New band teacher excited for upcoming school year

Times Reporter 

 

Strathmore High School (SHS) and Crowther Memorial Junior High School (CMJHS) have welcomed a new face into the band room this year. 

Bryan Allsopp grew up in Calgary. He attended the University of British Columbia for his bachelor of music and bachelor of education.

Last year he taught in Fort McMurray at a Kindergarten to Grade 8 school. Allsopp is a French horn player and has completed several conducting workshops, something he hopes to focus on after getting a few years of teaching under his belt. 

“My hope is I’m just trying to keep band fun, have it always be enjoyable. If the student’s not enjoying band then they’re not going to take it because it’s an option. My goal is to keep it fun and then just keep building the programming as much as I can so that when I hand it off I want to leave it a better place than when I came in,” said Allsopp.

“I want to have the students keep building up their playing, keep building up their reading, and keep building up their enjoyment of music, so that hopefully they will keep wanting to do it through high school and outside of high school. Even if they don’t necessarily play having that enjoyment and knowledge of music is always good because music is always part of culture.”

Right now the students at both SHS and CMJHS are busy preparing for the first concerts of the year. First up will be CMJHS next week on Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. 

Allsopp said he is working off what Karly Zinken, who is on maternity leave, has built up over the years and will be expanding on to the senior and junior high programs. 

“I’m just trying to take what she has done with the groups and keep building it, try to keep building up the band program, the choir program. It’s great that I can teach at both schools because I’m essentially feeding into my own school. My Grade 7s, 8s and 9s feed into high school, which is a fantastic system,” said Allsopp. 

Strathmore High’s concert is on Dec. 11 also at 7 p.m. in the high school theatre.  Allsopp said the band will be doing more in later concerts, both learning and playing new music. He has a piece planned for the end of the year that is being released in December and will include electronic accompaniment. Thanks to grant funding received last year there will be an electronic music program introduced this year to the students.