On Feb 1, 2005, at 6:06 AM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
Next component, then: Who will begin the educational change? Ouch, ouch,
this is very tough. We've lost one generation of educators, now unfamiliar
with nonpop (whether new or old, classical or electroacoustic or
performance-art based or any other kind, or even jazz, which has collapsed
toward history and commerce, save for artists like David Ware). Even those
who were and are conversant with it have not enabled students with the
bundle of tools for writing, for making their own mark on musical history,
and for inventing their own ideas.
One of my private alto saxophone students (age 13) was given the assignment (by his school band director) of pairing up with another student to do a duet, and was told that he could write his own composition for this project. He paired up with another alto sax player, wrote them a piece, and when a trombone player couldn't find a partner, my student offered to write him a part. The result sounds pretty good for a 13-year-old. And he did it in Finale!
Another alto sax student of mine (5th grade) signed up for jazz band, and was asked by his band director to play an improvised solo on "C Jam Blues." This kid's been playing since Sept. of last year, so he doesn't even know all of his sharps and flats yet. I usually wait until a student has a good general knowledge of his instrument before even thinking about teaching him improvisation. But now this kid is really excited about playing the sax, especially since I showed him what could be done with five notes (the minor pentatonic scale).
On the negative side, my brother teaches music at the grade school level in a low-income section of Portland, Oregon. His students will have no music at all after they leave him--no music at the middle school or high school level. He says that school officials, when given the choice of cutting the arts or raising classroom sizes, opt for cutting the arts more often than not. Here in L.A., the infamous Prop. 13 property tax cut that occurred in the early '80s devastated the school arts programs across the board (and some sports programs as well, heaven forbid! No football?). The state lottery was supposed to help our schools, but so far I don't see that it's helped the arts programs at all, but who's fault is that? The parents have to be the ones who put the pressure on school officials, and if they have no interest in the arts themselves--but look at what happened in our last presidential election. I assume everyone has seen that red-and-blue map, showing by geographical area how our country voted. If that kind of thing continues in this country, what chance do arts programs have?
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Lon Price, Los Angeles
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