Connecting Music Students with Opportunities Outside the School

Music is both personal and something to be shared. Creating music alone is very enjoyable, but music is a language, the universal language, one that appeals to everyone at some level through style or genre.

Musicians have varied views on how they feel about practicing – love it, hate it, look forward to it, dread it. But practice they all do, working hard to improve upon their talent, to hone their skills, and to revel in that improvement. Practicing creates music on that personal level. Practicing with others in rehearsal creates music that, while being honed and improved, is still being shared and enjoyed by the participants. There is great satisfaction in sharing music with others – both in rehearsal and in performance.

School music ensembles spend most of their time together in rehearsal and have that experience with a finite group of other musicians. After weeks or months of steady rehearsal, the band or orchestra, chorus or jazz ensemble, puts on a performance for their parents and supporters – and possibly an assembly or two for the other students in their school, their peers, friends and classmates. Once again, this is a finite and predetermined group of listeners and appreciators. And after one or two performances, the school group returns to their rehearsal space, changes the music in their folders and starts the process again, rehearsing with the same finite group of individuals.

School music ensembles are not the only ones making music in your community or region, and your high school ensemble isn’t the only musical group in your school district. The ensemble’s peers and parents are not the only audience that would appreciate their musical talents and efforts, and a polished performance isn’t the only way your school musicians can share the universal language of music.

Consider performing on a regular basis for the other students in your school district by inviting some, such as the students at the next-door middle school, to your onsite dress rehearsal on concert day. If you do a pops or light concert program (or a piece in several concerts), invite some elementary students to your auditorium for a concert of tunes they might know and include an instrument or voice demonstration to inspire the future musicians in the audience. Designate one student in each section to come up with a short demo that involves others and possibly some of the music being performed. Nothing will get a third-grader more interested in being a part of the music program than hearing their favorite movie theme performed by the high school student who lives down the street.

Audiences abound in your community as well. While the logistics of moving your instrumental ensemble to other locations adds to the challenges, vocal and smaller ensembles (vocal and instrumental) travel easily. Such combinations can be set up in your local community center, senior living housing, youth program facility or local concert hall with little difficulty and perform a short program for the residents, staff or visitors.

Many community events can also be enhanced by music, especially those connected to holidays. Providing an ad hoc ensemble to perform Christmas tunes for the local Salvation Army’s bell ringers or the community tree lighting, can give your students the chance to perform in entirely new settings. And inviting alumni and musical parents to such opportunities helps to build, rebuild or reinforce those vital connections. No rehearsals are needed, and you don’t have to present a perfect rendition to have it be a learning experience.

Rehearsing with others is also a valuable way for your students to enhance their skills and learn from others. It is a great way for them to improve as musicians, learning from others’ mistakes and successes.

Often overlooked as a music possibility, joint rehearsals can support your students in building a special personal relationship with musicians other than the second chair that sits next to them every day in school. Joint rehearsals also expose your musician to a different folder full of music, a change in their responsibility within the group, another rehearsal setting and often, a new conductor. For the same reasons most music educators support their students participating in their district, regional, all-state and other selection festivals, having your students rehearse with others expands their music horizons in ways not possible in your school’s music room.

Joint rehearsals can start within your school district. Programming a piece for band and chorus, orchestra and chorus, band and rhythm section, orchestra with saxes, all provide the chance for students to connect with other musicians they only know as peers, not fellow performers. Having your middle school group join your high school group in rehearsal lets both be the expert, when rehearsing from their folder, and the sight-reader, when rehearsing from the other.

Taking that future, having a district-wide music performance that features each group individually and then has a combined piece at the conclusion, joins not only the musicians, but their parents and supporters who may not even know that they both have a trombone player for a child.

Your community has several adult musical organizations that are always recruiting and their future membership comes from your ranks. Have the local semi-pro jazz ensemble run their monthly rehearsal in your band room and let your jazz musicians sit in. See if the community chorus will consider doing a combined number in rehearsal in preparation for performing it together twice, once in each of the group’s concerts. Ask the nearby college that is working on its senior recital to present it to your students, even just those who play the same instrument. Have them speak about the music and then work with the students on sight-reading a new piece.

Even 20 minutes of reading a new chart, led by another musician, is a worthwhile experience for participants. Once you begin exploring what music is being done in your community, the opportunities will become open and apparent. Musicians benefit from every opportunity to make music, regardless of the purpose.

With a little investment in time and planning, you can open up a plethora of musical experiences for your students, both as performers and as learners. By doing so, you are not only supporting their efforts to improve as musicians, but expanding their musical connections and enhancing their musical abilities and skills. And you are adding length to their musical lives, providing them with a vision of what being a musician outside of high school can include, even if your college and career do not, on the surface, include them continuing. Isn’t that what we all want for our students, to be lifelong musicians?

Steffen Parker is a retired music educator, event organizer, maple sugar maker, and Information Technology specialist from Vermont who serves as the Performing Arts/Technology representative on the NFHS High School Today Publications Committee. He received the NFHS Citation Award in 2017 and the Ellen McCulloch- Lovell Award in Arts Education in 2021.