Thinking on Your Feet

Putting a hundred 5^th graders who I’ve never met on stage with a high school jazz band I’ve never met to perform four jazz pieces I’ve arranged, all with two 45-minute classes to teach each from scratch and with one half-hour combined jazz band/rehearsal on stage before Friday’s performance, could be a sure recipe for disaster. Or at least great deal of stress and anxiety. The truth? I love it! And I’m totally relaxed. 

 

I was concerned that while one 5^th grade group was playing my Cookie Jar arrangement on Orff instruments, I really didn’t have a clear plan for the other 20-kid 5^th grade group. Yet. But a clearly defined problem is a springboard for the creative faculties to kick into gear. 

Today for the second class with both groups, they were combined. I had one little body percussion idea for the “what to do?” group and we started there. By the end, we had three sub-groups do a different pattern, create a little dance, sing a new part of the song, choreograph the three lines switching places and end with a dramatic revelation that it was Lucas that indeed stole the cookies from the cookie jar. All of this happened in about 35 minutes with the entire group of 40 kids and the instrumentalists also learning a quick new riff. Talk about thinking on your feet!

 

Not boasting here–well, maybe a little. But more to acknowledge the way I like to work, in the heat of the moment, with ideas emerging in the midst of experimentation. By the end, the kids also had the wheels turning and several came up and suggested, “I have an idea! How about if we…?”

 

Now I’m about to come into a group playing Dvorak’s Going Home and try to figure out how to add some improvisation ideas. Which I’ve never done and forgot that I was supposed to do this (it was suggested to me yesterday afternoon). But if we have faith in music’s ability to reveal itself, anything can happen.

 

I’ll let you know.  

PS Just did it. It went great.