Jazz Band

Herron has a full jazz band consisting of 16 musicians, and they're pretty good (in my untrained opinion). Mr. Horgeshimer is their leader. He has done a remarkable job with this wiley bunch. All of them are boys, except for one girl who plays the trombone and the French horn (poor thing). Mr. H. had a family matter to attend to so I filled in for him today. I was told ahead of time that jazz band is perhaps the most difficult assignment that a sub could get . . because of the part where I said it's 16 high school students with noise-making devices and I am a substitute who knows practically nothing about music.

The instructions said basicallly to take attendance and then let Chester (not his real name) lead the group. My role on this day was to intervene only when needed. If the players did not want to listen to Chester, I was to make them listen. I laid down the law right from the beginning. I told them, "I don't know anything about music, but I know what good music sounds like, and I want to hear a lot of it being played today. Chester is in charge and you need to do what he says. Mr. H. will throw a fit if he gets a negative report from me." I would say they rose to the challenge.

After these remarks Chester practically shouldered me out of the way. He is a senior and has performed all four years he has gone to school at Herron, so he knows exactly what he's doing and he knows there's no time for fooling around. Chester is an awesome saxophone player, and a very bright student. He does not get a lot of respect from his peers however. The reason being . . well how to put this politely . . Chester is somewhat of a nerd.

It's a tall order for Mr. H, a seasoned instructor, to corral these teens into a decent band, let alone a nerd like Chester, but god bless him, Chester never lost his cool even though his bassist and his drummer openly mocked him and held side conversations most of the time. They rolled their eyes every time he gave directions and basically behaved like condescending jerks. He is fully aware of what his band mates think of him, but never backed down on this day and never seemed intimidated by the moment. Chester just kept leading, "Sammy you were a little flat on the third measure. Tommy don't be late when we hit that second part. You guys aren't playing with any energy." It was the most impressive display of leadership that I've ever seen from a student.

They wrapped with a fifteen minute improptu jam session, that sounded really good. And while I didn't leave a glowing report for the group as a whole, I did laud Chester's performance in a note to Mr. H. I found out later from an anonymous source that (at leaset in her opinion) it was the best behavior that that band had ever shown with a sub in the room.