The Walpole High School Music Department is the most overlooked department in the school. Though it consists of over 150 students in the five performing groups alone, though it regularly sends students from all performance groups to district-wide and state-wide music festivals, the department has only one teacher and one hallway across all programs, and its semi-annual performances can barely fill Walpole’s 450 seat auditorium. The subjugation of the program is sad in and of itself, but given the quality of the 2011 Winter Concert, it’s almost tragic.
Fortunately, the concert was better attended than those of the last few years, with a mostly full house of friends and family of music students. Unfortunately, the concert did not receive as much attention as the effort put in by the five performance groups– Concert Band, Jazz Choir, Jazz Band, Concert Choir, and Orchestra– warranted. Mr. Mike Falker, music director at Walpole High, put together an entertaining program, and the students performed it with dexterity.
Beginning the night was the Concert Band, with three exuberant, percussive, modern-classical pieces: “Big Four March”, “Abracadabra, and “The Glacier Express”. Considering the fact that the Band also performs the thankless duty of the Walpole Rebels’ pep band, the group was somewhat pressed in putting the program together; despite this fact, all three pieces were executed cleanly and professionally. Said junior first trumpet Jungwoo Yoon, “I, personally, am happy to be a part of the band”.
Following the Band was the Jazz Choir, a selective extracurricular group directed by Lynda Maccini-Pavloff, which performed simple a cappella versions of well-known traditional Christmas Carols such as “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night”. Joining the group for the performance were a handful of Walpole High alumni, many of whom were from the class of 2011, but a few who were significantly older and had been alumni of Walpole High since before the current upperclassmen were even enrolled. The fact that such people would even care to show up, let alone perform, speaks volumes about the lasting influence of the music department. As for the immediate influence of the Jazz Choir, it was apparent when afterward a parent said, “In spite of this unseasonal weather, I’m in a holiday mood. I can thank the Jazz Choir for that!”
The Jazz Band, another small, extracurricular group, followed, performed a less seasonal, but far more complicated program of swing, latin, and modern bebop tunes, including Duke Ellington’s famous “In a Mellow Tone” and the high-school marching band favorite, “Big Noise from Winnetka”. Jazz Band director and trumpeter Dan McKenzie noted that the group includes “the best and brightest students at Walpole High”, and given the various nuanced styles of the program, intelligence was necessary. Whereas the Jazz Choir illustrated the natural and emotional side of the Music Department, the Jazz Band gave an indication of the technicalities of music, with improvised solos and abnormal chord structures blending together seamlessly. There is a theory that the intake of such music not only requires intelligence but fosters it– therein lies one more reason why the Music Department should receive much more credit than it does.
After the two extracurriculars went Mr. Falker’s Concert Choir, which, like the Orchestra and Concert Band, is a five-credit course that meets five times in the school’s seven-day rotation. The group performed five short, winter- or Christmas-related pieces– the motive “Welcome Winter”, melodramatic “Locus Iste”, exuberant “Bidi Bom”, and the traditional “Coventry Carol” and “Angels We Have Heard on High”. The pieces were geared toward high-ranged voices, because more than 30 of the 61 students in the current WHS choir are freshman girls, 30 girls who give the Choir a feeling of expansion even as the music department shrinks around it.
Closing out the night was the always-excellent Orchestra, a collection of about 70 wind, string, and percussion players, who played “Waltz of the Flowers” from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker”, a string-arrangement of “Danny Boy”, and Eliot Del Borgo’s arrangement of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah: The Hope”. Given that the songs were recognizable, there was even less room for error in this segment than in other segments: if the audience knows a song, there is no room for experimentation or improvisation. Mr. Falker, too, demanded an extraordinary amount from this group, because he is a string player himself, and because he conducts such groups as the Southeastern Massachusetts Scholastic Bandmasters Association Orchestra. Naturally, the errors, if any, were few and far between: the group met almost daily during the months leading up to the concert, and they had Mr. Falker leading them. The combination of dedication and expert direction led the Orchestra to a rousing performance.
Such is the case with all music groups at Walpole High School: as long as there are numerous dedicated students, as long as there are parents supporting them, as long as there is Mr. Falker– the heart of the Walpole Music Department– music will survive in Walpole. It is a shame, however, that it need only survive, that it can’t thrive as other departments have. With the success of the Winter Concert, it was at least able to thrive for a moment.
