American Classical Music

As a musician whose beginnings were in Rock music and whose formal education is in Jazz... Let me restate that... As a musician whose background is in American Classical Music, I find it troubling how we balance the repertoire and music styles we offer in most of our school music programs. From my experience, it seems that almost every high school with a decent sized music program has a choir, wind ensemble of sorts, and maybe an orchestra at the core of the program. When I say core, I mean these are the classes that meet most often, probably on a daily basis or at least every other day. In addition, there is probably a Jazz Big Band (We're getting there... that music is only 80 years old...) that meets only once a week. Rock and Blues music are no where in site... If we're lucky maybe there is a class that teaches Modern Jazz (Practically new music, at only 70 years old! Wow!) In a large program, I would like to think that these courses do exist, as well as music technology courses, but they probably meet for a marking period, or semester at best.

The Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, and Choir groups most often put together concerts that feature 1 to 2 pieces in the classical music tradition, and maybe one contemporary piece (that the students will probably enjoy the most of all, and maybe even learn the most from and go away inspired). Yes, I am making generalizations about these programs, but I have seen what I'm describing in many schools in my area.

I think it is important for music programs to offer more courses in American Classical music. Or, perhaps these styles should be implemented into the already existing ensembles in our schools. With that said, I think it is important for music educators to be aware of the significance of Jazz and Blues and have a reasonable amount of training in the history and authentic performance of those musics. However, I don't think all music educators should necessarily be "experts" in Jazz... First of all, that would make people like me less valuable! And also, it'd probably lead to overall mediocrity for those educators who'd be better off focusing 85-90% of their efforts on their speciality.

Regarding repertoire, which is a big can of worms, I don't even want to try to start naming specific pieces that students should be learning. However, no student should graduate from a high school music program without having played something by Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock, etc. (I will lose sleep over all the people I am leaving out of this very short list). But in addition to having played that music, the students should have some basic understanding of the significance of those artists, as well as artists like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and The Beatles. If we taught with these ideas in mind, we'd be producing music students who have an understanding of the impact of music on politics, civil rights, and our culture for example. It sounds like these students would therefore be more well-rounded, culturally-aware individuals... And isn't that the point?