A Room With a View.

Since Sierra Madre School expanded to include grades 7 and 8 a few years ago, the middle school part of the school population has occupied the farthest east campus in the Pasadena Unified School District. Originally called Sierra Mesa School, it was, for many years home to Maranatha High School which leased the property from PUSD. The District reclaimed it to use it for the expanded Sierra Madre grades, and the Instrumental Music program found a home in one of the many aging portable "bungalows" on the site. For awhile the Music Theater class occupied the other half of this double long structure, and it became affectionately known as "The Palace".

The Palace roof leaked, the floors has spongy places that felt like they could fall through, and at least one window a year would be broken by a stray soccer ball, but over the five or so years we were in that room, the orchestra grew from a handful of kids to a rowdy, talented group numbering almost 30. We made music in that room. Little by little, note by note, squeak by squeak, the year would progress, and by spring we would sound pretty good. Kids who could barely read notes in 5th grade got it by the end of 6th, and then they were off and running.

Each year the orchestra has gotten bigger and better. To build the program, I took to accepting pretty much anyone into the class who had a mind to be there. This could be anyone, including kids who had never played anything but maybe a few weeks of violin somewhere back in third grade and wanted to learn drums, a number of obsessed guitar players, some kids who had never played any instrument ever, and some who had not played for several years.

To accomodate this rag-tag group I would do things like take band or orchestra arrangements and pull out a part for the guitars to play, or tell the budding drummers to make up a part. French Horn parts became alto sax parts, and String Bass parts sometimes were played on Electric Bass. Sometimes I just let those guitar players sit on the porch and jam while the rest of us worked on orchestra music. Some days I opened the room at lunch and let the rockers hang in there and play electric instruments and drum set. Anything to keep the music going, to keep the kids coming back, and to make them feel that the Palace, funky as it was, was theirs.

Then in 2008 a bond measure passed in Pasadena allowing for upgrades to all the schools in the district, and, miraculously, a complete new school on the Sierra Madre Middle School site. In the plans is a whole Music Suite, with ample space for both the Instrumental Music and the Choral/Theater programs. As exciting as this is, it was still with a bit of nostalgic sadness that I packed up the Palace last spring so that we could move to another, smaller, portable on the upper edge of the campus beyond the construction zone.

Jury Duty at the end of this summer prevented me from getting into the room much before school started, but when I finally set up chairs and stands I stood back and thought, if we get 25 we'll be fine. Any more and it will be tight. Well, thirty kids signed up for Instrumental Music, and for the first three weeks the Air Conditioning in the tiny room didn't work at all. Part of that time the temperatures were hitting triple digits in the afternoons, so the orchestra decamped for a few days to the 8th grade Science teacher's room where we played Rhythm Bingo and listened to orchestral music and learned some theory. Tuesday this week, I arrived to find the AC guy just finishing up, and the room COLD!

So here we are, in our new room. 31 Students now, as we have added a couple more violinists. Our windows (which overlook the construction site where the old Palace still sits awaiting removal or demolition)  will not be broken by soccer balls, because they are far from the PE field. The roof does not leak. There is barely room to bow, and the trumpet players were shy about playing out at first, because they were blowing directly into the back of the flute players' heads. But note by note, and squeak by squeak, we have started to make some music. This week we have been doing playing tests, with each student playing exerpts from the one piece we have focussed our attention on this month. This testing, which sends jitters and nervousness through the whole group, results in sudden leaps of improvement in the overall sound. Whether it's due to the extra practicing that goes on in the days before the test, or just the attention I am able to give each player when his or her turn comes to fix little problems, I don't know. But the shiver that stands my arm hairs on end when I hear this group, in October mind you, is not coming from the AC.