Music Hitting Right Note

You can hear the evidence from the swelling ranks on the high school practice field after classes end for the day. You can see it in the empty shelves at music stores, sense it from a principal who is scrambling to find a director for the new orchestra.

After three decades of decline, the once-proud music programs in California’s public schools are making a comeback at last.

The faint, hopeful stirrings that began a few years ago have yet to reach a crescendo, music education experts say. But the signs are unmistakable--especially with the start of the new school year.

A sampling of districts across Ventura County, from Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks to Oxnard and Ojai, showed marked increases in students signing up for music classes, forming a small army of bands, choirs and ensembles.

In the Oxnard Union High School District, Assistant Supt. Gary Davis said the increase is most notable in vocal classes this year. Groups such as Camarillo High School’s California Swing Kids, who have performed around the state and are set to travel to Paris next year, have seen strong competition for spots, he said.

Such experience is invaluable for the students, but there is also a more important, secondary benefit: Many educators think music education helps increase understanding of other academic disciplines.

“I believe there is a strong correlation,” Davis said, noting that self-esteem and poise are natural aids to learning.

His belief is shared by many others, including Bill Wagner, who directs bands and choirs at both Matilija Junior High School and Nordhoff High School in Ojai.

The Nordhoff marching band, which drew as few as eight students a few years ago, has grown steadily, attracting 45 teenagers this year. They practice most days at 2:15 p.m., and their enthusiasm is infectious.

Wagner, who is also principal trumpeter for the Conejo Valley Symphony, said the quality of the music has improved over the years.

“The level of music is at a point where the kids feel really good about it, and themselves,” he said. “With that quality comes respect, not only from their peers, but from faculty too.”

More music programs and institutions in the community make a difference too, making music more a way of life. Wagner pointed to a new youth choir in Ojai, a theater and a civic light opera, not to mention a proliferation of private teachers, and a cadre of devoted parents who help raise funds for the programs.

And there is something else that can’t be overlooked about joining a music program, something that makes it an especially cool activity for students.

“It’s hard to quantify, but it’s there--an emotional release for students, which they really need at some point during their week,” Wagner said.

Most music students say it’s an invaluable combination of very hard work, discipline and concentration, plus lots of fun, achievement and experiences they would not trade for any other subject.

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Nordhoff junior Mike Deutsch, 16, told his parents back in the third grade that he wanted to play the drums. He’s been playing ever since, and now he’s not only a member of the marching band, but he also performs with the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony, and has just formed a band called Damaged Adam.

Despite the long hours of practice at home and the mind- and sole-numbing precision of the marching band drills, Mike said it’s all worth it. He hopes music will always be a part of his life.

“I think so. At this point in my life, it’s what I want to do,” he said, adding that he is still considering choices for college, although he may attend UC Santa Barbara.

Fellow marching band member Cambria Bower, a 17-year-old senior, was even more emphatic. Her work on the bass clarinet and saxophone impacts everything.

“Music is basically my whole life right now,” said the Ojai native, who is also planning to continue playing while in college at UCSB. In addition to her classes and the daily marching band drills, she practices for 45 minutes to an hour each night.

Cambria said she really took up music in earnest after a neck injury interrupted her budding high school soccer career. She joined the band, taking up the cymbals (“It’s a lot harder than people think!”), and taking some time to find the synchronicity.

“I had everyone laughing at me at first,” she admitted. Cambria thinks that her newfound passion has helped her immensely in other areas, especially in mathematics, and that her fellow musicians see the same link.

“You have to be so well-disciplined, and you have to think very, very fast,” she said.

The county surge mirrors a trend around the state.

At Westchester High School in Los Angeles, for example, band director Eric Hankey has watched his corps grow from an anemic 11 members last fall to a respectable 69 this year. To help meet the growing interest, the school’s music department recently received $15,000 in new equipment from a private foundation.

In Beverly Hills, elementary teachers have pulled mildewed violins, cellos and basses out of storage for refurbishing, responding to a band sign-up of about 200 students, according to Gil Young, arts coordinator for the Beverly Hills Unified School District. At Arcadia High School, the band director expects to wait for up to 18 months for large, expensive instruments, so great is the demand.

“We have gone as far as Indiana to purchase instruments,” said band director Tom Landes, who has seen a 20% increase in music programs, now boasting about 600 students, in the last few years.

School officials aren’t the only witnesses to a music education renaissance. Stores are cashing in as well, especially those with special programs for students.

Business has been brisk at Instrumental Music in Thousand Oaks, where parents can take advantage of a rental program that allows them to purchase the instrument later. For example, a flute rents for $24 a month, or $180 for a 10-month rental, and the full amount can go toward the purchase if Johnny shows any promise.

All saxophones have been rented; a few flutes and clarinets and a couple of trumpets remain. “We have rented just about everything that can physically be rented,” said salesperson Kelly Barber.

It was the same jam at other Southland stores.

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Johnny Thompson, owner of Johnny Thompson’s Music in Monterey Park, said he has seen a 10% to 15% growth in the sale of instruments. “Some schools haven’t ordered instruments in years, and all of a sudden they’re ordering,” Thompson said.

None of this comes as a surprise to Jay Zorn, president of the California Music Educators Assn., who has been watching school districts up and down California gradually restore the programs they dismantled during a long spell of lean budget years throughout the 1980s.

Several factors are at work, Zorn said, including growing evidence that musical literacy improves performance in mathematics and other academic subjects. An improving economy and the resulting increases in school budgets have played a key role, and even Hollywood has done its part.

“ ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ helped us,” said Zorn, referring to the 1995 hit movie starring Richard Dreyfuss as an inspired, and inspiring, high school music teacher.

But the growth is not without its downside: It has resulted in a shortage of qualified music teachers.

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“We have pretty much exhausted” the supply of teachers in California, “and now districts are going elsewhere to fill that need,” said Zorn, who chairs the music education program at USC.

The growth is neither across the board nor all attributable to an uptick in music programs in public schools.

Many private schools have steadily added to their music programs, and public school parents have found other ways to look after their children’s music education, at least in more affluent neighborhoods. They simply signed them up for private lessons or had them join youth music programs offered by civic associations to fill the gaps; in some cases, school districts have allowed private instructors to set up shop on campus, offering after-school classes for a fee.

In some districts, including Glendale, Long Beach, Burbank and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, community support allowed music programs to keep going despite public school funding cutbacks in the wake of Proposition 13, the landmark property-tax-slashing measure approved by state voters in 1978. Parents and business and community leaders in Glendale and the Palos Verdes area formed education foundations to raise funds for music programs and teachers.