Concert Band in Okinawa

Recently, I've been reading Thomas Friedman's, The World Is Flat and I started thinking about an experience I had this summer. I was touring Japan with the New York Symphonic Ensemble for the second summer and we did a concert in Okinawa at the city center in Naha. Every year before the concert we work with two local school bands which is broadcast by a local TV network.

I am always so impressed by how great the groups are. The ensembles are extremely disciplined, no-one talks during rehearsal except for the conductor and I could tell that they took a lot of pride in what they did. The ensembles were tight, they played together very well with good rhythm and intonation. My collegues were so awe struck by how well the group played that we had to talk about phrasing and musical gestures, in order to have anything to say during the masterclass (on TV).

This experience made me think of the band experience in the US and how often these kinds of details are taken for granted. I've only really seen a band with this much discipline at the college level, when I visited and taught masterclasses at the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP), which also has a strong band program.

Back to the Flat World though, I remember as a student, feeling the pressure of competition from players from the neighboring county for all state or regional orchestras. Now we have access to peak into band programs and players from all over the world, so aren't we competing globally, just like every other industry? It's an exciting concept, and could do great things for the music community at large, after all isn't music the universal language? But I just hope that we all get a chance to see actually how high the global standard actually is, not just in math and science but in music too. The sense I got in Okinawa was not just that these students were trying really hard but that there was a community behind them that supported their experience.