When joining the all-Island band, elementary school students are faced with a tough decision: what to play. Sometimes the decision is made by what their friends are playing, other times it’s by how the instrument looks, and, occasionally, how the instrument sounds.
Mateo Darack, a fifth grader at the Tisbury school, chose tuba. He first heard the booming instrument in a parade, he thinks, and knew immediately it was the one for him.
“I always liked low instruments, right when I heard it I knew I wanted to play it,” Mateo said during rehearsal on Wednesday. Next week Mateo and the rest of the band hit the big stage, the performing arts center at the regional high school, for the band’s annual spring concert on Thursday, May 12, beginning at 7 p.m.
Mateo is one of just two tuba players in the band. Saxophones are a popular instrument this year, and flutes have high appeal in the up-Island schools.
“We have a huge low brass section, I don’t know, I guess it’s all about that bass,” said Julie Schilling, the Tisbury School music teacher.
Ms. Schilling said when she was in third grade she chose the french horn. When that became too cumbersome to carry on the bus she switched to clarinet.
On Thursday over 200 fourth through eighth graders will perform. Songs will range from marches to classical to jazzy to pop. The seventh/eighth band will play a medley from West Side Story, and the all levels will come together to play a Star Wars song.
Near the end of rehearsal on Wednesday, Zach Tileston, the Edgartown and Oak Bluffs music teacher, approached the podium to conduct the fifth/sixth band on their next song.
“What day is it?” he asked the students. “May the Fourth be with you,” the students chimed back in unison.
Comments
Comment policy »