A Letter to the Music Department

The G-E-T High School band and jazz band will be performing tomorrow night, marking my last high school band concert. This has sparked many thoughts about my high school band experience and my adventures through music. I learned how to play a hand-me down clarinet I bought from a guy down the street at a yard sale for $30. I was ten. Around that same time, I was inspired to learn guitar from a high school jazz tour for Trempealeau Elementary after seeing the guitar player play an eye-opening solo. I switched to bass clarinet, its macho prefix adding a sense of masculinity once hailed as vital to existence, in seventh grade. I continued to play bass clarinet through high school band. Freshmen year I added guitar into my repertoire of instruments via jazz band. Throughout middle school and high school, I've obsessed over learning how to play the guitar, far more than bass clarinet presumably. I've taken music theory classes to understand chord structure. I took a jazz improvisation to improve my soloing abilities. And now, tomorrow night, it will be summed up into one last performance. I am excited yet sad to see it go. Most of my high school memories took place doing something with the music department. I remember getting a stomach virus freshmen year at Jellystone. I remember Trademark Infringement. I remember Mr. Munderloh and Mr. Christianson. I remember marching down the street with a bass guitar. I remember drum majoring with a Styrofoam finger at my senior homecoming. I remember New York. I remember my first jazz band audition. I remember seeing everyone cry in choir and thinking to myself, "I am filled with joy, not sadness, because of this music we create together." I've spent many hours in practice rooms, in theory books, in jazz charts. I've read thousands of rhythms, quarter notes, whole notes and everything in between. I've broken hundreds of reeds and squeaked hundreds of times. And now I can play music, something that can't be taught but only discovered. I thank my directors and my band mates, for showing me the path of self-discovery through the art of music. Thanks to them, I will long reminisce about my experiences in the band and choir programs. Thank you.