Listen to the full podcast from School News Network HERE.
Charles Honey: Hello everyone and welcome to study hall from school news network, your window into the public schools of Kent County, Michigan.A special welcome to our listeners at WGVU.I'm your host Charlie Honey and I'm here at East Kentwood High Schoolfor a rehearsal of the Anything But Classical Orchestra.The ABC Orchestra plays rock, pop, blues, bluegrass, pretty much anything but the standard classical repertoire.They're under the direction of Ryan Wallace, a veteran punk rocker who prepares these young musicians to arrange their own music, play gigs in the community, and maybe embark on musical careers, or at least have a lifelong relationship with music.Here with us in addition to Ryan are three of his talented musicians, Millie, SJ, and Maggie. Welcome to you all. So I just have to ask, what gets you up so freaking early in the morning to play this music?What brings you here?
Mille: Firstly, I think I joined mainly because of Mr. Wallace because he was my teacher in middle school and I just had that connection with him. So, but also I think getting up in the morning, it's probably what gets me up in the morning because otherwise I would just come to school and come straight to physics and I think that would be like a lot worse. I think this is a very good like pick me up to start my day.
CH: I'll say. Maggie?
Maggie: Yeah, I mean what Millie said, it's like a really good way to start the day and I like feel excited going to class because I already like played music and I've done something that I love first thing in the morning.So it really helps me like throughout the day to get through the day. But it also like,I think this is the reason that I really love music because with regular orchestra, like I always liked it, but I never really loved it. Like I found my passion for music in ABC.
CH: Yeah. Oh, you found it very cool. SJ, how aboutyou?
SJ: Well, I discovered uh electric bass from ABC and that really inspired me to join. And the short answer is, it's just really fun. Like honestly, even if it weren't like a required class, I got no credit or it's just a volunteer thing, I'd still do it. It's just still fun to pursue passion in music.
CH: Ryan, what's special and distinctive about ABC Orchestra?
Ryan Wallace: I think in the name itself, it's the anything but classical. We're going to work on the skills that students wouldn't normally get in the regular orchestra classroom. So improvising, learning how to arrange, learning how to put on an engaging performance are all things that we don't really have time to do in the normal classroom, but we're able to teach these kids in this group because we don't have to focus on notes and rhythms anymore. We can focus on these other skills. So I think it really brings an air of independent and more professional musicianship geared towards uh non-classical gigs, obviously, where kids can go and take ownership of these skills and really make it their own.
CH: So they do a lot of, for instance, their own arranging of music, correct? You largely sit back,you largely stand back in the rehearsal and let them kind of take charge of the process.
RW: I like to have the students do as much as we possibly can. I, know, in teacher terms, like I'm, it's a student-led classroom and I'm facilitating their learning. We had a gig where we played for the, new teacher training here at Kentwood.And one of the students was doing the announcing at that gig and said, Oh, by the way, Mr. Wallace is our teacher, but he doesn't really do anything, so you don't need to pay attention to him. Which is, mean, it's, it was set in love and it's kind of true. I would rather be in the background. So it's not my group. I'm just facilitating their learning. And then, one of the gigs I actually was a violin tech because strings kept going out of tune or breaking. So they were like running backstage and I'm like, I have a master's degree to be a violin tech to a bunch of high schoolers, which was a good thing. That was a fun thing for me.
CH: Anything But Classical take on this. And this is a program that's been going on since before you were here, right? About 18 years altogether. But what is the value in your mind as a musician yourself of having them in addition to the classical that they get in their regular orchestra program here. What's the value of having themlearn these more popular styles like the rock and the pop andso forth?
RW: I think it gives them the skills to go, maybe I don't want to go into music professionally, you know, I want to go into a different job or career path or anything like that, but I can take these skills and I can still go play music with my friends, I can go into the community, I can find a jam session, I can hang there. If I want to get a little bit more seriously, you know, we could play weddings or I don't know, just go play some cover stuff or play with a cover band at a bar or something like that. So we don't necessarily have to keep music at the forefront of our lives of I am a professional full-time musician. It can be, I'm a lawyer, a doctor, or I work a construction job and I just like playing on the weekends, which I think there's a lot of space for that. And I think we had this idea that if you do a hobby, you have to be the best at it. And you have to be perfect, you have to be professional, and you have to monetize it. And it's like, but what if we just had fun?That's okay. We can just have fun with our hobbies.
CH: Yeah. You want them to have a lifelong relationship of enjoying music. And you play out in the community quite a bit. You've played a couple of different places recently.
RW: We played the Mona Shores Fiddle Fest. We are the featured artist for that, which we got to play for their fantastic program, play with their fantastic program.They're doing really cool stuff over there.We opened for the Grand Rapids Symphony. We played in the lobby for their Friday Pops concert last week which was a really fun thing seeing a bunch of people stopping and watching us which Apparently we blocked traffic so I had to send some other people over to make sure that parents weren't stopping and you know getting in the way of everyone else trying to go in there. And we try to play out in the community as much as we possibly can so we're a community based group To draw the community into what we're doing here.
CH: Yeah, yeah about 20 outside gigs a year.
RW: 15-20 a year.
CH: 15-20 a year. That's amazing. And right now you're doing some holiday stuff, Mariah Carey, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, very cool stuff. Talk about the importance of music education in the total education program that these students have.
RW: I think that music is so, I think extracurriculars overall are very important. I happen to like music and I think that. For a lot of these kids music isnot only something that they enjoy doing but builds a sense of community For them to feel like number one. This is home and number two I can enjoy being at home with all my friends and engaging this creative practice
CH: How cool wonderful well great job that you're doing with them. Thank you for being with us today.Thanks to your count talented musiciansand thanks to the listeners at uh WGVU for joining us to the full version of this podcast, go to schoolnewsnetwork.organd click on podcastsor you can find it on Spotify wherever you get your podcasts.So thanks again and until next time, happy studying.
