by Linda Charlton
As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And for the young performing artists in local schools, there’s been a lot of lemonade this year.
“It’s been exciting,” East Ridge High band director Jack Hart says.He’s talking about his program, with students and band parents rising to the challenges of a pandemic and excelling in the process. In fact, he says that in the second semester his students actually performed more than they would have in a normal year, many of those performances being on campus, and by invitation only.
In terms of performance opportunities, East Ridge High is perhaps an outlier, but other programs have come up with creative ways to boost their students’ performance opportunities. In the most recent performance at East Ridge Middle, the student jazz band paired with the professional big band Same As Lame Jazz Ambassadors for an in-person concert at the school. At Windy Hill Middle, Fine Arts Artistic Director Michael Tarquine reports presenting four plays and three choral concerts, some inside, some outside, all with performers and audience members fully masked. He overcame the lighting challenges of the outdoor performances with the help of a lighting company that regularly works with the City of Clermont. Over at South Lake High School, students made good use of the relatively new amphitheater at Lake David Park, holding several concerts there.
As South Lake High director Ryan Wright says, “That’s been the one silver lining. [The concerts] were all met with great community support and we are glad to have made this new connection with our home city of Groveland. In May, we were also able to hold an in-person concert here in our school’s auditorium. It was wonderful to get back to offering performances for our students, as we were unable to attend any of our usual competitions or Music Performance Assessments (MPAs). While I gladly welcome the return of our usual performance opportunities, I was glad to find these alternative ones this year that we are going to continue in the years to come. This school year was riddled with challenges from almost all angles, but with a bit of creativity and collective grit, the South Lake High School Screaming Eagle Band was not only able to survive, but thrive this school year.”
LAKE MINNEOLA HIGH SCHOOL “Branching Out” (WGI Winds)
Lake Minneola High School students went back to nature for a wgi (winter guard international) winds competition. In laymen’s terms, they competed with the same type of show they might have performed at a Florida Bandmasters Association marching MPA, if marching MPA had not been canceled. The difference is that instead of props they had trees. They recorded the performance at Minneola Trailhead Park, coming in second in their division at the wgi virtual world championships held last month.
Back at Windy Hill Middle, Tarquine chooses to view the school year now ending as one of “possibilities,” as well as the opportunity to allow his students a sense of normalcy — even while following extensive anti-virus protocols. The Arts program provided students multiple opportunities to be involved in their communities, including sponsoring a free holiday shopping event on-campus, where every single student on campus was able to come in and shop for one member of their family for free so they would have something to give for the holiday, according to Tarquine. The arts program also provided a catered meal to frontline workers, in thanks for their service.
“That’s been the one silver lining,” director Allen Venezio says. “My beginning students, they have been able to go all the way through the beginner’s book.”
For different reasons, other band programs have also had the luxury of time. First semesters are typically dominated by the demands of marching season. For all practical purposes, paired-back football seasons meant there was no marching season.
“We found ourselves working on technique, on sound, on entire musicianship,” Jack Hart says (East Ridge High). “It was actually relaxing, being able to reach into students and determine ‘what level and what program they are.’ That was absolutely beautiful.”
Hart is in his 37th year teaching public school band, and his 19th year at East Ridge. Shortly after last school year, he announced his retirement. Then he quickly ‘un-retired.’ He says he will definitely be back next year.
“I felt that last year was not complete,” Hart says. He had students still dealing with the after-effects of the first-semester fire in an instrument storage room, and the band as a whole was not able to get back into the band room until January. Then came Covid-19.
Addressing his retirement flip-flop, Hart says “I just decided, I’m going to come back and finish the job and do it well.”
He was not expecting that the pandemic disruption would last so long.
“I decided I’m coming back next year and I’m going to have a normal year and then I am retiring,” he says.
