By Dan White – Special to the Sydenham Current
Prior to rehearsal with the Wallaceburg Concert Band this past Tuesday, I sat in the trombone section to chat with Steven Reeves. Steve is a talented trombone player who performs in the Wallaceburg Brass Quintet, WCB and Lambton Concert Bands with me. As a result, I hear him a lot. He has a full sound and can play with enough volume to peel paint off the wall at 5,000 paces! I joke with him that he has managed to weaponize the trombone. But in fairness, Steve can also play with a delicate sound and in the quintet, he balances with the other four instruments and is a valued member of this, and all of the ensembles he is a part of. In the Brass Factory, he can fill a room with his big band sound.
I sat down with Steve to get caught up on his experience at the UWO brass day this past Sunday. For the past few years Joni and I have joined several other area musicians in attending this one-day workshop. It is a great networking opportunity and a wonderful learning experience. Unfortunately, Western changed the date from January to late November and, like most musicians at this time of year, Joni and I had several conflicts on that day. Steve had to cut the workshop short to return to Wallaceburg for an evening rehearsal, but he went and had a fabulous lesson with Professor Denis Jiron.
As we were chatting about the lesson and what Steve took away from it, the conversation drifted to reflecting on the decline of music programs at the post-secondary level. When Steve was auditioning at Humber for their music program a couple of decades ago, he was in a pool of around 70 trombones challenging for a handful of posts in the program. When I was at Western in the ’80s, the faculty was quite large, boasting a few dozen trombones and six tubas. In chatting with Denis, Steve learned that even Western, one of the largest music programs in the country, had only four trombones a few years ago. It has now rebounded somewhat, but nowhere near the numbers that it had.
In a quick search online, it is easy to find one news story after another discussing the decline of music programs from elementary schools all the way through to post-secondary. The question Steve and I pondered was why?
School boards continue to cut funding to music programs, justifying the decision because of the cost of the programs. Yet there are a multitude of studies demonstrating the direct correlation between studying music and mental health benefits, and those same boards give lip service to addressing mental health concerns in our youth.
Following are a few short excerpts from an article written in May of this year. It is worth a read.
“…learning music supports a wide range of student development. It strengthens memory, sharpens concentration, and has even been linked to improved performance in mathematics and languages. Emotionally, music encourages patience, discipline, and confidence. Socially, it fosters teamwork, empathy, and cultural awareness. And yet, despite these well-documented benefits, music education is quietly disappearing from many classrooms around the world.”
“When music education is reduced or removed, the effects may not be immediately visible, but they are real. Without regular exposure to music, students miss out on opportunities for creative expression and emotional exploration. Skills that music helps nurture like focus, collaboration, and persistence may go underdeveloped.”
On a practical level, can society truly afford to ignore the benefits of arts education? It helps to develop a more rounded, compassionate, creative, empathetic, thoughtful individual. Arts fill the chasm that technology and social media create.
Arts in schools bring students together, enhance celebrations and ease challenging times, developing collaborative teams who identify challenges and create solutions through a process of discussion and negotiation.
Imagine this time of year without the opportunity to attend live performances.
Many of our holiday traditions revolve around performing arts that bring us together to celebrate and strengthen our sense of community.
This holiday season, I urge you to consider taking your family to a play or concert near you. As I noted in my previous column, there are a multitude of performances going on from now until late December and many of them are free of charge. You may even inspire a young family member to explore arts.
And please, take a moment to bring older loved ones who are not as mobile as they would like to be. I know from our seniors’ tours with the quintet and the Oktoberfest quartet just how meaningful attending live performances can be for us as we age.
See you at the performance!
