Traverse City News and Events

How Students Saved A 20-Year School Music Tradition

By Craig Manning | May 25, 2018

When Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) music administrators decided to pull the plug on a beloved springtime tradition at Traverse City Central High School, students took matters into their own hands.

Such is the story of this weekend’s “Rendezvous at the House of Blues,” a pop music variety show that’s a descendent of “Rendezvous at the Jazz Club,” an annual event that Central’s music program has mounted every spring for the past two decades.
 
Started in 1998 by then-choral-director Jeffrey Cobb, “Rendezvous at the Jazz Club” brought students from Central’s choir, band, and orchestra programs together to perform their favorite pop, rock, and jazz tunes. Students picked their favorite songs, auditioned, and performed with full band accompaniment. Each choir at the school also got to perform.
 
Cobb started Rendezvous to give students a different kind of performance opportunity. “To see how my students were changed by singing to a supportive sell-out crowd, with 100 of their classmates dancing along on the dance floor, was awesome,” he tells The Ticker. When Cobb resigned as choir director in 2006, his successor, Tami Williams, kept the train rolling, bringing in local pianist David Chown to serve as bandleader.
 
After Rendezvous marked its 20th anniversary last year, though, the TCAPS music department decided the time was right to retire the tradition.
 
“The music department took a step back and asked ‘Is this something we want to do in perpetuity? Is this something we can do in perpetuity?’” says Christine Guitar, head of PR for TCAPS. “And they said, ‘You know, it doesn’t quite align with many of the curricular things that the district really focuses on.’ And so they ultimately decided that the district would no longer be running Rendezvous.”
 
Guitar, speaking on behalf of Williams and TCAPS K-12 Music Coordinator Wendee Wolf-Schlarf, says other factors contributed to the decision as well, including “a lack of time and funding for the event, competing for venue/rehearsal space, and scheduling conflicts with student sports, concerts, Advanced Placement exams, and State Choral and Solo & Ensemble festivals.”
 
For students, the news came as a blow.
 
“Rendezvous is everyone’s favorite thing,” says Abe Stone, a senior who has been heavily involved with Central’s choir program since his freshman year. “We were heartbroken when we found out that it was something that wasn’t planned for this year. We understood that the decision wasn’t malicious, but it was still really unfortunate.”
 
Rather than accept the loss, though, the kids took another stance: “We’ll do it ourselves."
 
According to Stone, the students began organizing ideas for an alternative Rendezvous in September. TCAPS agreed to let the kids mount the show – and perform on school property – but students weren’t allowed to use the names of TCAPS-affiliated ensembles – such as the Traverse City Central Jazz Band – and teachers wouldn’t be involved. Williams did pull together a step-by-step preparation timeline for students to follow.
 
The road proved to be a rocky one; the students hadn’t realized the amount of behind-the-scenes work involved in such a production. So, a week before Spring Break, they called Carey Owens, a local entertainer affiliated with SwingShift and the Stars who just happened to be the mother of a choral department student.
 
“I asked a few questions to see where they were coming from and what level of maturity they were using in terms of how badly they wanted this to happen,” Owens says. “Did they just want to perform? Or did they want to learn the whole process of doing the show? And I was so blown away, because they all said, ‘Even if we don’t make it into the show, we still want it to happen.’ And at that moment, I knew they were ready for an enormous piece of curriculum with regard to this part of the industry.”
 
With time in low supply and countless hours of work left to do, Owens formed a student production team, drew up contracts outlining responsibilities, and scheduled weekly board meetings. She also brought in some outside help: Chown, in a consulting role; local pros Larry Avery and Mike Hunter, to play guitar; and SwiftShift mastermind Judy Harrison, to help write the show. Owens also entrusted Avery, Harrison, and Harrison’s colleague Sherry Galbraith with judging student auditions – something she did not feel impartial enough to do, given her daughter’s involvement in the program.
 
Owens believes the educational value of this experience will stay with students; they’ve done everything from coordinating rehearsal times to fundraising to promotion. Two students – Elliott Smith and Delaney Jorgensen – arranged and wrote horn charts for nearly every song. And each performer got the chance to work one-on-one with Avery, Harrison, and Galbraith to hone their skills.
 
“Right now, the show we have is really cool,” says Stone. “And if Rendezvous hadn’t been taken away, we wouldn’t have had this opportunity to grow and take leadership roles and learn about the actual process of putting on a production like this. It’s a lot more work than I think any of us anticipated, but it’s been really fun.”
 
“Rendezvous at the House of Blues” will take place on Friday and Saturday at 7pm at the Central High School Auditorium. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and will be available at the door.

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