Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The thing is, you  don't have really high expectations.  After all, what can kids accomplish in only five days?  But then the lights dim in the auditorium and come up on the stage and the flute ensemble starts playing a scherzo.  Your eyes snap to the stage -- are these really kids?  The quality of the playing, the ensemble and music -- this is really good!  And the rest of last Friday's 2006 Band Camp Concert didn't disappoint.


This is the fifth year Middle School band teacher Gail Hughes has offered summer Band Camp through the Lansing Recreation Department.  Students about to enter 5th through 7th grade meet from 9am to 4pm, five days in a row.  The day starts with about an hour in the full band, then kids break into groups to work on band music, technique and get questions answered.  Then they do musical activities like worksheets on symbols, games with musical terms, note naming and they go outside to do non-musical things to take a break.  Next they work in groups and band again before lunch.  After lunch they swim in the pool before coming back and doing it all again.


"The biggest thing that I think your kids have gained is confidence," Hughes told the parents in the Friday concert audience.  "Monday morning when they started working nobody spoke, nobody touched their instruments unless I said, 'Play now.'  They were all quiet and shy.  Yet by Wednesday they'd come in start warming up and playing their songs.    They had the confidence to do that.  They felt good about what they could play, and that's the biggest thing, to have the confidence to tackle it."


The kids work hard and play hard.   Hughes says each kid made huge progress every day.  "You wonder, because they're so tired at the end of the day, if they'll really come back the next day.  They come back rested and they're ready to work hard and do it all again."

And the results are remarkable.  In Friday's concerts individual ensembles of flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets and brass played eleven different pieces ranging from a scherzo and a fanfare to the theme music from 'The Flintstones.'  The full band played an equal variety including O'Reilly's 'Crater Lake Overture,' Sueta's 'Rockin' Easy,' and Ployhar's 'Clarinets on the Run'.


"None of this camp, any time, any place, any year, would be possible without the fabulous counselors that worked for me," Hughes told the parents.  "They crawled home at night.  Without them this camp would not exists.  All their energy is passed on to the kids." 

Counselors included Tab Hughes teaching flute, Colleen Trowbridge and assistant MC Barrett on clarinet, Matt Jones on Saxophone, Alejandro Brenard on Trumpet, Jenna Topper with assistant Luke Kutler on the Low Bass and Hughes teaching drums.  Huges found her counselors among former students and  friends of students.  "They are all musically oriented, of course," she says.  "Tabitha is already a teacher in Horseheads -- she teaches beginning band there.  And Alejandro is going to be a senior at Ithaca College in music education.  He's been a counselor all five years."


The most remarkable thing about the camp is how quickly kids learn, and how much they accomplish together in such a short time.  "It's amazing," Hughes says.  "All the parents should come for a concert on Monday morning and then come back Friday afternoon to truly appreciate it.  Some of the younger kids came to me and said, 'I was feeling really lost.  What should I do?'  We had no music, nobody played together before.  'I said hang in there and you'll get it.'  And by the end of the second day several of these fifth grade students came to me and said, 'You know what, you were right!  I can play a lot more than I did before in one day.'"


The proof is in the culminating concert.  The quality of the playing is what you might expect of older, more accomplished musicians.  "What they can accomplish when they set their minds to it, and they're doing it with their friends, it's just amazing," Hughes says.  She adds that the non-musical activities help relax the kids so that they play better together.  "They get comfortable playing in their small groups, so when they come back to the large group they're much more confident.  And the work with their counselors."

Hughes says the most important accomplishment for the week is that the kids have fun making music together.  "They realize that they work hard, but the end result is amazing."  She says she most enjoyed watching them improve over one day, then doing it again.

----
v2i27