The Dover Post
It’s elementary, dear music fans!
CR, Lake Forest districts present concerts by their youngest musicians

By Joanna Wilson
Lifestyles editor
The Dover Post
May 18, 2005
http://www.doverpost.com/PostArchives/05-18-05/index.html

This Friday evening, local music lovers, consider this: are you feeling jazzy or brassy?

If your answer’s jazzy, you might like to head on down to the Lake Forest School District. If it’s brassy, you might check out the concert at Caesar Rodney High School. Either way, you’ll get a preview of the future — no crystal ball needed — as fifth- and sixth-graders from the two districts show off their budding talents in performances that have been months in the making.

Their band directors, Maureen McDermott of Caesar Rodney and Joe Baione of Lake Forest’s Central Elementary, offered a preview of what audiences can expect to hear.

Caesar Rodney’s Spring Gala

For the fifth year, McDermott will be leading a combined band of 175 students, ages 10 to 11, from her district’s five elementary schools — W. Reily Brown, W.B. Simpson, Nellie Stokes, Star Hill and Allen Frear. Each school has been rehearsing their pieces separately since March; on Friday morning, they’ll come together for one mass rehearsal before taking the stage that night.

When Fifer and Postlethwait middle schools opened for grades six through eight, McDermott, a music teacher with 13 years experience who also plays violin with the Dover Symphony, got the assignment to teach music to fifth-graders in all five schools, spending one day a week with each.

“I thought it would be a very cool idea to put them all in one concert,” she said, adding with pride that her kids have been playing only eight months — but the pieces they’ll perform aren’t typical choices for beginners. “I like to raise the bar.”

To inspire them, McDermott picks music they’ll enjoy, such as Rob Grice’s “Dragonslayer,” a vigorous, “very percussive piece,” or the slow, sweetly melodic Muppet tune “The Rainbow Connection.” Then there’s “Romulus,” another percussion piece with a marching military beat that requires the band to play by section, with woodwinds and brass changing places. And just for fun, she put in a bit of early rock ‘n’ roll: “Wooly Bully.”

The show’s capper, “Patriotic Bits and Pieces,” brings together eight familiar favorites including “America the Beautiful,” “Yankee Doodle” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

“That’s the greatest challenge, because they’re changing songs,” she said.

Retired CR band director Eddie Englehart will serve as master of ceremonies for the concert, which McDermott hopes will draw a cross section of community members to hear her students.

“This is the foundation. This is where it all begins,” she said. “And they never cease to amaze me, what they can do.”

Lake Forest’s jazz concert

Baione, who plays jazz himself in Delaware, Philadelphia and New York as well as serving as band director to about 200 Central fifth- and sixth-graders, wanted to bring a little extra culture to Kent County while introducing his students to the joys of jazz. So he founded one of the few elementary school jazz bands in the country and won a three-year MBNA grant to start the annual Benny Golson Central Sixth Grade Jazz Band Concert, named for the legendary jazz player and composer who performed with them the first two years.

“I wanted to give the kids an opportunity to perform for the community,” Baione said, adding it’s never too early to learn to appreciate and play jazz, a deep-rooted cornerstone of American music.

This year, Baione’s students will have a new inspiration: New York recording artist and trumpeter Duane Eubanks, brother of the Tonight Show’s Kevin Eubanks, a member of Mulgrew Miller’s Quartet and a schoolmate of Baione’s. Minnesota-based jazz pianist and recording artist Larry McDonough, who arranges music for young jazz musicians, also will join the band to premiere the bluesy piece “Moanin.’” Last year, McDonough arranged and performed Golson’s “I Remember Clifford” as a jazz waltz with the Central students.

Baione will lead his 45-member student jazz band through other numbers including “Jazz Cats;” “Killer Joe,” a Golson piece about a “killer” sax player; early rock tunes “Wipeout” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll;” and the bouncy “Mambo No. 5.” “That’s probably their favorite,” he said.

Vibraphonist Baione also will perform with Eubanks and McDonough, plus his bassist brother Tom Baione, his dad, alto sax/clarinet player James Baione and Philadelphia drummer Webb Thomas.

If you go…

Who: Fifth grade music students from Caesar Rodney’s five elementary schools

What: A Spring Gala band concert

When: 7 p.m. Friday, May 20

Where: Caesar Rodney High School Auditorium, Old North Road, Camden

Admission: Free and open to the public

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If you go…

Who: The Lake Forest Central Elementary School Jazz Band and special guests

What: The Third Annual Benny Golson Central Sixth Grade Band Concert

When: 7 p.m. Friday, May 20

Where: Lake Forest Central Elementary School, Killens Pond Road, near Felton

Admission: Free and open to the public, donations accepted

Information/reserved tickets: Call the school at 284-5810; seating limited, reservations suggested

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