Third-Stream Music Education

We all know that the first impression speaks the loudest. When a group walks on stage with focus and raise their instruments in one motion, the audience (most of whom are musically uneducated anyway) is compelled to quiet down and listen. Many of us have been disappointed to discover that the spring concert was judged more by the choice of Santana’s “Smooth” as a closer (which your kids cleaned in an afternoon) than by the execution of the running passages in, say, Mvt 3 of Norman Dello Joio’s Satriric Dances (which your students slaved over for weeks). I would posit that the same is true for their attire; when the ensemble members look sharp, then parents, siblings and friends are more likely to take them seriously, give them the benefit of the doubt, etc.

On the other hand, coming back to Greg Sandow’s point, is formal attire a good idea for young people? Do your students hate it? It could turn in to a recruiting and retention sticking point. More to my point, however, is that we should be teaching our students a wider repertoire of music and teaching it to them in culturally authentic contexts. That symphonic work was composed at a certain time, for a certain audience. Shouldn’t your students (and audience) experience it as similarly as possible to how it was intended?

The caveat is that the opposite would be true (but for the same reason) for your group playing a concert of rock/pop music. Marching ensembles have been on the leading edge in this regard, with color guards in themed costumes for field shows and entire indoor drumline shows in theme-specific garb. I have a yearning to do an entire evening of 50’s era cool and blue jazz with my jazz ensemble split up into combos, and make it really a cafe, with coffee and dessert being served and the sound of clinking glasses. It’s not a new idea; schools have done this before as a fund raiser for the jazz band trip or for service hours. But I want to actually transform the space by bringing in couches, green shag carpets and cafe tables, everything but the cigarette smoke….and I want to enlist the theater department to costume my jazz students in narrow-cut suits and skinny ties. Better yet, I want to rent out a real jazz club in town on a Tuesday night for the spectacle. Afterwards, for the rest of their lives, I want my students to look at the pictures on their own copies of Kind of Blue and see the dark cafe, smell the coffee, feel the suit. A real multisensory experience. Another idea I am working up the guts to stage is a full-out rock concert with my wind ensemble: leather pants, big hair, mics clipped to the bells of clarinets, wah-wah pedal on the trombone and lots of distortion on the oboe solo. Again, trying to create a personal, emotional connection to musicians from a certain time and place. Until I work up the cojones stage one of these stunts, my concerts will contain a wide variety of music, but leaning towards symphonic. That leaves me dressing my students for the sit-down formality of shirts and ties.

Do you think that (semi-) formal attire improves the student concert experience? I do. I want to build the community expectations at my current school over the next three to five years to include formal attire for my top ensembles. My stated objective in this regard is for students to feel like their performance is just as serious and important as that of the best professional symphony in the world. I want my students to watch professional performances and feel a personal, emotional connection. When my students go on stage, I want them to feel like they are the center of the universe for one hour.

Entry Filed under: Music as a Snapshot of Time and Place, Recruiting & Retention