The Brass Tacks of Music Education

By Gregory Keer

When my eldest son came home one day during his first week of third grade, he lugged in a sinister-looking black case. My immediate reaction was that he had joined the elementary school mafia and was about to make us an offer we could not refuse after making him transfer to this new school. The reality was a bit more surprising. Our quiet, seemingly risk-averse son had brought home a trumpet.

“How did this happen?” I asked Benjamin.

“They asked if anyone wanted to join the orchestra, and I said yes,” he said with a shrug.

It was that simple. He had never discussed interest in playing the horn before and, because he previously took piano lessons without much commitment, we assumed music was not his thing.

That was OK. I was thrilled enough for the both of us. Having spent much of my adult life regretting that I had given up piano as a teen and then devoting 30 years to idolizing musicians and writing album reviews, this moment was celebratory. My sons would play music.

Over the next three years, Benjamin practiced with a ragtag orchestra of kids, most of whom had never played an instrument before. However, their teacher, Mr. Geiger, steadily and expertly trained them so they got pretty darn good. Maybe some parents dread the warbly, sometimes out-of-tune seasonal concerts, but my face hurt from all the smiling I did while listening to Benjamin play in the brass section.

Our middle son was a little more intentional when it came time for him to choose whether or not to join the school orchestra.

“I’m going to be better than Benjamin,” he said, never shy about his competitive spirit.

Yet, when he came home with his own black case, this one contained a clarinet.

“Why not the trumpet?” I asked.

“Dad, I’m my own person and the clarinet is more me,” he reasoned.

Jacob performed with gusto and enjoyed being one of only two to play the instrument in the group. He didn’t practice much, but he made the most of the rehearsals and his flair for pouring his outgoing personality into the reed instrument.

Then Ari’s turn arrived. Like his brothers before him, our third child selected his own instrument, the trombone. Seriously, that thing was taller than my tyke, yet my boy was determined to master it. Of all my sons, Ari showed the most joy in playing, even though it proved a challenge to get skilled enough to blow the notes the way he wanted to. Often, he’d get frustrated.

“I’m really not any good,” he would sometimes say.

“I don’t care,” I would reply. “Just keep playing.”

I could have told him that the sounds he was creating were akin to those generated by a flatulent walrus. However, his drive to improve focused my encouragement of him. If he wanted to get good, I would not dampen his spirit. Even if it meant going to another room to rehabilitate my ears.

And keep playing he did, month after month. He got to the point of more proudly pulling the instrument out to show off his version of “When the Saints Come Marching In” and “Winter Wonderland.” And no kid waved more excitedly when we would see him in the back row of the orchestra on performance days.

While Benjamin petered out on music by sixth grade and Jacob took up the guitar on and off for the years past elementary school, Ari kept going. In the first year of middle school, he joined the beginning orchestra with which his skills really began to take flight. Much of this had to do with an attentive teacher who always found extra time for his large array of students. It is also attributed to Ari’s outside-of-school lessons with a patient and creative piano teacher and a marvelous trombone teacher. This brass instructor nurtured not only Ari’s playing, but helped him to transcribe music by ear and explore the classics of my own true musical love, jazz.

Recently, Ari emerged from a trombone lesson saying he wanted me to select one of my favorite jazz tunes each week or so for him to learn. To say that I got a little dizzy from the extra oxygen that request filled me with is not an exaggeration.

As this new school year rolls forward, I remain committed to the extra dollars and driving time it takes to give Ari as much music education as he wants. My wife and I may have led our children to the water of music, but it has been their own curiosity and willingness to take risks with their creativity that has given them a means of extra expression and an enduring love of music’s affective powers.

If I have advice for parents on this subject it is that, whatever your own musical interest is, make the effort to expose your children to playing music early and then support their pursuits to the utmost of your resources. You never know what will happen. Likely, it will be something beautiful.

© 2017 Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.

Posted in Activities With Kids, Adolescence, Arts Education, Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Music, School | 1 Comment

Stages

By Gregory Keer

Performer-IMG_4990Last January, my eleven year old tracked me down in my fortress of solitude, the bathroom, and launched into “Suddenly Seymour,” his audition tune for the public arts academy he desperately wanted to attend.

Despite all the love and support I harbor for my child, my reaction was swift as I cried, “Let me poop in peace!”

This sent Jacob into a fit of laughter before he collected himself and continued his song in complete ignorance of my compromised state.

By the time he hit his final note, I had long forgotten where I was or what I had intended to do there. I just applauded.

“That was the best I’ve ever heard you sing,” I told Jacob.

My son gave me hug, at which time reality hit me that I was sitting over a toilet bowl.

“Thanks, Dad, now I can let you poop in peace,” he laughed as he took off.

Whether he’s standing on bathroom tile or auditorium floorboards, my son loves the stage. It started early, when we took a three-year-old Jacob to see his older brother in a theater-camp production of The Sound of Music. We had to hold back the nascent thespian from leaping to join “Do-Re-Mi.” Even as Benjamin grew more self-conscious about performing, Jacob’s theatrical bug never stopped buzzing.

Sometimes, that buzzing got on our nerves. We were frequently torn between encouraging his creative, outgoing nature and protecting our senses from his often disastrous training. There were countless nights when he belted a medley of the Top 40 all day long, from every room in the house – and mostly off key. He didn’t know he was out of tune, nor did he care. He also had the habit of trying to force his vibrato to sound like Justin Timberlake – only he wasn’t Justin Timberlake.

There were the mornings we awakened thinking clowns were ransacking our home when it was just Jacob leaping around his room, rehearsing hip-hop moves he learned in his after-school program. On countless occasions, we sat with frozen smiles while we watched him do modern dance versions of movies like Iron Man 2.

There were all the elementary-school plays, the ones Jacob made us practice with him for weeks, even when he only had one line to say. Worse yet, given Jacob’s perfectionist streak, we endured his criticism of how we delivered our parts: “Daddy, I really think Zeus would sound much bolder than you’re saying it.” You know there’s something wrong when your eight-year-old makes you feel like you’ll never work in show business again and all you wanted to do was help him understand a Greek god’s emotional fragility.

As anxious as Jacob’s relentless practicing of his skills made us, nothing compared to how he felt every time he tried out for a part he didn’t get or was made fun of by peers who found his theatricality not macho enough. Each time this happened, Jacob would come home angry or in tears, and we would boost his ego for being brave enough to take risks. Yet it was mostly his own sense of resolve that motivated him to try all over again.

In this last year of grade school, all of Jacob’s practice seemed to pay off. After three years in the back of the chorus, he moved to the front because he had improved his vocal pitch. After years of musical instrument obscurity, he learned the ukulele and became a soloist at his graduation.

And after endless sessions spent rehearsing dance moves, song stylings, and acting chops, he auditioned for the performing arts academy with so few available spots and so many dreamers vying for them. Weeks later, the email came with the word “Congratulations” on it. Jacob shouted and jumped high, but landed soberly and said, “What’s for dinner?”

Who knows if this opportunity to learn in an arts program will lead to Jacob’s success on Broadway or in Hollywood? What I do know is that, as much as my son has learned to follow a passion, he knows that there’s more to life than a stage. More important than any lead part is that Jacob has learned about working hard, enjoying triumphs, and weathering fear and failure. He’s also learned to balance his theatrical pursuits with friends, family, and soccer, a game he still loves. These lessons will serve him as he makes the transition from the smaller elementary school stakes to the bigger ones in middle school and beyond.

As he takes on this next challenging phase of life, I am so very proud of my boy. So proud that I’ll let him interrupt my bathroom privacy any time he wants to break out into song.

For more on middle-school change, see Middle Earth.

Posted in Adolescence, Arts Education, Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Creativity, Education, School, Tweens | 2 Comments