blog_images_13__large-3.png

Raa Band Students Feel Connections Watching Stoneman Douglas Performers

There was total silence from Raa Middle School’s advanced band students as they watched video footage of a concert at Carnegie Hall. Only the most accomplished musicians are invited to perform in the prestigious venue…

There was total silence from Raa Middle School’s advanced band students as they watched video footage of a concert at Carnegie Hall. Only the most accomplished musicians are invited to perform in the prestigious venue but it wasn’t a famous artist that entranced these middle schoolers. Instead, the stage held 65 members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Wind Symphony.

Stoneman Douglas was one of just six high schools chosen to perform at Carnegie Hall as part of the 2018 New York Wind Band Festival. The invitation had come before the Feb.14 shooting in which 17 students were killed, two of them music students and one a member of the Wind Symphony. In the three weeks following the tragedy, the ensemble decided to go ahead with the performance.

The Raa students were clearly moved and so was their band director, Barbie Townsend. “I know Mr. Kaminsky, the Stoneman Douglas band director,” she said. “When I was first setting out and didn’t know what I was doing, he was the first one who grabbed me and told me what to do.” At times, fighting back tears, Townsend explained to her band students that emotion is an integral part of the music making process and the Stoneman Douglas students provided an exceptional example.

“It’s amazing, especially to play through all those different emotions they might be going through and still be able to put on such a musical performance. So on top of the right notes and the right rhythms and good tone and making sure your jaw is open and that we’re playing the phrase correctly, we also have to think about why are we doing this.”

To help make the point to her students, Townsend drew upon the words of pianist Karl Paulnack. While serving as the director of the Boston Conservatory’s music division, he made a speech to the parents of incoming freshman.

He said “art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basicneed of human survival.

Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.”

With that sentiment in the air, the students rehearsed several pieces of music while searching for a deeper message.

Read the rest of the story by visiting the Tallahassee Democrat

or read more by downloading the article here