I was a member of the band for my four years in high school. At the end of my junior year, the original band director retired after around 30 years of service. He was a very laid back guy. He didn't take marching band very seriously, rather putting more work into concert selections and the band's Europe trip. Most students liked his methods for running the band so many were ambivalent to the upcoming year.
The new director was quite a bit different. The biggest source of ire for many was that he valued marching band greatly and wanted the school to take it much more seriously. He had a multi-year plan that involved ramping up the number of outside of school practices, building a color guard team, and doing more involved shows that involved props and dancing. Finally, he gave more power to the drum majors (a student leadership position) and opened the job up to sophomores and juniors.
Reactions were mixed, top say the least. Many (myself included) were very unhappy about the increased marching band time requirement. If you desired to be in the top concert band then you were required to be in marching band, so most couldn't drop marching without other negative effects. A smaller minority were also angry about the drum major position, traditionally a senior-only position, being opened up to underclassmen. The new band director had a tough year ahead of him, trying to win back the upperclassmen.
Impressively enough, it went rather well overall. The first year saw many more seniors quitting band than normal. However, the new freshmen were getting far more involved in band. The color guard team also gave band members that disliked marching with an instrument a different option, causing more to remain in band. As the old guard cleared out the quality of the marching band increased very quickly. The more stringent practice requirements also saw members of the band increasing their musicianship much faster than under the old director. The band even started traveling to competitions. So far there have not been any wild successes, but they are still a young program and have more to learn.
Though this regime change ended up a mostly positive change, there were still transaction costs to the reorganization. Like I said earlier, many of the more senior members of the band quit when they saw an increased participation requirement. The director change was a loss of quite a bit of experience and connections as well. It was more difficult for the new director to set up the Europ trip as he did not have the trove of connections the old director had in Europe. As a younger director, he had to build up the conducting and music choice experience that the older one had down. All in all, the band is on an upward trend and so far the reorganization has definitely been worth it.
The new director was quite a bit different. The biggest source of ire for many was that he valued marching band greatly and wanted the school to take it much more seriously. He had a multi-year plan that involved ramping up the number of outside of school practices, building a color guard team, and doing more involved shows that involved props and dancing. Finally, he gave more power to the drum majors (a student leadership position) and opened the job up to sophomores and juniors.
Reactions were mixed, top say the least. Many (myself included) were very unhappy about the increased marching band time requirement. If you desired to be in the top concert band then you were required to be in marching band, so most couldn't drop marching without other negative effects. A smaller minority were also angry about the drum major position, traditionally a senior-only position, being opened up to underclassmen. The new band director had a tough year ahead of him, trying to win back the upperclassmen.
Impressively enough, it went rather well overall. The first year saw many more seniors quitting band than normal. However, the new freshmen were getting far more involved in band. The color guard team also gave band members that disliked marching with an instrument a different option, causing more to remain in band. As the old guard cleared out the quality of the marching band increased very quickly. The more stringent practice requirements also saw members of the band increasing their musicianship much faster than under the old director. The band even started traveling to competitions. So far there have not been any wild successes, but they are still a young program and have more to learn.
Though this regime change ended up a mostly positive change, there were still transaction costs to the reorganization. Like I said earlier, many of the more senior members of the band quit when they saw an increased participation requirement. The director change was a loss of quite a bit of experience and connections as well. It was more difficult for the new director to set up the Europ trip as he did not have the trove of connections the old director had in Europe. As a younger director, he had to build up the conducting and music choice experience that the older one had down. All in all, the band is on an upward trend and so far the reorganization has definitely been worth it.
This is an interesting story and I'm glad you wrote about your high school experience, as most of the other posts I've read so far are about college experiences or summer work experiences. That said, I'm going to respond to you a little differently as my kids were in band in high school, as was I when I was in high school. But we didn't have a football team, so there was no marching. There was only concert band.
ReplyDeleteYou may not be in a position to know this, but it would be interesting to learn whether the new band director really made these decisions independently or if instead he got (pardon the pun) marching orders from the school principal, perhaps at the urging of the football coach. I'd be curious whether the football team at your school was competitive in its league and if its fortunes changed at around the time the new band director was selected.
Another related issue is how band is funded. My recollection (both of my kids went to Centennial High School here in Champaign) is that band relied quite a bit on fundraisers put on by parents. So there is an issue about whether that changed any from the old band director to the new. Did parents like the old band director or were they happy to see the changes? It's a different set of stakeholders than you considered who do matter if they are providing a good chunk of the funding.
The other thing you might have talked about is practice on your own on your musical instrument. How did that work for most kids in the band and did the marching practice have an impact on that? I believe considering this angle will help you really get at the transaction costs in the situation.
That's not to say that the turnover didn't matter. But what about those kids who stayed with the band. Did they practice their instrument less after the new band director took over? Or is it even possible to say what happened here?
Hello Professor,
DeleteYour point about who made the decision to have a more involved marching band is interesting. Now that I think about it, it was likely a decision on the part of the district to hire someone that was more into marching. With the original director our marching band was much less involved than the ones at the rest of the schools in the district.
Our band was funded mostly by parent-run fundraisers as well. Many of the parents with multiple children that had gone through the band program were involved in these fundraisers, and with the loss of the old band director many went with him. There was some disappointment that he had to retire a little early because of some contract negotiations with the school. I suppose this is another transaction cost I neglected to talk about in the post.
I think the instrument practice increased with the new director as well, at least slightly. We had placement tests every year with the old director, but there was no cutting from the lower band so they had no real negative effect if you performed badly. The new director, however, implemented a monthly online practice test where you were actually graded. For most in the upper bands this did not change anything, as many either had private lesson teachers or practices sufficiently on their own. The lower bands, I hypothesize, likely saw some improvement as the kids were forced to practice for the new test.