North Bands

Belleville Bands Festival Day

This year, we will again hold our own "Band Festival" with only Belleville Bands, South MS, North MS and BHS.  7th and 8th grade bands will participate in this festival.  We are doing this for two reasons; Education and Cost.  With transportation costs rising, it has been more and more expensive to bus our students to and from band festival.  In addition, the cost of the entry fee has risen greatly in the past three years.  Beyond the cost issue is the educational value.  I have been very disappointed in the educational value of the festival format as run by the organization, MSBOA (Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association), in the past years.  I am not talking about the ratings or how we rank with other schools.  That is not important.  What is important is what we get out of it both from a student's point of view and the teacher's point of view.  Each year we come back from festival and look at the comments from the judges.  I see mostly a grocery list of problems that I am well aware of and that the students have heard from me before.  I feel that I want a clinician to work with the group for a period of time on some of these issues.  The kids need another viewpoint or another angle of how to approach the same goal.  In addition, I need as part of my growth as a teacher, to have comments directed at my conducting and my rehearsal techniques. 

The instrumental teachers of our district are attempting to address these issues by using the funds that we would have spent on band festival and hiring our own clinicians to work with our groups.  Each band, (7th and 8th) would play for a panel.  After the concert, one clinician would go with the group to a different room and work with that group for about 1/2 hour.  There would be one clinician who would be solely commenting on the teacher.  The performance would take place in our own auditorium so we would be eliminating the need for transportation.  We feel that this format would be more beneficial to the program.