. Slightly older peers and siblings are your best recruiters. They wouldn’t verbalize the benefits like we might, but they can tell what’s good for them!”

Skip Quinn White Station Middle School Memphis, Tenn.

Fall

15% Winter

5% All year long

32%

For high school teachers, which of the following most accurately describes your music program?

Most students stay in the music program for all 4 years Most students stay in the music program for 3 years Most students stay in the music program for 2 years Most students only stay in the music program for 1 year

Additional thoughts:

48% 32% 17% 3%

Do you have any advice for teachers who might be having a hard time retaining current students in their program?

“Keep trying to visit the elementary school. Perform at PTO or athletic events if you can. I have even had our Jazz Band perform at their Fall Carnival.”

Cindy C. Owens W.C. Friday Middle School Dallas, N.C. “Make yourself available to your feeder programs! The more the students feel comfortable around the high school director, the more apt they will be to pursue music in high school.

Larry Petersen Huron High School Huron, S.D. “Make the students part of the decision making process.

Students need to feel a degree of ownership of the program and its goals. Once the students feel that they are important in decision making, their level of commitment to the program will increase dramatically.”

John Combes Notre Dame High School Sherman Oaks, Calif.

“Your serious high school musicians might stay in music no matter who directs the group, but many kids are there because of who and what we are. I think the middle-of-theroad student signs up for ‘Mr. C’s class’ more than they sign up for ‘band.’”

Vince Caruso Bellevue High School Bellevue, Wash.

“Getting the kids there is only half the battle. Keeping them is the other. Kids who find success want to practice and will stay with the program. I try to go into the year knowing that all kids can learn. I make a promise to them to give them 100 percent if they promise to do the same.”

Margaret Delligatti Northwood Junior High Highland Park, Ill. “You reap what you sow! Put some sincere time and energy into this and you will be rewarded. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself and your program as if they were really yours to sell. If you don’t promote yourself, who will?”

Jay Allsbrook Bayside High School Virginia Beach, Va. “If you ever think you have it figured out, you will be proven wrong. You must constantly incorporate new ideas.

Each year, students have more activities to choose from and we must find ways to meet their needs.”

Keith Rudolph Penn High School Mishawaka, Ind.

38 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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A Revolutionary Method for Beginning Musicians Robert SHELDON

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Customize your method to fit your unique classroom DIRECTOR’S CHOICE EDITION

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SBO_39 39

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SBOTechnology: Tech Winners

Three Tech Winners for Music Ed ach January, manufacturers, publishers, and distributors

BY JOHN KUZMICH, JR.

E

in the music products industry come together in Anaheim, Calif. for the Winter NAMM Show, the largest music industry convention in the U.S.

Let’s take a look at three innovative music technology offer-

ings that were launched at the show this year. I rarely characterize a new product as “revolutionary,” but these three are worthy of that distinction: Sound Innovations for orchestra and band by Alfred Music Publishing, WhoTune, and Noteflight.

Dr. John Kuzmich Jr. is a veteran music educator, jazz educator and music technologist with more than 41 years of public school teaching experience. He is a TI:ME-certified training instructor and has a Ph.D. in comprehensive musicianship. As a freelance author, Dr. Kuzmich has more than 400 articles and five textbooks published. As a clinician, Dr. Kuzmich frequently participates in workshops throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia, and South America.

For more information, visit www.kuzmich.com.

Sound Innovations Sound Innovations has created a dream-come-true method for beginning concert band and string orchestra. This unique blend of time-tested strategies and technology offers a great foundation for a successful teaching and learning experience.

Beginning this spring, 2010, you can log onto alfred.com/soundinnovations and use the Internet-based, step-by-step program to build and preview a unique, customized curriculum. The Standard and Director’s Choice editions both allow users to customize the pedagogical approach, the music repertory, and the enrichment materials to fit different teaching styles and situations. You can change the starting concert pitch, the starting note values, start with pizzicato or arco, include note names in note heads and the number of pages on which they are included, select order of exactly which tunes you want to use in each book, and then you can add up to 32 pages of enrichment activities. Accompaniment recordings can also be customized to match selections. Each instrument-specific DVD contains master class lessons demonstrating key concepts by distinguished teachers/performers. And the lessons are relevant to material throughout the book, not just at the beginning.

Sound Innovations is organized into six levels and each exercise includes a specific goal, helping students focus on key concepts. The format is clear and uncluttered with each page structured to highlight essential concepts.

This book also includes an MP3 CD with instrument-specific recordings of every single line of music. Each tune contains a click track with the melody plus accompaniment or a play-along accompaniment-only. Also included is a Tempo Changer program in which a track can be sped up or slowed down to accommodate individual practice styles which is critical in any method book involv-

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ing home practice. Practice/assessment tool SmartMusic is also included and the first 100 lines of music (more than half of the music in Book 1) are available for free to SmartMusic users.

Music educators can customize and pre-order their books in advance. Standard Edition costs $8.99 and the Director’s choice edition offers a three-tier customization option: $8.99, $10.99, and $12.99, depending on the number of enrichment pages added and tunes selected. Books are printed, bound and shipped directly to the school. Visit www.alfred.com to view sample books, an introductory video and sound/video clips.

Kimberly Syvertsen directs the Lower School Violin Program at the Dwight-Englewood School, a college preparatory day school in Englewood, N.J. She is responsible for educating students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade with a 30-minute private lesson and 45-minute group class each week based in the Suzuki Method and an emphasis on developing note-reading and ensemble skills.

Kimberly explains, “There is a compelling challenge assembling a curriculum for this program. In the past two years, I’ve lovingly and painstakingly handwritten color-coordinated rotenote materials and exercises for the

students. This is neither cost-effective, as it requires color copies to be made at school, nor time-effective.

When I encountered Sound Innovations, I was immediately struck by how it would suit the diverse needs and vision of our program. The CD and DVD accompanying materials have been a delight for the students as well as for the parents! As a sight-andsound generation, these young musicians flourish when the visual and aural learning modalities are so carefully incorporated into their education. For their parents it’s an opportunity to grasp materials learned at school and support the at-home practice routine more effectively.”

WhoTune WhoTune [www.WhoTune.com] is a free Web-based music community designed from the ground up to support music makers, educators, and music businesses offering peers discussion, access to teachers, trends, radio stations, and the Jam Cam-Live performance platform.

This is great for sharing music, videos, and pictures. Its fast distribution platform lets you share any MIDI or .MP3 file for listening, analyz-

ing or practicing concert and festival recordings, for example. Students can video themselves and share clips with you for assessment. The Website is safe and easy for registration since students give very little identify information.

They can register with just an e-mail address, leave their age as ‘unspecified’ and only include their city/state for an address. WhoTune is active on the site and monitors behavior. They have the ability to immediately delete profiles at the first sight of trouble. Fortunately, this has been required as they build a true feeling of community. WhoTune has also asked their code writers to give students the option to make their profiles only visible to people to whom they give a special password, and this would supply another level of security.

WhoTune provides powerful tools for unique interaction including jam cam, on-line lessons, special events or presentations, interactive group activity and on-line concerts for family and friends. It’s designed for beginners, and advanced musicians alike. Check

out my profile at: www.whotune.com/ jkuzmich for examples of the powerful multimedia attributes that can be utilized by educators with videos lectures and concerts as well as photos and play-along recordings along with their music scores and much more.

WhoTune is inviting teachers to come onboard and share their experiences/ideas with the site’s founders so the experience can be refined even more. Educators can also conduct “live” classes for up to 150 students using Jam Cam and even record the lecture or do a “live” concert originat42 School Band and Orchestra, April 2010

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JazzPlayer.com Looking for more online musical excitement?

Another free social networking Web site that caters to musicians and educators is www.jazzplayer.com, a site where teachers can actively promote their musical endeavors far beyond the portals of their computer. The following are some of the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s areas of emphasis: posting music, photos and videos on individual profile pages as well as participating in site forums, blogs, CD showcases and more. Once you activate your free account, you will get: â&#x20AC;˘ A personalized â&#x20AC;&#x153;Profileâ&#x20AC;? page where you may tell the world about yourself and upload photos. â&#x20AC;˘ Quick links to all your friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; profiles. â&#x20AC;˘ An online journal that has the option of being shared with friends or kept private. â&#x20AC;˘ Personal bookmarks that can be shared with others. â&#x20AC;˘ Public and private message boards. â&#x20AC;˘ A personalized central message board to follow conversations across the network. â&#x20AC;˘ A tribute section â&#x20AC;&#x201C; let your friends â&#x20AC;&#x153;toot your hornâ&#x20AC;?! â&#x20AC;˘ Easy search functionality to quickly find people with similar interests or backgrounds. â&#x20AC;˘ Fun ways to easily make new friends and meet new people around the world. â&#x20AC;˘ And much more!

Sharing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music is a natural extension of being a musician. And as educators, we can never do too much promotion for our students and our music program! ing from the school. Performances can be posted to a WhoTune.Com account for students, parents, friends and administrators to peruse 24/7.

Noteflight Noteflight [www.noteflight.com] is an online notation program that allows teachers and students of all skill levels to create and collaborate on compositions. It is a great vehicle for implementing national music standards and bringing composers into the online world. The free, full-feature notation/composition program, called Notefight Score Editor, is easy to use and offers the first social networking and community classroom for teachers and students to seamlessly create and share music and with the full security of a classroom setting.

Noteflightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s online notation software has powerful applications for editing, displaying and playing back music notation in a standard Web browser on Mac, Windows or Linux, that uses Adobe Flash Player. It is integrated in a digital library of music scores that

anyone can publish, link to, or embed.

Music can be easily created whenever inspiration strikes and immediately shared with other people. Since its debut in 2008, Noteflight has grown to over 61,000 users in 131 different countries. It is a vibrant Web-based community of composers, arrangers, and music enthusiasts creating and exploring diverse genres while connecting with each other. Every score has a unique Web page â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not Web site â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where it is shared. Yes, you can export the compositions as MIDI or Music XML or embed them on your own Web page or blog. Templates are provided for creating online musical exercises, assignments, and exams. It integrates with Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Moodle, and Haiku.

The paid subscription edition, Noteflight Learning Edition, is especially designed for teachers and students. Students can access and work with assigned teaching materials at any computer, and all compositions are saved. Whenever you create an assignment, each student automatically

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receives a copy of the assignment to work on. Later you can review individual studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work and provide feedback online, directly in a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s document. You can easily chart a studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s progress by looking at previously saved versions.

Noteflight Learning Edition (which just upgraded as Noteflight Crescendo) offers 40+ professional recorded wavetable virtual instruments, guitar tablature and a private, secure space for everything created by you and your students. This communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s users can freely share music with each other for group composition activities or for informal music making.

Sandi MacLeod, director of the prestigious Vermont MIDI Project reports, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Students can compose anytime they have access to the Internet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; home, school, the public library, or at a friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. A student only shares those pieces they wish with their teacher or friends. And a student can develop a portfolio of their work to demonstrate their progress.â&#x20AC;?

Some other examples of Noteflight Learning Edition that Sandi lauds include: â&#x20AC;˘ Chorus members in a high school class have a theory-based course online that begins with simple note identification and ends with creating a canon. â&#x20AC;˘ Beginning band students in 5th grade can create compositions with the five notes they have learned to play. Throughout the year, they create additional pieces as they broaden their ability. â&#x20AC;˘ High school chorus students have a class page within NLE that includes multiple video recordings of a selection they will sing. â&#x20AC;˘ Five third graders each developed compositions to provide background for a classroom PowerPoint project supporting an award-winning childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book.

No longer limited to time and place restrictions, students are thriving with the help of new music education opportunities. And best of all, these three tools Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve mentioned are either free or available for as little as $8.99.

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Superscope’s PSD410 and PSD450 400 Series of professional music practice and digital recording systems are portable SD Card and HDD audio recorders that can record MP3 files or WAV files using 16 or 24 bit. The USB interface allows for easy transfer of files to a computer or onto a USB storage device. The PSD410 is a SD Card recorder and the PSD450 features a 40GB hard drive and a CD burner for creating audio CDs and custom play lists. Both models are portable and can be battery operated.

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Wiggles N’ Tunes musical instrument lollipop shapes include violins, violas, cellos, trumpets, saxophone, harps, drum, accordions, guitars, and musical eighth notes. All lollipops are available in a multitude of flavors and a variety of sizes. Wiggles N’ Tunes also offers various advertising specialties such as imprinted egg shakers and maracas.

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