For Children’s Sake--Don’t Stop the Music

The children sat on folding metal chairs with music stands in front of them. In cases on the floor were school-issued instruments, scratched and dented, as if accidentally run over by a lawn mower.

And then, in walked Mrs. Palmer.

Old Mrs. Palmer--the screechy-voiced, baton-wielding conductor of the elementary school orchestra I played in as a child--as frumpy as ever with her Miss Clairol black hair and flowery dress.

“Anna-one-anna-two!” she yelled at the orchestra members--including me, the only adult seated there--as the group began playing a hauntingly awful version of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

When it was over, Mrs. Palmer scanned the group approvingly, as if it were the New York Philharmonic.

“OK, good! Now, let’s do it again and watch the tempo!”

That’s when I woke up, wondering what it all meant.

*

Of course, dreaming that I had just heard “Pomp and Circumstance” played horribly isn’t that weird. Just about every rendition of the piece I’ve ever heard--played at every graduation ceremony I’ve ever attended--has been played that way.

Perhaps the composer actually made that notation into the music. (Molto Gravo: Flutes a half-tone above the violins; clarinets a half-tone above trombones; all play at different tempos . )

In truth, there is perhaps nothing on the planet that can undo years of good psychotherapy quite like budding young musicians scratching away at this particular piece.

Still, Craig Newton of Simi Valley--who’s no psychoanalyst but nevertheless has plenty to say on the subject--doesn’t think my dream was a nightmare. The real nightmare, Newton says, would be not hearing children play the piece at all.

“If we’re lucky now, maybe one-fifth of the schools have some kind of music program going,” he says. “There’s this attitude: ‘We’ve got to have computers.’ Well, computers are great, but not at the total sacrifice of art and music.

“If kids don’t get exposed to music,” he asks, “how are they going to learn to play?”

*

Newton’s question--coming as it does from a man committed to fostering music education in the local public schools--is more than rhetorical.

It’s also being asked by other Simi Valley residents, particularly those watching to see what kind of turnout there will be this Saturday. That’s when the Simi Valley Cultural Assn. holds open auditions for young musicians interested in participating in an upcoming youth concert.

As a part of the association’s summer-long Festival of the Arts, which Newton will take part in and begins next month, the concert will feature “outstanding musicians, ages 9 to 18, from Simi Valley and Moorpark,” according to association board member Jan Glasband.

Now the problem is, how to locate them.

“We’ve already found a 16-year-old virtuoso violinist from Simi,” says Glasband, adding that the auditions--open to instrumentalists as well as vocalists--were extended through June 19.

“That violinist can’t be by himself,” she says. “There have got to be kids out there who are gifted. We just need to find them.”

*

Newton, too, knows there are kids out there who are gifted. Unfortunately, he says, the majority haven’t had the opportunity to learn about different instruments--much less choose one for themselves.

It certainly isn’t the smorgasbord it was when he was a kid.

He picked up his first instrument, a flute, in second grade. Pretty soon, orchestra teachers were handing him other instruments and saying: “Here, try this. We don’t have anyone who can play it.”

“It became almost like a disease,” says Newton, who is proficient on eight instruments, including piano, trombone, mandolin and saxophone.

“I just kept adding more and more. But the thing was, I really never had a way to put it all together until this program.”

The program in question is one Newton has been taking to public elementary schools throughout the county for the last several years, introducing children to orchestral and other instruments, as well as telling them about the history of various familiar pieces.

He’ll be giving a similar program during the festival.

And how musically savvy are the kids?

“They don’t know the difference between a trumpet and a trombone,” he says. “If they don’t see them on MTV, they don’t know what they are.”

As discouraging as that sounds, Newton and members of the Simi Valley Cultural Assn. aren’t at all prepared to despair. There are signs, they say, that give them reason to hope:

Local PTAs are raising money for in-school concerts like Newton’s.

Young musicians are calling to find out more about auditioning.

And, of course, there is the most encouraging sign of all.

“All kids love music, and when they hear it you just see that look on their faces,” Newton says. “You can’t suppress that.”

Anyone know where I can buy tickets to hear “Pomp and Circumstance”?