Percussion Quartet

Last fall I set foot in my first elementary school classroom in over 30 years.  I became a volunteer with Pacific Symphony’s elementary school partnership program, Class Act.  The symphony’s core purpose is to “enrich the human spirit through world-class symphonic music and community engagement”.  They accomplish this through a series of events directed to elementary school students and their families designed to  increase awareness of, and involvement with, classical music.

I love this idea having grown up with classical music myself.  I went through a rigorous piano study course as a child and also sang in choirs.  While I may not have appreciated all the practice, study, performance, and testing; choirs to this day give me a sense of community and belonging and the piano education left me with a love and appreciation of classical music.  I didn’t realize until recently that these experiences also taught me the importance and benefits of discipline, help build my confidence, allowed me to explore and discover the leader within me, and made me a better team player.  Skills that are mostly learned through sports these days can also be learned through music education.  Music education is just not as prevalent.

But I do digress.  The Class Act program explores a new theme and composer and this year it’s symphonic storytelling and Peter Tchaikovsky.  Yes, it’s February and I’m still listening to music from the Nutcracker Suite, LOL.  I’m assigned to an elementary school and will stay with that school as long as they are in the program.  In order to explore the different symphonic instruments the school is assigned a new Pacific Symphony musician each year.  This year I’m working with a percussionist, which is way cool because a percussionist has many instruments in their toolkit.

I’m officially called an “Ambassador” and my job is to assist the musician, mostly in delivering the lessons.  For every lesson the musician, myself, and our dedicated parent volunteers set up a drum set, tambourine, cymbals, cowbell, glockenspiel/marimba, and boomwhackers (which the kids get to play with).

Percussion instruments are either rhythm based or melody based, the latter of which is kind of like playing a piano.  So I fell in love with the one instrument I could relate to, the melodic marimba, and in fact got to play it a little bit during one of our breaks.  I’m still trying to convince my husband that I need one at home.

The other night my husband and I attended another event of the Class Act program, Family Night, where the musician invites 3 other musicians in his instrument class to perform for the students and their parents.  That’s right, a percussion quartet.  The melody instruments (marimbas) played classical pieces rewritten for just the marimba.  Both are a bit unusual.  As much as I love the marimba it was the rhythm instruments that stole my heart and the heart of the kids.  I can’t decide if my favorite was the quartet of tambourines, which they opened with, or the quartet of buckets, which they closed with.  Or the snare drums played with brushes to imitate the sound of a train.  All in all a very fun evening.

I haven’t written a gratitude post in quite awhile, but it’s what I think of as I write this.  Some time ago I made an unsuccessful attempt at volunteering for a program like this.  I was disappointed I couldn’t make it happen, but accepted that it wasn’t meant to be.  Turns out it just wasn’t the right time nor the right route.  I had to re-join a community college choir I sang in 10 years ago and then befriend one of its members to make the right connections.  I’m grateful for the circuitous route because it brought all this music back into my life, introduced me to like-minded people who are becoming fast friends, and gave me an opportunity to be a part of something special – the Class Act Program.  You never know – a student we’re working with today may become a future Pacific Symphony musician.  And wouldn’t that be way cool.