Every music director has made the following exclamation either out loud or silently while lying awake at night: “Our ensemble needs to experience playing music together after all notes and rhythms have been mastered.” Why? This is when the magic of playing music together happens. We want our students to experience how the joy and art of collective music-making is taken to a heightened state when our minds no longer need to be concerned with “what note is that?” or “how does that rhythm go?” What’s more, when students can play their music effortlessly we can put our energy towards exploring and practicing the many nuances necessary for bringing the music to life. Too often directors and students spend their valuable class time going over things that should be tackled before or after a rehearsal.

LREI’s HS Wind Ensemble is no exception. Given the full and busy lives of most HS students, practicing and preparing our music for rehearsals often goes unattended. I challenged the musicians to have mastered three pieces from our repertoire by a certain date. The year to date has been a great one in terms of student participation and excitement for our music. However, I was particularly struck by how unaffected most students seem with not knowing their parts even many weeks after having the music.

At a recent rehearsal I challenged students to come to class knowing their music not for me but instead for each other. Our group is made up of wonderfully conscientious young people who if they saw a classmate in need would not hesitate to lend a helpful hand or a thoughtful word. Yet, playing wrong notes amongst their peers class after class doesn’t seem to phase them. I asked them to see this unpreparedness as “not having their friend’s back” if he or she were in need.  “You’re actually letting down those students who did put in the practice time and are prepared,” I said.

I set the deadline for mastery as a way of stating my expectations. However, when it came time to evaluate them something did not seem right about me asking them to demonstrate their mastery to me. After all I had made an impassioned request for them to do this for each other. Instead, I asked each student evaluate a peer.

Working in pairs students were required to perform sections of our music while their peer evaluated the performance. The peer evaluator had to make a final recommendation as to wether or not that student had reached a sufficient level of mastery–enough to take part in our next rehearsal. My hope is that students will begin to have the same expectations for each other when it comes to practicing our music as I have for them.

As I checked in on each pair I could sense a level of communication and bonding that indicated the kids were enjoying the process.  As I could have predicted they were going about their evaluations compassionately and with a true sense of helpfulness.

“Rachel is awesome!” exclaimed Mei.   “I didn’t know you had such a hard part,” I heard one student say to another.

By the end of class students were excitedly handing in their evaluation forms chattering about how good their peers sounded.  I’m excited to see if the connection made between each student raises the preparedness level that each student feels they need to maintain. Stay tuned!