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.
No comments:
Post a Comment