SHS to unveil new band room

Sabrina Kooistra
Times Junior Reporter

 

This fall, Strathmore High School (SHS) is set to unveil a new band room to accommodate growing program numbers and physical shortfalls of the current space.
Strathmore’s only public high school has offered a music program since its opening, but since then, it has encountered several issues relating to inadequate playing space for students, and separate rooms for students to practice while the main room is in use.
SHS is offering the opportunity to play in a concert band, along with the diverse experiences of electronic, jazz and choral music. All of these courses primarily share the same space.
Bryan Allsopp, now the full time music teacher at SHS who formerly taught both at SHS and Crowther Memorial Junior High School (CMJHS) has been impressing on Golden Hill School Division (GHSD) the need to act on a much needed update. With 37 students in the concert band class in 2014-2015, and the steady increase in expected program numbers, the need for improvements was becoming more dire.
The new band room, an unused portable from Prairie Christian Academy’s renovations in Three Hills, is 1,500 square feet, a drastic improvement from the previous 756 square feet of the second floor space. It features two practice rooms, an office and a main large ensemble space for a full class to rehearse in. This will allow students to practice outside of their regular class time in a suitable environment for sound at an instrumental volume, and will not interrupt neighbouring classrooms.
Costs for the transportation and possession shift are not final at this time.
For the next few years, the portable will be unattached to the main school building and will be temporarily placed at the northwest end of the school until the anticipated extension of the main building is finished within the next five to 10 years. The fact that the band room will be on the ground floor is a major advance in itself as many of the large percussion instruments’ tuning is altered by being tilted and transported at great distances to prepare for concerts in the school’s gym theatre. With this inconvenience now behind them, the program hopes to expand its percussion sections for the future by adding instruments such as orchestral bells, a marimba and a gong.
The long-term hope for the program, and especially with the impactful change of a new band room, is to foster a newfound excitement about music and to expand the high school’s musical opportunities.
“We’ve been working a lot since I’ve been here, working on the culture of the program, making it fun. But also work so that it’s something that we can be successful at,” said Allsopp, who led the 2014-2015 high school concert band to a third place victory in New Orleans at the World Strides Heritage Performance Festival.
With growing numbers and space, Allsopp is excited to broaden the scope of the program by having multiple concert bands, experimenting with small ensembles and working with the school’s extensive drama program.
Allsopp concluded, “As you build it [music program], it becomes more self-sustaining. You have older siblings who take it and their siblings want to take it as well, and then farther down you have parents who took it and want their kids to take it, and then it becomes a thing at the school so people want to do it. People want to be involved. So if it’s there, it’s visible, it’s strong, showing good results, people will want to participate.”