Thomas J. West Music

The majority of my career has been as a Jr./Sr. High Band Director. Band programs, due to the marching band experience, have built-in opportunities for ensembles to develop as a community outside of the four walls of the band room. Students, teachers, and parents often are as socially invested in their participation in the band program as they are academically. Typically, band students feel connected to each other in a way that is different from a normal classroom environment because they have shared experiences that bring them together in a common interest that transcends the classroom.

Other performing ensembles at the secondary level do not have this built-in community building as part of their normal yearly schedule. Here are some suggestions for getting choral and orchestra programs to experience the same kind of personal investment in a group musical activity that bands experience.

Travel Brings People Together

Traveling as an ensemble for the purpose of performance, whether it is to an adjudcation festival, a public performance away from school, a community performance, or a trip to a tourist attraction, can give students, supporting parents, and music staff the time and experiences they need to form bonds that transcend the classroom.

Richard Victor, Director of Bands at State College High School (PA) strongly advocates for not only band programs to travel, but for the entire music department to travel together. "Our primary activity is travel." Victor states. "We always travel with all of our top high school performing groups. Every year we travel to an adjudication with a Concert Band, Jazz Band, String Orchestra, Mixed Choir, Men’s Chorus and Women’s Chorus. Every three years we go to Europe with the Jazz Band, a Select Mixed Choir, and a String Ensemble. This creates the common bond of music with all of the students and their parents. Each group wants to represent the school and their own group with excellence. The students and their parents get to know and respect the students in other music groups. The end result is that the music department becomes the community . . not just the individual performing groups."

If your school doesn't have the personnel or resources to take yearly or international trips such as these, even day trips to local attractions to perform, or performing for civic events in your community can generate a lot of interest in your program while you build community among the students.

Create Opportunities to Bond Musically Outside of Class

Another effective way to build community is to form a function outside of school for ensembles to spend extended time together learning and rehearsing. Bands have the traditional "band camp" in the summer as a pre-season preparation period and bonding experience.

Kyle Weary, vocal director for the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland, advocates creating a Choir Camp for students before the school year starts. "Do it on a Saturday at the school." Weary suggests. "Play team building games, learn some new music, have a talent show.   Have the students bring money and get pizza and ice cream. Start small if that seems to big: have the men come by themselves.  Have the women come in by themselves.  Then get them all together. Have a pot-luck dinner for your students and their parents get them all to come together."

Other similar events include retreats, master classes, and visits by performing artists.

Creating Community Starts in the Classroom

Tom Carter, experienced vocal and choral coach, believes that community as a performing ensemble begins in the place where they function together the most - the choral room. He states that many components of a good choral program create community as part of the process. Some components that create community include:

• Repertoire Choice: Is the music rewarding to sing? Challenging but not overwhelming? Fun, interesting, engaging to listen to and think about? Rhythmic and melodic hooks on occasion? Humor? Is there variety of sound and substance, both musically and textually?
• Group Expressivity: Are performers connected to music and text? Are they moving in relation to their mental/emotional/musical impulses, or are they standing relatively still. Are their faces authentically alive with the specific meaning and poignancy of the text and its musical setting, or the interpretation they have assigned the piece?Or is their focus more on perfection, singing well, or making the audience believe they're authentically engaged? Are they having a powerful, poignant, and truly joyful experience in front of their potential new members in the audience?
• The Director's Facial Expression During Performance: Is the director truthfully engaged with the soul of the music, allowing their face to do whatever it wants to do as they engage with music and choir? Or is their face modeling what they want the singers to do vis a vis expression?
• The Rehearsal/Performance Environment: Is it a positive, supportive, and safe place – consciously created and maintained by the director – where each member knows that they will not be teased or shamed by anyone? Or do members gossip or insult each other, with no meaningful response from the director? Does the director shame and intimidate, even throwing tantrums or rages on occasion? Does the director have good boundaries and time management, always respecting the singers by doing their best but not taking themselves too seriously?
• The Director's Best Practices: Does the director maintain an excitement and interest in learning state-of-the-art conducting and teaching techniques? Do they look at the overall process, celebrating progress and constantly working toward a shared goal? Or do they incur tension and a stultifying atmosphere of perfectionism in which they constantly seek out and fix "mistakes"? 
• The Director's Overall Approach: Does the director see all humans in the room as valued co-creators working toward a shared artistic goal? Or is it more about the director doing this, that, and the other as they strive to craft a certain sound from these human 'organ pipes'? Is "control" their inner mantra and outer affect as they work towards "perfection," or are they empowering the singers to be co-equal artists in the process, everyone tapping into the same well of shared humanity which inspired the words and music in the first place?Do they see themselves as a "Good Director" or a "God Director"? A guide or a guru?
• Opportunities for Performance: Are they plentiful? Does the director support lots of different sorts of performance opportunities, or do they stick primarily with two or three seasonal concerts per year? Other performances might include singing for seniors, service organizations, festivals, other schools (who might do a joint concert), private parties, academic functions, sports banquets, etc. The director can also create a tradition around some of these – a bi/annual tour, for example, or a Madrigal Dinner, or even an 'Evening with the Chamber Choir,' during which the choir performs the year's rep along with various solo and small ensemble acts (lighter/comedic fare included) that they put together ... while the audience enjoys dinner or desserts, perhaps. Even going to private/organizational holiday parties and singing traditional holiday music can be a great thing for the group to look forward to on a yearly basis. It can also really help to pay for that tour!

It is very evident from Mr. Carter's extensive experience that, as with most things in a classroom, the community that is created for the ensemble is primarily the result of what the ensemble director does and does not do. Attitude is everything, and if the director creates opportunities for community, community will result. Read more great choral tips on Mr. Carter's choral coaching website.

Sharing Musical Experiences Builds Community

In conclusion, the best way for music ensembles at any level to build community is to have meaningful, enjoyable, and sustained experiences performing music together. The by-product of great ensemble music making is a sense of community, as all ensemble members must function as a team, or parts of a whole. There are as many ways to support community-building as there are schools that support performing ensembles. Innovative ways of supporting ensemble growth are always out there - share some of yours.

This article (c) 2010 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before republishing on or offline.