Indoor Persecution?!

As I have mentioned before, I work with a high school band program outside of work. This year, the program is expanding to include a competition indoor percussion program. Our group is made up of 20 band students who play a variety of wind instruments in the regular school ensembles, but have chosen to take on learning percussion instruments as part of an extra ensemble. Since I was (am?) a band geek and played mallet percussion in high school, college and in an extra ensemble outside of high school, this is a very exciting development for me!

The title of this post comes from a funny incident earlier in the school year when David was trying to promote the program and get students to sign up if they were interested. As with most schools, announcements are done in the morning when students and teachers are getting ready to start a class. An announcement had been written about the percussion program. The person who reads announcements (ranked first in the senior class) read the following:
"Any student interested in participating in indoor persecution should sign up in the band office"

Check that: it definitely says percussion.

Big difference, huh?


Anyway, we had our first informational meeting with the students last week and gave out music. As instructors, generally David and I don't look forward to listening to kids just "bang out" parts while they try to learn them (we prefer it to be pretty I suppose); this was a completely different experience. It was SO COOL to hear them working on learning a completely new instrument, and even more exciting when they asked me about how to play parts. "Does this sound right?" "Where's the C on this keyboard?" "Ms. Beam, can you come listen to me play?"

That, my friends, is music to my ears.