On December 8th, J. Clarke’s Arts Department held an outstanding art, music, and dance event that showcased our school’s amazing artistic talent for our community. This show consisted of events from our school’s dance team, art club, jazz and concert band, guitar ensembles, and student soloists. The best thing is, this event was the first of its kind in over three years! Due to the success of this wonderful event, we decided to write a newspaper article!
To gain some insider information about the planning process, we interviewed the wonderful music teachers, Mr. Watson and Mrs. Peever for some insight!
EYE ON THE STORM (EOTS): “How was it like to hold a musical event for the first time in over three years?”
MR. WATSON: “It was amazing! We were really happy with the turnout, there were over 300 people there for the evening show and the afternoon show was nearly packed with Elementary School students, so for a first-time concert since 2019, I was more than happy with how it went.”
EOTS: “After the Winter Concert, do you think there is anything that we can improve on for the Spring Concert?”
MR. WATSON: “Organizationally speaking, I was really happy with Music Council and Stage Crew, but I think as always, we’re just looking for more musical growth in the new year, so like skill building and being able to build up our repertoire.”
EOTS: “During the pandemic, musicians were finding a lot of different ways to promote their music and collaborate with other musicians while also maintaining COVID-19 guidelines. Do you think we can take any inspiration from those and bring those things into the school?”
MR. WATSON: “Yeah, I think the good that came out of that was that I remember with my senior students from two years ago, it was easier to bring in special guests and now that everyone has gotten comfortable with using Zoom, I had some former students who had gone onto post-secondary to study music drop in on a couple of Google Meets and Zoom so they can come and play to the class and talk about it. I realized from that that students don’t have to physically be in the room to do something music related, so I found that was handy and it opened some doors. Also, I think it forced music teachers to get a little bit more creative about what we can do since we can’t really play instruments in a room, so just things like that I found it was nice to focus on. Sometimes it can be more on composition than you normally would do in an instrumental class. I remember last year with my grade nine class, we were just doing rhythm stuff and that was fun because normally I wouldn’t do a ton of that because we’re usually focusing on band instruments, so in some ways it was nice and we also did some more things like focusing more on social issues with music. I know last year we did some reflections based on documentaries we watched and with music that we listened to, we created some playlists as a class to put a positive spin on a not so positive time.”
EOTS: “How was it like to hold a musical event for the first time in over three years?”
MS. PEEVER: It feels amazing! My only wish is that the theater’s curtains were repaired in time for the concert.
EOTS: “After the Winter Concert, do you think there is anything that we can improve on for the Spring Concert?”
MS. PEEVER: Just keep getting awesome repertoire and practicing and bringing the energy to the stage. I thought everyone did a great job after not having experience performing due to the pandemic.
After a three year hiatus, it’s great to see how quickly the music department bounced back from the trials and tribulations of the pandemic. We can’t wait to see what is next…Jazz Night Cafe 😉
