Balancing Balance: Silver AGAIN!

Yesterday my middle school orchestra made its annual pilgrimage to the Forum Music Festival, and took home for the 5th year in a row a silver rating. This means we are in the top 20% of middle school music ensembles nationally, and for that I am quite proud. But we were sure we had a shot at the gold rating this year, and we are all a little disappointed.

What we got dinged on were things we can control, and things we can't really control, and we got dinged for things that, while they may have been less than gold to the judges, represented HUGE improvements over the course of this past year.

Number one on the judges' written comments had to do with balance. This is something we struggle with constantly due to the size and make-up of our orchestra. In a group of 45, there are 20 strings, 20 winds and 5 percussionists. 6 first violins, 9 seconds, 2 violas, 2 cellos and a bass. We also have for the first time 2 trombones AND a tuba and a couple pretty decent piano players. A horn, 3 alto saxes, a tenor sax, 3 trumpets and 4 clarinets round it all out. So balance is always a challenge. The alto saxes alone can drown out the violins without even trying. Our balance has improved over this year. The kids are sensitive to their part in the whole sound, but they don't always have the skill level to achieve the sounds needed. How does a tenor sax fit into the sound of a symphony orchestra anyway? The cheap violins some of the kids are playing on came from nameless online places without proper setup and crummy bows. Almost all the string instruments are strung up with old strings. Some don't sound that great. I tuned every string instrument myself, and we got dinged for having out-of-tune open strings. They wanted the strings to use more bow. And all I can think is: they should have seen how much bow they used to not use!

Forum Festivals did send around an email/newsletter a while back with some tips about how to improve the sound of any ensemble. We took those suggestions to heart and learned how to breath together, how to listen for the melody and back off if you don't have it, how to start and release together. We talked about and worked on bow placement. We worked on dynamics, and did receive a compliment about that. The percussionists learned how to work together. We worked on breathing, keeping lines going. Everywhere and at all times we fine-tuned pitch. We learned about subdividing beats and finishing phrases. We matched note length and articulation. We got all the bows moving in the same direction.

I haven't listened to the recorded comments yet, but I am really hoping to hear some acknowledgement of those accomplishments.The kids and know what we've done. We know where we were in August, and we know how far we have come. Maybe it would be a neat thing to have a fall festival, where the same judges hear you and then hear you again in the spring to see how much progress has been made. That probably won't ever happen, but thinking about that progress over the course of the year does help me stay focused on doing well for its own sake.

It's been a gratifying journey this year, and I am so proud of these musicians. If balance is important to music, it is also important to life, and I have to balance the work we did with the outcome and realize that top 20% in a nation of school musicians is pretty good. When I think of each individual student's growth and the vast improvement of the whole group, I am overwhelmed. Balance that against the snapshot we present at this festival, and it all pretty much evens out.