Glenn’s Trumpet Notes

At Ballard High School, Seattle

If you’re a musician, you’re a performer, an entertainer. You’re meant to play for an audience. Naturally, you do it for your own pleasure, because you’re talented and it’s fun. But it’s a gift you share with others in a band or orchestra, and together, you give to an audience something of beauty and pleasure–music. If you’re good enough, they’ll even pay money to receive your gift.

But imagine this: you attend a private school without a music program. You don’t get to perform at three concerts per school year like students in most other schools, even though you take private trumpet lessons year-round. That’s the predicament of one of my students. So, what does he do?

He attends the Seattle Music Camp in the summer! He did so last year and again this year at Ballard High School. And on 21 July, as a forthcoming 8th-grader, he played in a public concert for just the second time in his life. And he got to perform in both the Senior Band and the Jazz Band. Good for him. Well done!

This was the camp’s 63rd Annual Summer Music Evening Concert, held at Ballard High School on 21 July and headed by Mark Oesterle, a music teacher in the Seattle School District since 2001. The other five camp teachers were Lindsey Dustin (Junior Orchestra), Mika Armaly (Senior Orchestra), Katrina Sibicky (Junior Band), Aaron Hennings (Intermediate Band and Jazz Band), and Michael James (Chamber Ensemble and Senior Band).

Michael James conducts Senior Band at Seattle School District’s 2016 Summer Band Camp

Michael James is Director of Bands at Ballard High School. His award-winning Ballard Jazz Band has performed at three of the nation’s most prestigious jazz festivals—the Essentially Ellington Jazz Festival in New York City, Swing Central Jazz Festival in Savannah, Georgia, and Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, California. In April 2017, his Ballard Wind Ensemble will perform in Carnegie Hall at the New York International Music Festival.

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