Brandt Schneider "Creating Musical Flexibility Through the Ensemble"
This article was very helpful. Today’s music educational standards require us to have composition, improvisation and analysis in our curriculums and Prof. Schneider has made a powerful case for the importance of these standards. He says that our school musicians cannot change keys, improvise songs in various genres and have lost a lot of knowledge of American music. I agree with his assessment. I remember watching old black and white performances of jazz bands and other bands of the 1930s-1950s. So I do know that bands used to play pieces of music in different keys just by having the conductor or the singer tell the band what key they wanted to use. I also know that the same was true for pianist accompanists working in American music as well. This is something we have lost in America but it doesn’t have to stay lost.
He has also given us a blue print of how he added these missing elements into his own band practices. He identified pieces of music that are considered American standards and tested his students to see how well they knew these pieces of music. He filled in the gaps in the knowledge of American music in his students and taught them to play these songs in all 12 keys. He also taught students the stylistic concepts necessary for them to perform American standards in a variety of different styles. He set goals for his students that he thought they could complete each week and then increased the work load and complexity once they had grasped the concepts.
I think that there are a lot of ways to critique a musician and part of that assessment must come through judging how well a musician thinks musically and responds to musical ideas -this also includes excellent playing skills that express these responses. It has come to my attention as a classical musician that I have almost been paralyzed at the thought of altering music-the thoughts and ideas of other musicians and wanting to get the most technically “by the rulebook” answers to respond to musical ideas. In the world of classical music that formed me as a musician, I have had friends who had travelled to Europe and gone to obscure places looking for original manuscripts of compositions just to see if there was a comma in a song or not. My colleagues who have been trained in jazz and rock music feel more comfortable making broad changes to music. They are often bolder in their capacity to alter music. I think that my classical training has given me a subtly of expression in my responses that can sometimes be lacking in the performances of some jazz and rock musicians-sorry any jazz and rock musicians out there who may be offended. I think this is why live jazz appeals to me so much whereas recorded jazz music often falls flat for me. I think we can judge musicians on either separate sets of criteria one for the subtleties of classical music and one for the broader expressions chosen in the moment by jazz, rock and folk musicians. I think that Pavarotti was an excellent musician but hearing him sing American songs during the Three Tenors Concert I was less than impressed with his performance skills. I also think that not every rock musician should be playing classical music. I don’t think the band members of Kiss should be singing Samuel Barber any time soon. Thus, I do think that the case can be easily made that different types of music require different musicians.
I do have some exceptions to this division on judging musicians…General music teachers in our schools. I believe that they must have skill in both areas although I think that it would be unrealistic to assume that they will always have both types of musical responses both broad experimentation and subtle infinitesimal choices within their mindset. Music teachers do tend to gravitate towards the musical training in which they have been raised. But as teachers we must be able to respond to all of our students. As a voice teacher, I must be able to respond to the needs of a jazz or rock oriented singer. I must be aware of the musical skills needed in these genres and be able to give high school and early college level training in these areas to those students whose gifts require it. Teachers must always be able to go beyond basic high school training so that students can progress beyond it as well under our instruction. As we were once the gifted students at our schools so these youngsters may be the musicians and teachers of tomorrow as well. I and my fellow teachers must respond to their training needs so that future generations may profit from them.
Teachers must also adapt music to the available musicians, compose music as necessary as their may not be suitable music for their ensembles or certain performance occasions. Teachers in the public schools must have training on a variety of instruments and keep some skills fresh in all of them. No one can be an expert on a dozen instruments such that they can perform in a professional ensemble with their current skills but every music teacher that I have worked with has been trained on one or more instruments from every section of the orchestra, plus piano and recorder. The public school music teachers that I have admired the most in my observations owned multiple musical instruments and have told me that they regularly go back to these instruments to practice and thus maintain a basic level of playing knowledge on these instruments.
To sum up my views of judging musicians, western classical musicians or musicians that perform in styles of music that require great attention to the rigorous style of music that does not allow for much deviation can be judged on subtly in their performances and musical decisions. In musical art styles that require broad musical decisions in the moment, musicians can be forgiven some momentary lapses in subtle performing perfection as they have a lot of musical decisions on their mind. The public school music teacher must be a generalist which means some ability to train students in both types of music, plus train students on multiple instruments as well as singing plus they must be able to arrange and compose music as needed.
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