Culture
Thursday, May 24, 2018
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For themselves and for the town
Glenfield
Middle School
hosts concert
by GWEN OREL
orel@montclairlocal.news
Jonathan Ward plays every in-
strument in the orchestra.
Many of the student musicians
at Glenfield Middle School first
learned their instruments from
Ward, the school’s instrumental
music director.
He teaches an introduction
class to sixth graders.
The kids
also learn from
books. But how
do you learn an
embouchure for
a flute or a hand
position for a
violin from a
JONATHAN
book? You can’t.
WARD But before
you suspect that
the class at Glenfield is an elab-
orate scam like Harold Hill’s in
“The Music Man,” with his “think
system” that teaches the children
their instruments through the
power of thought, remember:
Ward plays every instrument in
the orchestra.
Every one.
“And I try to play as well as my
eighth-grade students,” he said,
after the students emptied the
band room when the bell rang this
past Friday. “I do that because I
have to demonstrate.”
Ward explained that he’s really
a drummer, and wouldn’t “gig out”
on the saxophone.
He has been teaching at Glen-
field for 16 years, and went there
too. “I sat right there,” he said with
a laugh, pointing at a chair. He
had a model in a teacher who also
played every instrument, John
Best, he said.
“He could hop on the piano, and
then he played the guitar, and then
he would pick up a saxophone and
then he would pick up a violin and
he was really comfortable on all of
them. I remember thinking, that’s
just so amazing,” said Ward.
In the introduction class, sixth
graders focus on one instrument
for an entire year. Should they
choose to continue, they can join
the orchestra and band in seventh
and eighth grade.
On Friday, the orchestra was re-
hearsing for its upcoming Spring
concert. A Beatles medley includ-
ed “Eleanor Rigby” and Hey Jude,”
while Ward went from section to
section demonstrating “The Sabre
Dance.”
There are about 80 people in
the orchestra, 40 in the jazz band
and 67 in the chorus.
JOINING A COMMUNITY
When you ask middle school
Send me in, coach: music as a team
Program
Notes
Gwen Orel
When I hear “You’re Never Fully
Dressed (Without a Smile)” from “Annie,”
I want to dance.
Not only because the number is catchy.
I want to dance because we danced to it
when we performed it with Ninth Grade
Girls Ensemble. And I still know the
steps. Some of the things you learn at that
age never leave you.
When I think of junior high, I think of
the concerts first.
When my stand partner Joe Marley was
bored in orchestra, he would start up the
theme to “Spiderman.”
My father would run down the aisle to
get a good picture of me in the orchestra
or chorus. Other dads did too. It was em-
barrassing, but not really. Singing and
playing with classmates, for classmates
The Glenfield Middle School Orchestra rehearses for its May 31 Spring Concert last week, under the direction of Jonathan Ward.
Jonathan Crawford practices the alto
sax.
orchestra musicians how much
they practice, they say once a
week.
But that’s not counting their
daily rehearsals for jazz band and
orchestra, which take place before
school and at the end of the day.
Seventh-grader Juniper Shel-
ley picked up the flute in Ward’s
class last year. She already played
piano, so she knew how to read
music. Playing flute allows her to
play with others, unlike piano.
“I love the moment when it’s
silent, just before all the noise be-
gins,” she said.
“I think the best thing about
playing in a group, especially
in school, is it’s a community,”
The author, front row second from left, in ninth-grade chorus at Millburn Junior High.
and parents, was a highlight of the year.
I was really happy, teasing a French
teacher, diagramming sentences, learn-
ing to draw with perspective.
But, I didn’t think so at the time.
Some kids at 13 look like young adults.
MUSIC
Aidan Dowell leads the trumpet
section.
said Aidan Dowell, an eighth-
grade trumpeter. Like Shelley, he
learned his instrument at Glen-
field. “There are several points
when we’re playing when it’s al-
most like you get goosebumps. It’s
a physical feeling.”
Jonathan Crawford, also an
eighth-grader, has been play-
ing alto saxophone for five and a
half years, and came to Glenfield
already proficient in the instru-
ment.
“It feels really, really good to
perform onstage, because you’re
performing for your teachers, and
friends and family,” Crawford said
adding that his great-great-grand-
father also played the saxophone.
Leaving Glenfield will mean
changes to their music. Crawford
will play saxophone in the Mont-
clair High School marching band
Others, like me, look like children.
When I was in eighth grade, my feet
were their full size, but the rest of me was
a foot shorter than my full height.
I felt like a letter “L.”
For a solid year I thought I was an Au-
Page B-5
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ADAM ANIK/FOR MONTCLAIR LOCAL
Glenfield Spring
Concert
Thursday, May 31, 7 p.m.
Glenfield Middle School
25 Maple Ave.
Tickets: online at
gms.booktix.com/
who meets his groups every day.
Fuentes said her hope is the
students enjoy singing and will
keep doing it later on in life. She
programs with music the kids can
connect to, and wants to involve
Juniper Shelley plays the flute.
more students.
“Singing is
and concert band. Dowell ex- a vulnerable
plained that as a freshman he can thing. There are
only take one elective at Montclair a lot out there
High School, and his schedule who think sing-
didn’t work out, so next year he is ing and choir is a
taking personal finance and web specific thing. . .
design. But he will play outside of and you can do GAYLE
school. a lot with the FUENTES
All three students, who are sec- voice. So, I’m
tion leaders in the orchestra, sing trying to spread that,” she said.
in the chorus, so never really leave Over the course of his time at
the stage. Glenfield, Ward has sent many
kids to Jazz House Kids and School
MORE THAN MUSIC of Rock, and written many recom-
Gayle Fuentes, the choral di- mendations to college and conser-
rector at Glenfield, is in her first vatories. But like Fuentes, he sees
year. Her biggest challenge, she music as more than skill. “What
said with a laugh, is getting the we’re really working with is future
students to stop talking. lawyers, and future doctors, and
“What amazed me coming into future parents. What you’re trying
the school is that they all want to to instill in them is not so much
sing, and that they’re willing to music. Music is very nice and it’s
learn,” she said. very useful,” he said. “But what I
Fuentes meets with the chorus think I’m teaching here is team-
every three days, unlike Ward, work.”
tumn and wore beige and brown to match
my freckles. Basically, I blended in to the
wall.
In the cafeteria one day, Moina Camp-
bell threw butter at me.
I had a few good friends, though. Eve,
Margaret and Tammy all sang in chorus
with me. Sometimes, walking home, we’d
sing in harmony.
I liked everyone in orchestra, too.
Later on, I played in competitive or-
chestras. Competitions for orchestra and
voice definitely have a place, but getting
in to those groups, rehearsing and per-
forming in them, adds a layer of anxiety
to music. That can spur you on to practice,
and better heights.
GWEN OREL/STAFF
But there’s a lot to be said for playing
for the fun of it.
But in school, chorus and orchestra
were just places to be with people I liked,
working on something together.
In the school orchestra, not everyone
was serious, or even took lessons. In ju-
See NOTES, B-11