From Ensemble to Solo - Arts Education for the Individual

What is hanging on your band room wall?

Chances are your band room wall is adorned with plaques and trophies from various festivals and competitions.  High quality ensemble performance is something to be celebrated.

How many individual accomplishments are celebrated on your walls?

PLC Question #1 asks us to develop a high quality curriculum with priority standards that are selected for their endurance, leverage, or power to prepare students for the next level.  While large ensemble success empowers students with many wonderful skills, students don't get college scholarships because their high school band won the regional marching championship.  At the audition, each student must stand alone and succeed on his or her own merit.

I judged solo and ensemble festivals for many years in Michigan.  Students are required to perform scales for state proficiency exams.  Year in and year out, I cringed when students failed to cash in on 25 free points on the exam.  The scales are not a secret - they can be mastered months or years in advance of the exam.  Perhaps they should have been part of the curriculum?

Students are also required to perform scales at most college auditions.  When our students fail their auditions because they can't play scales, we have failed to adequately answer PLC question #1.

The ensemble problem is obvious in music, but can also be found to a lesser degree in theater.  When the focus is on a large scale production, the development of individual knowledge, skills, and dispositions can get lost in the crowd.

There is another path.  Consider Edna Karr High School in New Orleans.  Their band was the subject of an NPR All Things Considered segment.  Some instruments are held together with tape.  The director has spent his own money keeping the instrumentation at a functional level.  The audio clips from the story would not be considered first division performances in Michigan.  So what's the big news?

Some of these students are prepared for college auditions, and some of the colleges give band scholarships.  In a community that is characterized by crime and poverty, a college scholarship is a lifeline.

I'm proud of the first division ratings that my bands earned over the years, but I'd trade all of them to lift even one student out of the cycle of poverty.

Check out the story at http://www.npr.org/2014/05/15/312455384/at-a-new-orleans-high-school-marching-band-is-a-lifeline-for-kids?ft=1&f=1013

PS:  The title of this post is an adaptation of a wonderful article on fine arts PLC collaboration:

Maher, J., Burroughs, C., Dietz, A., and Karnbach, A. (2010). From solo to ensemble: Fine arts teachers find a harmonious solution to their isolation. Journal of Staff Development, 31 (1), 24-29.