Posted by No surprise on December 16, 2001 at 00:50:03:
In Reply to: Decisions...Decisions...Decisions... posted by James McNeil on December 15, 2001 at 21:42:10:
The inanity of high school directors surpasseth human understanding. In our district, where the school doesn't provide much money for instruments or repairs, and most students other than low brass, low winds and percussion own professional quality instruments, the director just took $8,000 raised by the band boosters and spent it on 6 new laquer Bach strad cornets, requiring players to use them when most of them own Bach Strad trumpets already. When I heard about that I closed my checkbook to them permanently. And despite professional advice, he continues to buy more Yamaha YBB641s (replacing good King 2341s) and Yamaha sousaphones (replacing Conn 20k and King sousas!) Sounds like you have his clone. They say it's about sound or uniform appearance, it's really about control and power. Too many high school band directors missed their callings as German drill sergeants or Jr. ROTC instructors. Band is supposed to be fun, hard work perhaps, but fun. When I was in high school 40-odd years ago, the director may not have been as great a musician as some of these guys, but we wrote our own shows, played a lot of fun and funny music and managed to also play lots of serious arrangements of difficult music, we had a lot of the old professional level band transcriptions of 19th century orchestra music that some prior director had collected, and we played them. I'm always surprised now in a community band how many of them I played as a kid.
Jay's advice to you is excellent. My kids do stick in the band, but play in outside groups and go to private music school on the weekends (gets them out of marching, too).