Klarinet Archive - Posting 000136.txt from 2004/03
From: Gary Van Cott <gary@------.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Libby Larsen Interview
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 12:58:19 -0500
It is interesting, because you have raised several points I have been
thinking about recently. My knowledge of what is going on currently is
primarily based on being a parent of one former high school clarinetist and
current high school vocalist.
>Music is taught primarily in ensembles, which ignores forms that are
done by only one or a few people. <
I think that this is truer than it should be. Most schools do very little
playing in small groups. I have seen a string quartet at my kids' school
(a magnet school which includes performing arts). I have never seen a
woodwind group of any kind. Of course time is a major problem. I heard last
night that their jazz band won first place in a competition with 170 other
schools. When do they have time for anything else?
These kids also have sectionals with specialists on their
instruments. However, I never got the impression from my son that they got
much out of them. I think it is worse on the vocal side. The kids are
less likely to take private lessons and the teachers don't spend much time
on technique.
My son did have the opportunity to play in a pit orchestra for Hello Dolly,
which I think was the only significant departure from the normal band
routine.
My daughter has had much more variety as a vocalist. In additional to her
regular choir routine, she has appeared in three musicals, sung solos at
two pop concerts, and sung with a smaller ensemble at the solo and ensemble
festival. She has told me that four of the boys have formed an absolutely
killer barbershop quartet which they are going to enter in what I presume
is the regular adult barber shop quartet competition. (They did this for
the festival which must have floored the judge, but apparently he really
liked it.)
>School ensembles don't play music. They practice only a few pieces by
rote, to do well in contests.<
I think this is almost entirely up to the director and what their
priorities are. In my high school band in the 1960s (Arcadia HS in
Southern California) we did a fair amount of site reading throughout the
year. I have some friends who went to high school near the Bay Area
(California) in the 1970s and the way them tell it, their director was
almost entirely fixated on marching band with little room for anything
else. My son's band did some sight reading but not as much as they might
have considering they had 80 minutes of band every day.
Gary
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