What do former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and filmmaker Woody Allen have in common?
If your answer was that they, along with numerous other accomplished people, credit their training in music for part of their success, you win the gold star. Numerous studies, which have evaluated everything from brain activity to performance on standardized tests, have shown how the skills gained while learning music may lead to more success in academics and in life.
When it comes to learning about music, Durango students benefit not only from music teachers in the schools but from the wealth of talent in the music department at Fort Lewis College and Music in the Mountains.
For Jonathan Latta, assistant professor of music at FLC and coordinator of the Music in the Mountains Goes to School program, giving his students the opportunity to perform and teach in the schools is as valuable an experience for them as the students they reach.
“My philosophy for my students is to try to play as much as possible, period,” he said, in an unconscious echo of the 10,000-hour premise made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. “This is such an artistically rich community. Sing in the Durango Choral Society, play in some of the bars downtown, take every opportunity to play.”
Each year, he and a group of students prepare a program to present at elementary school assemblies. This year, the theme is “Music is All Around Us,” and his percussion group is showing students how to make music with items found in their daily lives and even their bodies.
“They’re one of the most engaging and rewarding audiences we have,” Latta said. “And my students learn to repeat the same performances and engage different audiences, find new inspiration.”
With Common Core state standards, standardized tests and increasing pressure to keep school all about student achievement, Music in the Mountains needed to demonstrate how the performance supports the required curriculum. Latta found a number of standards, including math, geography, history and listening skills, where the performance supports what students are learning in the classroom. Music in the Mountains is now a Tier One program, making Latta and his students welcome in any 9-R school.
“It helps that I have a lot of music education in my background,” Latta said, “I’m comfortable talking to young children, and my students see how to do it. And for the children, on the other side of the coin, college students are not that far away from them in age, so it makes the music accessible.”
The programs vary, with percussion alternating every other year with jazz or instrumental music. But all the programs have three things in common.
“I always try to leave them with a connection to what we do in the performance,” Latta said. “So every program has a movement component to it, a multicultural component to it and an interactive component to it.”
Not just in the schools
Latta and his students also reach out to at-risk youth at the Robert E. DeNier Youth Services Center with a drumming circle, using drums funded by Music in the Mountains with help from a grant from the Kiwanis Club of Durango.
For Kenny S., the music changed his life when a group of students came to DeNier to perform.
“I remember when they used to come in and gather all the kids and staff in a drum circle,” he wrote to Music in the Mountains as he was graduating from Durango High School. “I feel like it loosened everybody up a little bit. The music helped the staff connect with the students ... The positive energy lasted long after they left.”
When he was younger, Kenny had played several brass instruments, but that was one of many activities he had dropped as he slid into trouble.
“I think it’s important to teach and do things the students could use as hobbies to replace possible old negative habits that may have gotten them in trouble in the first place,” he said. “Along with music, I stopped competitive skiing and playing sports and found myself in DeNier. Nothing would’ve changed from then to now unless I found something to occupy myself. What better way than music?”
The mission is music
Music in the Mountains isn’t just interested in putting on a music festival every year.
“Music in the Mountains truly believes that music education is essential to a well-balanced academic experience,” Executive Director Angie Beach said. “Research has proved time and again how exposure to music at an early age can enhance and improve math skills, higher-order thinking skills and the ability to work in a team and be part of something greater than the individual.”
The organization sponsors music education year-round. It will spend more than $82,000 of its $764,000 budget this year on an effort to make music accessible to all students, regardless of income.
“Between us going into the schools and the students being bused to us, we reach them in lots of different ways,” Latta said. “For some of these students, it may be the first time they’ve sat in a formal concert hall.”
Among the other activities in the Music in the Mountains Goes to School program are the Fifth-Grader Band Concert, the Instrument Discovery Day and Taste of Music, all of which expose students from around the area to different instruments and styles of music. It also offers scholarships for individual students to study with local music teachers.
“Some people questioned the scholarships for individual students,” Beach said. “But teachers told us that when you help a dedicated individual who shows promise, they get better, then they come back to the group, and the group gets better.”
During the summer, the festival offers free tickets to chamber or conservatory concerts for local students accompanied by a parent – 117 free tickets in 2013 – and scholarships for local students to attend the Conservatory, which has drawn students from as far away as Europe and South Korea.
While learning to play an instrument or sing matters, just learning to appreciate music is important, too, Beach said, and her organization has a vested interest in that.
“We take special interest in getting students to learn to play an instrument or participate in music ensembles,” Beach wrote for the organization’s brochure, “not just so we can discover the future musical stars of tomorrow, but to build musical understanding and skill in the people who will form our future audiences.”
Latta said that between a stable 9-R faculty, Fort Lewis College students and faculty, San Juan Symphony members and a thriving Durango Arts Center, the resources are in place to help students on their music education path.
“I say the music programs here are really good, but they’re not great,” he said. “It’s time for the community and the schools to come together and make them great. I hope this will inform parents so they know where to look for help for their children.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
Music in the Mountains, Fort Lewis College students, Durango High School students and Katzin Music instructors will hold Instrument Discovery Day on Jan. 18. All fourth- and fifth-graders and their families are invited to try various brass, woodwind, string and percussion instruments. Appointments are requested, and may be made by calling Music in the Mountains at 385-6820.
To learn more about Music in the Mountains Goes to School and its various programs, including scholarships, concerts and free festival tickets for students, visit www.MusicintheMountains.com or stop by the festival offices at 1165 Main Ave.
