Star Band offers young musicians in Indiana a head start
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - If you want to play clarinet, Henry Mulligan explained to 11-year-old Connor Byon, you have to start with the reed.
Slowly and carefully, so the Childs Elementary student could see what he was doing, Mulligan showed Connor how to insert the reed into the mouthpiece of a clarinet, explaining that in order to make music, Connor had to use his breath to make the reed vibrate.
"Take a deep breath and see if you can get any sound out of it," Mulligan said. Connor puffed his cheeks and blew. The mouthpiece squawked.
"There you go!"
All around the Bloomington High School South band room, similar exchanges were happening over other instruments: flute, trombone, saxophone, trumpet, baritone horn. They were "meeting the instruments," as band instructor Robert Dubinski said, and trying out for the Star of Indiana Beginning Band, the youngest extracurricular concert band in the Monroe County Community School Corp. By the end of tryouts, 24 fifth-graders had signed on.
Dubinski, director of South's band program, and James Mason, the founding director of the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps, started the "Star Band" 24 years ago. They each had children who were in the sixth grade and wanted to play music, but at the time, students in the MCCSC didn't start playing instruments until seventh grade. Mason went to the late Bill Cook, Bloomington's most famous entrepreneur and historic preservationist, who had helped found the drum and bugle corps, and pitched the idea of starting an after-school program. The Star Band has been open to rising sixth-graders ever since.
Students can join the Star Band in the spring of their fifth-grade year and continue through the next fall. The band meets twice a week for one hour in the Bloomington South band room. Once students get the hang of the basics - keeping a rhythm, learning to read sheet music - they spend about half of each session practicing their instruments in small groups with instructors like Mulligan, and half as a full band.
Studies show musical ability can be linked with other academic skills, strong communication and a host of other boons, but in Dubinski's eyes, those benefits are beside the point.
"That's all well and good, and I understand that, but playing a musical instrument is just darn good fun by itself," he said.
Tai Mikulecky, a music education student at Indiana University, said that was certainly true in her experience. She had never touched a saxophone before joining Star Band, but under Dubinski's instruction, she fell in love with the instrument and performed alongside her best friend, who also played sax, in band classes and ensembles for the next several years. Now she is teaching the Star Band students, helping them fall in love with the saxophone just as she did.
"It's kind of coming full circle," she said with a laugh.
Mulligan had a slightly earlier start: He picked up the oboe in fourth grade at his school on Long Island in New York, and fell in love at once. In his eyes, the younger a musician starts playing, the longer they have to do something they enjoy.
"I really like this program, because it really is low-key and easy on the kids," he said. Even "auditions" are a relaxed affair. Prospective Star Band members rotate through the different available instruments and try to get a sound out of them. Everything else is secondary.
"You try to let them do as much of the questioning and the discovering as possible," Mulligan said. "When they're younger, they approach it with an innocence and excitement that's easy to latch onto."
During Connor's audition, Mulligan had Connor experiment to see how long and how loudly he could make the clarinet's mouthpiece squawk before fitting the piece to the rest of the instrument. Mulligan explained how to grip the instrument and showed Connor where to put his fingers. After several attempts at getting a sound out of the fully assembled clarinet, Connor succeeded in producing a long, low note.
But at the end of his audition, Connor signed up to play trombone, admitting with a grin that he preferred the brass instruments over the woodwind.
And that's okay, Mulligan said. "Nothing gets a kid to quit sooner than not getting the instrument they wanted."
Kevin Byon, Connor's father, said Connor wanted to come to auditions because he's become a big fan of concert music. Byon, a kinesiology professor at IU, has been taking his family to the university's free music performances for years. Connor already plays in the Jacobs School of Music's Young Pianists Program. In Star Band, he'll get to explore something new.
"This program allows him to grow his interest," Kevin Byon said.
Sherri Francis is hoping Star Band will awaken a similar passion for her daughter, Rosa. The fifth-grader at Binford Elementary tried piano lessons, but they didn't take; she much prefers playing Minecraft and collaborating with YouTube artists. But after hearing about the fun Francis had playing French horn in her own school band, Rosa decided to give music another shot.
She came in wanting to play the flute. In the end, she chose clarinet because of its sound and because she found it more challenging.
Rosa is naturally shy, and she's nervous about being in a large group of other students. But because she wants to learn the clarinet, she's willing to give it a try. Francis hopes the camaraderie band students develop will help Rosa build a social activity she'll love for the next several years - and possibly for the rest of her life.
"It creates lifelong friends," Dubinski said. "It's where you get your memories."
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Source: The (Bloomington) Herald-Times, http://bit.ly/2leaBt6
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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com