They have the music

Newport honor bands, choir perform at Gonzaga

SPOKANE – More than two dozen Newport High School and Stratton Middle School students performed at Gonzaga University last Friday night at the Myrtle Woldson Center for The Performing Arts Steven Munson is the Newport School District’s music teacher. This is the second year Newport students have performed in the Northeast B Music Educators Association event. Musicians and singers from Northeast Washington B schools audition to be chosen for honors band and choir.

“We get the audition music sometime in November and December and all auditions are turned in by Martin Luther King Day,” Munson said. The students make recordings and submit them. “And then there’s a committee of teachers from our region that listen to all the different recordings and pick the best ones.” Marckus Will is a high school junior who played trumpet in the high school honor band. He’s been playing since seventh grade.

“I wasn’t a real big music guy before I started,” Will said. That changed. In addition to trumpet, Will also plays saxophone. He says it’s important to experience various genres of music. “I’m partial to jazz.”

He enjoyed the Gonzaga event, the second year he’s been chosen.

“This year I made a lot of friends,” Will said. Students from the 14 different school districts performed together in a Symphonic Band, a Wind Symphony and a Concert Choir.

Seventh grader Elsie Bojorquez, who plays bass clarinet, said she enjoyed meeting people who played different instruments.

Will said music is very freeing for him.

“You can express yourself,” he said.

Munson agreed. “As kids gets more confident with their instruments and their voices, being able to express themselves is a really huge thing,” he said.

“For beginners, you know, when they’re just learning their instruments, it’s not so much about self-expression as it is learning something new and fun,” Munson said.

It takes a while to start to master the instruments. Newport students can start band when they’re in fifth grade.

Will, who didn’t start until he was in seventh grade, said it took him some time.

“You only get good after the second or third year,” he said. It takes practice.

“You never can have too much practice,” Will said. “Scales are important. “

Music can also be a lifelong activity. “You can keep doing it when you’re 30 or 70 or 94,” Munson said he had a friend who he went to horn club with in college that kept playing his French horn into his 90s.

Munson, 34, is a Whitworth graduate and went to high school at the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy. He grew up playing piano, as his mother was a piano teacher. He was in an orchestra in middle school.

“I was never in band class until I was in high school,” he said. “I had some really fun experiences and decided I wanted to keep doing music.”

Munson was in the Spokane Youth Orchestra, played in college band, orchestra and choir and was also in a jazz combo one year.

“I started playing in Spokane Symphony when I was in college,” he said. He still performs as a substitute with the Spokane Symphony from time to time.

Munson said playing an instrument is doing something physical.

“Because it is so challenging, you’re learning to do something physical that’s unlike anything you’ve ever done,” he said. “Using your face and your fingers and your air and doing it synchronized with anywhere from five to 50 people.”

Students are also reading music as they play.

“So, there’s a literacy side of things and you’re translating it into sounds with specific pitches and specific lengths,” he said, longer notes and longer and shorter rhythms. “It’s one of the only activities that really stimulates all the areas of the brain.”