Posted by Christian Carichner on June 01, 2003 at 23:23:55:
In Reply to: extravagant student ensemble trips posted by js on June 01, 2003 at 13:09:25:
I'm going to take a stab at this post, even though i didn't read all the replies. (at this point that'd take hours)
2 years ago i went to Europe a month before Sept. 11th. I went with the tour group American Music Abroad. It was a band and chorus made up of some of the top kids in NY State. I have to say, it was one of the most musically gratifying experiences of my life. To travel abroad and share in the culture of others was just the icing on the cake. To travel to the beaches of normandy and play/sing America the Beautiful and a couple Sousa marches (yeah it doesn't sound that great on paper, but to watch the crowd that gathered clap along to what we percieve as mundane typical band marches was totally awesome) was simply moving. To play beautiful music together, and celebrate/mourn our country at the same time is an experience i can only hope to live again. To travel to Mozart's house and see where the man himself spent years of his life living and creating music, an experience i will never forget (even though the 10 bucks admission was sort of a rip off). To play in a Tyrolean folk fest, to play dixie in a town sqare in Belgium, to wake up in the morning and see the sunrise on the alps, to walk through the cathedrals of Paris, to take in the art museums, to take in the concentration camp at Dachau.... all experiences i will never forget. So now my point: we aren't just musicians, we're people and artists who must appreciate life. How do composers write music? How did mussorgsky write pictures at an exhibition? How did Pat Sheridan learn about the historical and tradition value of the tyrolean variations in the Arban book? (taken from the NeRTEC conferece 2003) They had experiences in lands foreign to them. Just because my high school marching band played "this is my country" while in the Disney electromagic music parade doesn't mean it wasn't musical. You forget that half the kids in high school are in band for the trips. I say why not? It keeps them involved and they get music out of it whether they realize it or not. They have fun. Music is supposed to be fun, especially for high schoolers. It doesn't have to be about reaching that climax and hitting that chord in tune all the time (but when it happens--it's even better and cooler and inspires them more) Yeah i've taken my share of pointless trips. My youth orchestras trip to montreal. I was so god-damn exhausted i fell asleep through half the stuff we did --- cirque de solil (sp?) and an opera. Great musical experiences but did we have to go? no we could have seen it in NYC a lot closer i'm sure, but that doesn't matter. Branch out. Some kids don't get to leave their home town unless their band goes on a trip. Theres always money available you just have to find it. Grants, scholarships, fund raisers. My h.s. band didn't go anywhere without enough fund raisers and bottle drives to cover the costs. If the kids are involved and want to make it happen, it'll happen. Kids are unstoppable when they're told they can't do something they want to do.
Don't always look at musical value, because not everything in life has it, lets face it. Look at educational value--it makes you a better person overall and might just trickle down into the way you make music if you let it.