From the Archives

Here is one of my all-time favorite DHS band pictures. It's labeled on the back: "Jazz Rock 1974, Mr. Panzer, Chuck Black, Andy Van Ells." There are a couple of cool things about the shot. First, the large poster on the wall above the bassist says "Home of DHS Concert Band, The Governor's Own." This is a reference to the band's being selected to play for Gov. Dan Walker's inauguration in January 1973. Walker was from Deerfield, thus the connection.

Next, the old silver drum set you see was in use until a new kit was purchased by my predecessor in 1987. You can see a student in a plaid shirt holding the matching set of bongos. In the background on the right is the percussion cabinet that we still use. I assume it was built by Al Spriester, the band director at the time, who was quite a carpenter. The really ugly folding chairs lasted until I came in 1988, when we purchased all those nice, black Wenger chairs.

What I like most about the picture, however, is the designation of the group as a "jazz rock band," which really shows the era. I imagine them playing Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" and music by Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. I wish I knew more about the group, but they don't appear on any concert programs from the era. Perhaps they played at STUNTS or basketball games. The first mention of any jazz group playing on a concert at DHS was a "stage band" in 1976 on a pops concert. Quite a contrast from our jazz program today!

Welcome to Our Future Band Students!

If you are one of our future DHS Band students, welcome to our blog! It was great to meet many of you at Student Activities Night tonight. In addition, I'm very much looking forward to working with the Shepard and Caruso bands over the next week. Four years of wonderful music and friendships await you at Deerfield High School, and I hope you will make the most of them. You can play in the freshman Concert Band which meets as a daily class, not a before school activity. You can join the Warrior Marching Band, our school's most spirited group, and enjoy playing lots of exciting rock music. There's the Jazz Lab Band for all of you jazzers, and you don't even have to play a traditional jazz instrument. We've had flutes, clarinets, euphoniums, violas, and even an Arabic oud!

In the meantime, I wish you best of luck in your middle school bands. Have a great spring concert! If you want to learn more about the DHS band program, click on the black box in the upper left corner.

Podcasts and Other Road Trip Diversions

Last week I drove several hours north into Wisconsin to observe a band rehearsal for my dissertation research. It was the last of four site visits to see directors who scored highly on my survey on comprehensive musicianship. This means that the director I saw goes way beyond teaching just notes, rhythms, and performance skills. His students truly learn about the emotional content and historical background of every piece they play. It was a great experience, seeing CM in action in a very small, rural high school that has about the same number of students as we do in our band program alone.

What I really want to write about, however, is the audio accompaniment to my travels. I have been downloading podcasts of a great radio show produced by Chicago Public Radio called Sound Opinions. Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, the rock music critics from the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, respectively, have a one-hour show every Friday night at 8:00 on WBEZ 91.5FM. It's a mixture of news, reviews, interviews, and... (rats, nothing else rhymes) music history and criticism. Now I'm rarely in my car when the show is live, but you can download every show from their website or subscribe to their show through iTunes. The episode I was listening to had an extended examination of a classic album by The Clash, London Calling. They shared wonderful insight into what makes it such a great album, along with stories about how it came to be, including a crazy producer who chased the band around the studio and threw chairs at them. Other episodes included a Best Albums of the 2000s show and an introduction to synth-pop. All very informative, entertaining, and full of great music clips. I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to know about rock history and what's going on in the world of rock today.

In addition to this podcast, I enjoyed two episodes of NPR's This American Life, and some fine CDs. The first was Ornette Coleman's 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning album, Sound Grammar. Why this won a Pulitzer, I'm not sure, but it is very approachable, ear-friendly free jazz from the man who coined the term in 1959. I also listened to a CD of Vaughan Williams' orchestral works (can't get enough of RVW) and Rambling Boy by Charlie Haden. The latter is a curious recording. Haden is an important jazz bassist, but he got his musical start at the age of two on his family's country music radio show. While he went on to other musical pursuits, he never gave up his love of old-time American folk music, and a couple of years ago he recorded this awesome album of classic tunes with his wife, son, triplet daughters, and Jack Black. That sounds odd, but Black is his son-in-law, and thus part of the family band. In addition, he brought in top-shelf country musicians like Ricky Skaggs and Roseanne Cash as well as his good friend, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. If you like good acoustic music, traditional folk stylings, and above all, a huge, warm acoustic bass sound, I recommend you check out Rambling Boy.

More on Independent Musicianship

In the April 2010 issue of Teaching Music, legendary jazz educator Jamey Aebersold talked about teaching students to improvise so that they can become independent musicians beyond high school:

But if you teach people how to improvise, they can play music the rest of their lives. When all you teach them is how to play the second tenor part in a big band, they're not going to directly use that once they leave school unless they're able to play in a community jazz band--and there aren't very many community big bands. Imagine if the only time you could use math is if there's 20 people in the room with you, or if they only time you could write is if you could find 20 other people to write with. This is what's happening in many of our school music programs. Once you leave school, what do you take with you? You take a valuable experience, but you can't directly use that experience unless you have some kind of musical outlet. So my emphasis has always been on getting people to improvise, so that when they're 15, 20, or 50 years old, they can go wherever they want and play music.

As an aside, the Big Band Sound of Deerfield is one of those rare community jazz bands, and we are fortunate to have them in our town. But the point still remains: as educators, we need to teach students to be able to make their own music outside of the traditional, formalized school setting. It is my goal to continue to provide the kind of experiences for my students that will foster this independence.

Brazilian Music Links for Concert Band

Here are the audio and video tracks from the Brazilian music unit in Concert Band. Enjoy!

batucada - Abacaxi

Toque De Timbaleiro - Timbalad...

A Latinha - Timbalada