dec252001sfcv

By Michael Morgan

(This article is part of a regular series on Youth Music planned for San Francisco Classical Voice.)

Just when I thought my holiday cheer had been completely extinguished by world events and too many Nutcrackers, along comes the Holiday Concert at Skyline Performing Arts Academy in the Oakland hills. Many don�t realize Oakland has a public high school with an arts academy. While Mayor Jerry Brown is making a commendable effort to start a High School for the Arts downtown, Skyline�s program is already definitely on the upswing. In fact, on June 1, 2002, Skyline grad Tom Hanks will be in town to unveil the auditorium renovation he has spearheaded.

The leading ensembles at Skyline (orchestra, jazz band, advanced band, beginning choir, and the advanced choir �Voices of the Sky� � about 80 performers, it seemed) were all on hand to celebrate the season before a large and understandably enthusiastic audience. The miracle of all this, and most public school music programs that are succeeding, is that this is all presided over by just two people. Ted Allen leads everything instrumental. Just being able to switch from Swan Lake with the orchestra to Harlem Airshaft by Duke Ellington with the Jazz Band deserves praise. But also to be training that rarest of rarities, a high school orchestra with a bassoon (although lacking any string basses, alas), puts him in the major leagues.

Everett Baines leads the vocal ensembles from a baby grand piano that looks as though it fell off of several trucks before being brought to the stage (someone should make a donation); and the sporting-event-like ovations his choirs and fine soloists get serve to remind one what supportive school communities can be built around the arts. The soloists, instrumental and vocal, deserve praise, but three of the singers � Alexis Johnson, Jonathon Smothers and especially Mimi Yang (who�s stunning �Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas� even made ME want to go out and decorate a tree) � had the poise of old pros.

Devoted students and faculty alike
The population of the school is the multicultural mix you expect in the East Bay. Skyline�s Marching Band (the advanced band when not seated) appears in parades and at sports events. These young people start arriving very early in the morning in order to participate in all these ensembles and many of them are in more than one. As the Performing Arts Academy, the school draws from all over Oakland. Very recently the school began receiving regular visits from Oakland East Bay Symphony musicians who help in the instruction of the instrumentalists and assist the music teachers, but these teachers have built this on their own with the help of parents and a very supportive principal.

The teaching is quite traditional with regard to such things as technique, improvisation (particularly for the Jazz Band) and the reading of music. This has to be noted because in some school programs, in order to facilitate greater participation, a fairly wide array of abbreviations and symbols are used as a shorthand replacement for traditional notation. While well-meaning, this practice has had to be reined in at several schools.

There was skill, there was joy in this hall, there was even some good rhythm, no small matter in music education these days. With a little more attention from elsewhere in the city of Oakland, this school, with a great history and some talented students, is ready to soar again.

(Michael Morgan is Music Director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. He also leads the Sacramento Philharmonic, the Oakland Youth Orchestra, and Festival Opera.)

�2001 Michael Morgan, all rights reserved