Klarinet Archive - Posting 000531.txt from 1997/10

From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
Subj: Music education in MI.
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 11:00:06 -0400

In my neck of the wood (Northville, MI school district)
music starts in 6th grade, 5 days a week, no "group" or
private lessons - but the bands at the middle school are
split into basically woodwind and brass sections during
most of the school year. The sections play and practice
together every day, and only a couple of weeks before
a concert do both sections practice together (the percussion
section is split between both groups).

In high school, there is no orchestra. Marching band is
required if you're in symphonic band. Again, no group
or private lessons - we're all expected to provide lessons
for our children out of our own pocket if we want our
children to really progress in music.

The high scholl has an excellent jazz band program for
after school, but no clarinets in it (I tried to get the
director to change his mind ... to no avail).

I talked last week to the director, Mike Rumbell, about
whether or not they'll ever have an orchestra. He doesn't
think so - he tried before, but in his opinion it takes
a good 10 years or so to build a good high school orchestra
program, and no one wants to stick around (or can commit to
sticking around) for that long.

There are other school districts in Michigan which run the
music department completely differently. There is no state
mandate or special support for music in the pre-college
schools AFAIK.
--
Mark Charette, MIKA Systems, Inc., charette@-----.com
">>As far as I can tell, no."
">Fortunately, this is not correct."
"Proving once again that ... the best way to extract useful infor-
mation is to post wrong information." - Roger Glover, F90 mail list