Playing Together More Than 2,000 Children Band Together For Powerhouse Show

Audience members scan the floor of the Spokane Arena, searching among the 648 clarinet players and 436 violinists for their clarinet player, their violinist. Meanwhile, in an ocean of music stands, 392 cornet players scour the crowd with their eyes - and wave when they spot their parents.

The Spring Spectacular is a concert only 6,000 moms, dads, grandparents and siblings with binoculars could love.

Love it they do.

“It’s a feeling the kids are not all alone in a tiny, little band where you can hear each mistake, each squeak and squawk. They’re part of something bigger,” said Diane Moll, a self-described “band mom.”

Bill Hunt bragged about his granddaughter Alisha, a Garfield Elementary sixth-grader.

“She plays her dad’s cornet,” Hunt said. “Her daddy used to play in the marching band at North Central.”

The concert Tuesday featured 2,303 Spokane School District elementary students. Eleven music teachers spent months planning and rehearsing. Dozens of volunteers helped set up chairs and chaperone school buses.

“I’ve heard it’s the largest concert of its kind in the United States. I can believe it,” said strings teacher Judy Chastain, who got her start as a violinist at Spokane’s Roosevelt Elementary and fondly remembers performing in all-city concerts.

A Spokane tradition in the 1950s through the early 1970s, huge elementary school concerts disappeared for 20 years before returning two years ago. This was the concert’s first year in the new Arena.

“You asked why do we do it? Total insanity. We are not well people,” joked Kay Feely, who coordinated the concert behind the scenes.

During a morning rehearsal Tuesday, Feely spoke into one walkie-talkie with another walkie-talkie and a cellular phone riding in her back pockets.

Feely made sure two dozen school buses hauling the children to rehearsal knew where to go. The kids arrived in shifts: first the fifth-grade band, then the strings, finally the sixth-grade band.

Ten-year-old John Dressler, a clarinetist from Holmes Elementary, wore his dress-up clothes: tan pants, white shirt and his brother’s cardigan. It was his first time to perform in the Arena, he said.

“It’s fun and exciting and kind of scary.”

Nearby, band teacher Kent Meredith, who admits he cried during the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” waved an orange flashlight to direct hundreds of clarinet players to their seats.

Music teaches children lessons they will use the rest of their lives, Meredith said. He tells his students to pay attention, listen to one another and if they get lost, fake it.

Musicians score higher than non-musicians on tests of spatial intelligence, according to several recent studies of preschoolers and college students.

“Music improves their ability to think, concentrate and listen to people,” Meredith said. From his experience, band kids “are the best kids in the school.”

And like the Music Man promising River City a way to keep kids out of the pool hall, Meredith links music with clean living.

“This is a better anti-drug program than DARE,” Meredith rhapsodized. “You can’t do this stoned.”

Tuesday’s rehearsal had its ups and downs.

During the fifth-grader’s rendition of “Aura Lee,” the drummers, halfway across the arena floor, lagged a half-beat behind conductor Kyle Pugh. Other music teachers tried to help: Bryan Bogue clapped in rhythm, trying to get his side of the band to stay with the beat. Meredith played along on a cornet. Karen Budge just shook her head.

By the next number, “Marianne,” the students adjusted to the cavernous surroundings.

“I’d have never guessed you would step up to the plate and hit a home run with the first swing,” Meredith told them. The kids smiled.

Today, the music teachers will meet to hash over what worked and what didn’t. They’ll brainstorm ways to avoid bottlenecks in the halls, discuss adding more colors to the color-coded nametag system and laugh over the parking meter patrol trying to ticket a school bus.

They have no doubt they’ll want to do it again next year.

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