Free Music Lessons Hit Right Notes With Youths

Twelve-year-old Reggie Castaneda sat with his trombone to his lips and waited for his cue.

“Sit up straight. Don’t breathe until we’re ready to play,” teacher Corinne Griffiths said. “Listen to the notes--listen!”

Under Griffiths’ direction, Reggie and seven other Atwood neighborhood youths have spent their Tuesday mornings this summer learning to play band instruments at Placentia’s Parque de Los Ninos.

With used instruments that Griffiths rented and borrowed from several sources, the eight 11- and 12-year-olds have learned to squeak and oom-pah their way through standard tunes such as “Hot Cross Buns” and “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Griffiths, a sixth-grade teacher at Anaheim’s Glenview Elementary School as well as an accomplished woodwind player, came up with the idea of the free summer lessons after a local middle school band director complained that she was having trouble recruiting musicians.

“She said she had only one trombone coming in, and she needed trombones,” Griffiths said of Rita Watson, director of the band at Bernardo Yorba Middle School in Yorba Linda.

So the 44-year-old teacher turned to her class to find students who might be willing and able to learn an instrument.

“At Bernardo, they needed more trombone players, and we thought we could be those players,” budding musician Reggie said during a break from practice.

Another trombonist, Roy DeHerrera, said he has enjoyed the summer session so much that he doesn’t even mind practicing. “It gives me something to do,” he said.

That is exactly what Griffiths had in mind.

“If I can keep them in music, I can help them have a group of kids that are good kids,” Griffiths said. “That will keep them from being bored and leaning toward gangs and drugs.”

Watson sings the summer project’s praises. “It’s a great, great program for those kids,” she said Wednesday.

Griffiths, she said, “has more patience than any four people. I’m amazed by her. She knew those kids needed a place to be a part of something and to be successful at something.”

As for the students, they said they are eager to audition for the school band, which is divided by proficiency levels so that beginners are all but assured of being accepted, Watson said.

Frankie Cazessus, 12, said he plans to continue playing his tuba--an instrument he had never seen played until he picked one up.

He is undaunted by the teasing he gets about the size, shape and dented condition of the big bronze horn.

Watson speculates that the shortage of brass players is because youngsters are simply not familiar with the trombone and the tuba. “They don’t see those on MTV,” she said.