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High Schools Send Music Students on Elaborate Trips for Performances -- and Bonding

Posted on: Saturday, 15 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Jake Weyer, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

Apr. 15--A five-day cruise in the Bahamas offers the chance to vacation in paradise.

It's also where a group of Duluth Central High School band, orchestra and choir students performed, honed their skills, dominated the karaoke machine and bonded.

"I can already tell that we're going to perform better on Monday," Central senior and choir member Rachel Marsh, 18, said Thursday evening after choir students returned home.

The band and orchestra came back Friday.

Taking out-of-state trips is not uncommon for high school music groups in the area. Even Marshall School sent students to Disney World and New York's Carnegie Hall this year, the first trip the school had organized.

Music instructors said the journeys are more than vacations. They are opportunities for students to build relationships with each other, learn from professionals, experience different cultures and perform in places they might never have the opportunity to otherwise.

The trips are also a nice perk for anyone involved in a music group, and some students, like East High School senior Blake Reistad, 18, join ensembles because of the traveling.

"That was pretty much the reason I joined choir," said Reistad, who joined last year after hearing that the group was planning a trip to Hawaii.

He paid about $1,500 for the experience. Trips costing around $1,000 are not unusual for area schools, particularly if equipment needs to be transported.

Students usually take part in fundraisers to pay their way. That doesn't always cover everything, though, so parents often have to chip in, and schools often find ways to send kids who want to go and aren't able to pay for it.

Parent Peg Aldrich said it can be difficult for students to afford the trips. However, her daughter, Heidi, 17, was able to raise enough money to go on the Central trip.

Kyle Geissler, 14, a ninth-grade student and choir member at Hermantown High School, was bagging groceries at Cub Foods in Duluth with classmates Friday to collect money for a trip to Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Hermantown's Varsity Singers choir was invited to perform there in November. The cost of the trip will be between $1,000 and $1,200 per student.

Geissler said he will bag as many groceries as it takes to go.

"To go to New York and Carnegie Hall and perform is a huge thing," he said.

He is looking forward to performing with professionals and high school choirs from the Midwest that are expected to be there.

Music instructors often arrange performances with professionals or ensembles from other schools to give students feedback and a chance to collaborate on their trips.

Mary Whitlock, choir director at Marshall School, said a group of her students sang with a professional soloist, conductor and other high school choirs at Carnegie Hall earlier this month.

Students had asked Whitlock for years to plan a trip, but because Marshall is a private school that generally does not allow fundraising, financing any major travel has been difficult, she said.

Marshall students were allowed to bag groceries at Cub Foods and collect donations at concerts. The money was distributed to families who most needed it to send their children on the trip.

Whitlock said the trips probably will take place every four years, so each student will have a chance to participate.

"I know they will remember this as a highlight of high school," she said of the trip to Carnegie Hall. "I think they'll remember it forever."

Stanley Wold, University of Minnesota Duluth music professor and director of choral activities, said music trips continue at the college level.

Formerly a high school teacher, Wold recalls taking students on music trips more than 20 years ago. At the college level, he has taken students as far as Kenya, where they sang in Swahili with a Kenyan choir.

"You can't substitute that experience," he said. "When you bond as people together, you also make music better together."

Central's choir students sounded pretty good singing early rock musician Bruce Channel's "Hey Baby" as they stepped off the bus Thursday evening.

Music students at Central usually take a trip every other year.

Central senior Charlie Hurley, 18, said the Bahamas cruise was a great way to end his last year.

"When you go and do something like this, it culminates all your experiences," he said. "It puts a cap on your career."

JAKE WEYER covers Duluth K-12 education. He can be reached weekdays at (218) 723-5342, (800) 456-8282 or by e-mail at jweyer@duluthnews.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.

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Source: Duluth News-Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

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