Concerts help Staples musicians keep in tune with younger students

Sometimes one moment, one event, can inspire children to take up a musical instrument, or convince them to forge ahead with their playing instead of giving up. Educators in the Staples High School music department hope this week's Youth Concerts do just that.

If history is any indication, they will.

Seventeen-year-old senior Margot Bruce, who plays flute and piccolo, said the youth concert she attended at Staples while an elementary student made quite an impression on her. "It was cool to see the kind of stuff that you'd be able to do when you reached high school," she said, "and I wanted to keep playing so I could end up playing that well."

Later this month, Bruce will audition for a music scholarship at the College of Wooster in Ohio, one of the nation's most prestigious music schools.

This week, however, she was one of 85 members of Staples' Symphonic Orchestra, who along with the 65 members of the A Cappella Choir, performed for fifth- and sixth-graders on Tuesday and third- and fourth-graders on Thursday.

Adele Valovich, Staples' orchestra director, said it's important "for the older students to give back a little bit." She added, "It's wonderful because it really speaks to the best of the aural tradition that music has, so it's the passing down of grade to grade of everything that's possible in music."

Each year's Westport Youth Concerts have a different theme. The theme for 2011 is "Music in Animation." Clips from different Disney cartoons played on a large projector screen while the students below it played and sang such songs as "A Whole New World" from "Aladdin," "You've Got a Friend in Me" from "Toy Story," "Bare Necessities" from "The Jungle Book" and "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid."

Playing along to the clips is not exactly easy. During Monday's rehearsal, Valovich had to call out a couple of students to stay on the beat. The students had a TV to the left of the stage at rehearsal so they could see the animation if they glanced over, but on Tuesday and Thursday, with all eyes on them, they had to rely solely on their musical ear.

"They have to know the music well enough to follow me, regardless of how often they have heard it played," Valovich said.

Choral director Justin Miller said students often are surprised by how hard this "fun music" is to play, especially when they have to accompany animation.

"Part of the challenge is making it sound the way it sounds in the movie," said 15-year-old Staples sophomore Katie Hudson, who plays piccolo and flute.

The school's music department is generally considered one of the best around. Where other high school orchestras are playing arrangements of songs -- crib notes for music, if you will -- students at Staples play the original manuscripts of everyone from Beethoven to Tchaikovsky.

"Very rarely in the high schools do you have three equally performing organizations -- choir, band and orchestra," Valovich said. "It's the level at which these students perform that makes it unique." Miller, who prepared the A Cappella Choir for the two performances this week, added, "The early architects of the music program in Westport helped to develop a logical and structured progression for music education from elementary, to middle, to high school. The tradition of excellence is thanks to the great work of the people that came before as well as strong support from the community as a whole."

Valovich has been working in the school system for 25 years and she's been Staples' orchestra director for 18. To her, the job doesn't even seem like one "because music for me is not a job." "It's a passion. It's my life's work," she said.

Miller said the Westport Youth Concerts and the Candlelight Concert set Staples apart from the pack. "I'm not sure of many music departments that give back to the community as much as this one does," he said. "Candlelight is a gift to the community, and these youth concerts are also a gift to the younger students. They have a good time listening and learning about music, and if their experience is great enough, they will continue to study and will eventually pass that gift on when they are in high school."

Asked why she loves to play, 16-year-old violinist Caitlin McDonald responded, "It's relaxing. It's a nice relief."

Successful musicians, Valovich said, usually translate to successful students beyond the music department. "I've always had one of the top two students every year," she said, "either the valedictorian or the salutatorian, and last year, I had both, and I think music is a huge part of that academic success." Valovich also said there was a study that revealed 50 percent of all pre-med majors started out as music majors at the undergraduate level.

While Valovich surely inspires many of her students, they in turn inspire her. "Every day, because they're just fun to work with. They work hard," she said. "I think they keep me on my toes, so I'm always coming up with a different instructional technique, something that challenges them, yet make it enjoyable for them. I like to think I'm their enjoyable part of the day."