Building an audience in school music programs

I recently found myself at a fantastic percussion ensemble concert at WCSU. The group featured about 20 percussionist and two guest artists - Legendary vibist Dave Samuels, and Grammy-Winning drummer Joe McCarthy. As an alumnus of this ensemble, I gladly attended. In total, it seemed that there were about 60 people in attendance - mostly family, faculty, and friends of the musicians performing. It's a shame though, that there aren't just a few more people from around that campus who check out those events. Especially considering the level of talent represented on stage.

This weekend, April 25-27th, WCSU will host a Jazz Festival featuring John Scofield and Wallace Roney. The concerts will be well attended, but I would imagine there will be single digit representation of student body outside of the music/arts department. As an alumnus of the jazz department, I can recall the things that helped make this festival a huge success and consider how that might apply to my own concerts and festivals in the future. 

First, the Jazz students are heavily involved in the planning and promotion. In 2004 we drove around to assigned streets with flyers and tacks. I'm sure that still goes on, but I guarantee a great deal of promotion happens through social media as well. All of the university student jazz groups perform, and high schools and middle schools from all over CT participate in the festival. Naturally, this builds the audience and creates a connection with the University. I am bringing my group this year (our 3rd year going) and I plan on doing so for as long as I am teaching. It's a fantastic tradition, which brings me to some other thoughts on building an audience for my own program.

Luckily, I joined programs that already had established concerts and events with a great built in audience. The chair of the fine arts program has worked hard to keep these events a tradition. The Winter and Spring Jazz Band concerts happen at the same time every year - Fat Tuesday, and the second Friday in May. This consistency is important not only for reducing potential scheduling conflicts, but so people know about these events well in advance. The May Jazz concert features a selection of hors d'oeuvres presented by the school's culinary program. That collaboration immediately builds the audience. Not only do we have families of Jazz Band students, but parents and friends who want to sample the food made by the young chefs. 

I am now working on creating a new tradition for this same program - participation in a Jazz Festival, which I had the pleasure of co-creating along with the folks at Infinity Hall. Last year's festival was on May 19th and featured 2 bands. This year, we have 6 bands performing on June 2nd. I'm hoping for a great turnout - Perhaps you can join Northwestern Regional 7 at the 4:00 PM Set! I have considered some things that I think will contribute to the success of this event and this tradition... First, the date needs to be consistent - So it does not conflict with the busy school calendar, and can gain a following. Also, since the main promotion is by our students, it is vitally important that they get excited and see the benefit of this festival. So far it has been the amazing opportunity to play in that beautiful room, but hopefully in the future it will include more collaboration with other schools, guest artist performances, and clinics. Ultimately, if I can't get the students as excited as I am - we'll have an issue filling the room. 

The first thing I do is buy 4 tickets for the event. Not only does it support the group, but it puts my money where my mouth is. I tell the students, I just bought four tickets - my family will be there. Will yours!? In addition, I send email blasts and drown the Facebook feed in direct links to ticketing. I am happy to do this, as the students benefit more from my leading by example. I'm not going to do well getting them to promote and sell tickets if I can't even do it on my own. 

I hope to continue to have great luck with attendance at the regularly-scheduled concerts while creating new traditions. Ultimately, I need to make sure we continue to have an audience for our events so the students can feel like all of their hard work and efforts really paid off. They deserve the opportunity to play for a receptive audience and I'll continue to do my best to see that happen. 

For those of you reading - What kinds of traditions do you have at your schools? What are your most well-attended concerts and from whom do you see the most support? Do your administrators and colleagues attend? Your feedback is appreciated! 

Building the Program

I recently watched the documentary Chops about a killer high school Jazz Band that participates in the Essentially Ellington competition at Lincoln Center. While the majority of the footage  takes place in the months leading up to the competition and the competition itself, the first 20 minutes or so have footage from a few years before, following one student as he prepares for the high school ensemble. To me, this was the most valuable and eye-opening in regard to creating a killer music program.

At the opening of the film, a young saxophone student is given a great opportunity to play with a group of students who were older than him. The teacher made an exception to let him in the ensemble, because of how serious he was with music. That teacher took a risk and provided an amazing opportunity to that young student. That single decision was probably the biggest confidence boost and motivator for that musician's early career. Unfortunately, I have heard of many situations where the opposite happens, and one decision can ruin a young musician's desire to perform. Ultimately, in our efforts to build our programs and promote excellence, we as educators need to take risks and provide positive experiences for our students early on.

Another big motivator, and something that can help build a program is successful upper-level groups. This could be the top ensemble at the high school. In my case, the motivator was being able to be a selected percussionist to perform with all of the district bands at our annual big band bash. This is something I knew about in 4th grade and worked toward achieving as an upper-classroom a young lifetime later! The young saxophone student at the beginning of Chops knew what his high school jazz band was about, and he was working toward it years in advance! It's important to recognize that great high school ensembles really don't start in high school.

Most importantly, we need to provide exciting opportunities for our students. They don't have to be super expensive, or life-changing - but they definitely effect our students deeply. In Chops, the opportunity is the Essentially Ellington Competition. The students work as a team and motivate each other to be the best. The senior drummer Jamison Ross played a major role in motivating and inspiring the group. The teacher can't do this alone, and upperclassman are often a big help. This student wasn't your average high school musician - in 2012 he was named winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition.

We can't all have award-winning groups who take home trophies from national competitions, but that doesn't mean that we can't build our programs to inspire the love of musical performance and a fine appreciation of the art form. In my small program, I hope to build on traditions and cater to both the absolute beginner and experienced performer.

Music Copyright Lesson

Last week I presented a lesson on music copyright to my classmates at UB. I also gave myself the opportunity to teach this lesson to my Jazz Band students at school the same day. I think overall, they both went about the same way. There were some good moments and outcomes but it was basically uninteresting and definitely not my best work.

My first thought when I was assigned the topic was, "are you kidding? I don't even know anything about copyright... And, how am I going to make that a hands-on, engaging learning experience?" First of all, I knew more than enough about copyright to teach a basic lesson, and I don't think I stretched enough creatively to make the lesson engaging.

For the future, I don't think my objective(s) would change (students have an understanding of what copyright is, and how it protects artists), but the approach would definitely. I spoke way too much... I had some visuals and hands-on items for the students to see copyright logos, I played a fun example of Vanilla Ice back to back with Queen/Bowie's "Under Pressure" using Who Sampled and had the students become a jury to decide whether or not Vanilla was guilty... Need I say, it was a unanimous vote.

In my Jazz Band classroom, the best outcome was that the students were getting excited about recent lawsuits, and asking questions to the class while googling for results (Is it OK to use someone's name in a song title? What if you didn't realize that you stole a song?) - I was happy with this, but I'm not certain that the students know any more than they did prior.

In revising this lesson, I want to get students creating. Perhaps I can have them write a short musical composition and "steal" a student's work, write it on the board and say how proud I am to have written it. I hope that kid would call me out - no kid wants to be copied from! Maybe that would catch their attention... Maybe this lesson wouldn't necessarily deal with a hands-on musical approach, but something with copying in general. I think getting the kids fired up about it could be risky, but powerful and engaging.