By Dalton Salisbury
Many students at LREI consider the music room as a second home, a place where they can let out their creativity and practice their chosen instruments during classes and free periods. Yet any frequent visitor will tell you that the quality of the gear in the music room is sometimes lacking, with much of the gear (instruments, amplifiers, and cables) either broken or in bad shape.
Junior Alegba Celis-Etienne can be seen practicing piano in the music room almost every day. Often, Celis-Etienne will spend his lunch period working to perfect another jazz classic. In addition, he plays in both school bands as well as in the renowned jazz quartet, The Jazz Buds. “If you’re going to be in the music room, it should be treated like an art room, not like the cafeteria.” says Celis-Etienne, who is fed up with the “lack of respect” students have for the music room. He began to list off the gear that stood victim to this disrespect. “Being a pianist, the two pianos need to be fixed, most of the amps are broken just because of people being stupid with the equipment.” He insisted that having improved gear “would make class go a lot smoother” citing instances where classes were delayed due to faulty gear.
Another frequent presence in the music room is junior drummer Max Rubenstein. Another member of the infamous musical act, the Jazz Buds, Rubenstein has a lot to say about the current state of the music room. “Things are being broken so quickly and it’s hard to really keep track of everything, and there is still gear that is yet to be fixed.” Max is a strong believer that the key to revitalizing the music room is to get the broken instruments repaired. He also emphasized that it is extremely important for visitors to treat the music room and its gear kindly, citing this for the increase in broken gear. “People don’t have enough respect for the music room and I just think, that they don’t realize that they’re not the ones who actually pay for the equipment.” As a frequent Coffeehouse performer, Rubenstein argues that the ever-decreasing quality of school’s gear has had a detrimental effect on the sound quality of his performances. “We are the people who really use the equipment the most, so when [the gear] is not functioning it prevents other people from performing.”
LREI High School Music Director Vin Scialla is usually in charge of replacing and repairing this gear. He said that in any school music room, damage to the instruments is inevitable. “We just had a little injury to the piano,” said Scialla. “The pedals had broken off the bottom, which was the first time I’ve seen that happen.” This had been a common complaint among frequenters of the music room, who insist that the broken pedal makes it almost impossible for pianists to rehearse. Scialla went on to explain how the school goes about replacing and fixing gear, using the piano as an example. He explained that first he must “put a note into the business office” requesting that an expert must come in to diagnose the problem within the instrument. From there, the expert gives the school an estimate on the cost of the repairs. The request is then approved by the principal. “Repairing is one thing, improving equipment is another,” Scialia said.
While having someone completely set up and improve an instrument can be very expensive, doing some small necessary repairs can be both time and cost effective. Yet no matter the difference in these three opinions, one thing remains clear to those who use the room most often: students must have more respect for the music room. “Nobody’s going to go into the bio lab and start messing up the test tubes and beakers,” said junior Max Rubenstein. “So treat the music room the same way.”