The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“There’s no hiding in music”
There’s a din of activity in the Crested Butte Community School band room when Savannah Freeman, dwarfed by her double bass as she stands in pink leggings and white buckle shoes, starts in on the unmistakable baseline of Stand By Me. The notes are crisp and clear, flowing like a budding bassist’s favorite refrain.
Her five classmates mill around with their violins, almost unaware of the teacher, local musician Drew Murdza, at the front of the class waiting for his chance to get everyone’s attention. Slowly it comes to him. His hands come up and the students fall into a line.
At first, it doesn’t seem like anything unusual, but the simple act of bringing bows to strings in the Gunnison RE1J school district was unheard of just a few years ago. With the concert bands reserved for woodwinds, brass and percussion, an aspiring fiddler might be left out if not for an alternative. Now, financial hobbling of the school district has made any expansion of the band, or nearly any art program, unlikely.
Colton Schnaitter is one of those who has respect, and even admiration for the classical favorites high school bands tend toward. But he loves rock ‘n’ roll and chose the bass instead of a bassoon. Before his class period even starts, he’s already ducking through the strap to tune.
“I stopped playing in band and started doing this because there were no strings in band,” Colton says. “I heard about this and really wanted to do it because I’d been trying to teach myself guitar for a while and just couldn’t do it … Now, I prioritize this over everything I have to do.” With school budget cuts, these types of programs take special efforts to continue.
On behalf of Colton and other students like him, the Crested Butte Music Festival teamed up with the Crested Butte Community School Enrichment Program three years ago to offer instruction in the strings as an extracurricular program throughout the district, which donates space. They hired Murdza two years ago to run the Suzuki-style classes and at the start of this year the program had 50 students sign up, the most yet.
“I saw a lot of faces from the [Crested Butte Music Festival] bluegrass camp in the strings class and I’m hoping a lot of the kids in the string program go to the bluegrass camp and make that an even more substantial musical experience,” Murdza says, adding that this year they’ve landed Mike Finders, of Colorado-bluegrass band Finders and Youngberg, as an instructor for the camp.
Since ancient times, music education has been considered part of a complete curriculum. Aristotle wrote of the value of music education in his work Politics. Over time, the support of music has rarely wavered. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement says schools with the highest academic achievement in the U.S. today are spending as much as 20 to 30 percent of the school day on the arts, with special emphasis on music.
However, the focus in recent years on standardized testing at the schools has placed the priority on language, science and mathematics, leaving the other parts of a complete education in a perilous place during austere times.
Those lessons aren’t lost to Murdza, especially with a performance approaching fast. He laments that while the value of music in education has stayed constant, dedication to the teaching of music hasn’t. In a brief moment of quiet, he tried to help his class understand that music isn’t a lesson that ends when they walk out the door.
“If you don’t put the work into it, you’re not going to get the results out of it,” Murdza told his students. “There’s no hiding in music. You can’t lie about how good you are. You can dress really well, but when you get up there, either you can play or you can’t.
“So next Thursday, May 17, we’re going to play for the whole school at 2:30 p.m.,” Murdza continued.
“For the whole school?” someone repeated. “Isn’t that during the school day?”
“During the school day,” Murdza assured them. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Then it was truly quiet for the first time all period.
Parents and members of the community are also welcome to the performance. This year, the Crested Butte Music Festival will hold its Bluegrass Camp from July 9 to 13, staging a grand finale to close it out. For more information about the Bluegrass Camp, or the Bluegrass in Paradise festival to follow, contact the CBMF at 349-0174 or visit the website at crestedbuttemusicfestival.com.
