Middle School Music Festival Highlights Student-Artists
Tuesday morning sunshine was streaming through the skylight portion of the bowed roof on the Jacobson Exhibition Center at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Melting snow slid off the massive building’s edges in big chunks as a fleet of school buses began arriving from all corners of the district to deliver an elite force of middle school musicians.
They came to rehearse for last night’s All-City Middle School Music Festival. Besides the musicians a gallery of visual art was arranged for display in the building lobby. The annual fine arts event is a generous gift to Des Moines Public School from former school board member Marjorie Spevak that she just keeps on giving. You’ve probably heard the term student-athletes? Mrs. Spevak makes a regular point of honoring student-artists.
The musicians were divvied into a choir, a band and an orchestra and assigned separate practice spaces.
The band settled in at the Jacobson Center and after a rowdy arrival that was a mix of middle school hijinks and random, brassy tooting everyone got down to business under the direction of Richard Thimmesch, Director of Bands at Grandview University. Same thing next door with the singers where Stephen Sieck, Co-Director of Choirs at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, blended a strong, choral voice out of the 168 squeaky, changing ones that got off the bus sounding more like the moo-sic that’s heard in that 4H building every August. Meanwhile, Joshua Reznicow, Director of Orchestral Activities for the Linn-Mar Community School District, was working his magic with the stringy warm-up bleats coming from the Walnut Center, up near the sheep barns.
All told, nearly 400 kids from eleven schools were selected by their music teachers to participate. They’d all been practicing the program selections at their home schools since the 2nd semester began in January so they came well-prepared. But until yesterday many of them had never met one another, let alone played together. As they tumbled off the buses, most no bigger than a cello, clad in hoodies and tennis shoes and lugging their instruments and a change of clothes, the cavernous venue looked too big for them. Each school’s delegation arrived and improvised campsite in a corner where backpacks and other gear were stowed.
By the time they broke for dinner each of the three ensembles was ready. They ate and horsed around. Then they changed into their blacks-and-whites. And finally, after weeks of separate practice, school-by-school; and one long crash, mass rehearsal, they made music together – enough to fill that big barn of a recital hall and then some.
Ryan Rowley is the district’s Fine Arts Coordinator; the DMPS Music Man, you could say. And he orchestrated quite a show last night, as per tradition. There weren’t seventy-six trombones (only seven) or a parade. But there were rows and rows of virtuosos and horns of every shape and size, etc. Yes folks, we got music, lots of it, right here in River City. Thanks to Spevak. That starts with ‘S’ and that stands for SCHOOLS!
Outside on the Jacobson Center entrance plaza is a sign that proclaims BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE. It wasn’t put there with this specific event in mind. But it might as well have been.
