Sedona-Oak Creek School District has had its share of budget battles and cost cutting clashes. But despite a national growing trend to cut music education, SOCSD made arts and music a priority, turning a part-time theater position at Sedona Red Rock High School to full-time and adding a new band and music program at West Sedona School. In charge of starting from scratch with all new musicians is newly hired Band teacher Chris Wise.
“I was pretty impressed by the Sedona [Oak Creek School District] administration after talking on the phone with them about starting up this new program,” Wise said. “That excited me to start our program fresh, rather than filling the shoes of someone who’s been there 40 years.”
Wise refers to his ten-year job search to head a program, a harsh lesson on the at-risk status of elementary school music.
“I graduated ten years ago this year, so it’s been a back and forth trying to get a school job I like,” Wise said. “I was trying to find some local jobs [in Pennsylvania] but pretty much everyone was retiring and then they would cut the program. It was happening elementary through high school, all the programs were disappearing, so I thought ‘What should I do?’”
Music programs have either ended or are left having to do much more with much less. More than 1.3 million elementary school students across the country do not have access to a music class, according to the Children’s Music Workshop. “I went back to school for jazz trumpet performance at Cleveland State for a year … I joined Royal Caribbean Cruise lines, got to travel to Asia, Australia, Europe and, of course, the Caribbean,” Wise said.
With years of private lessons and music camp instruction between those jobs, Wise was still searching for a home as the head of a school music program.
“I put out a nationwide search for music jobs… got a few calls back from some Arizona schools,” Wise said.
That’s when the SOCSD search committee contacted Wise, with help from West Sedona School principal Brenda Cady.
“I sent out like 60 different applications all over the country, either online or on paper,” Wise said.
”Sedona, just seeing the pictures on the website and then when I Googled it, right off the bat, it said it’s an artsy kind of town, so I said the community is already into the arts and they are the type of people I’d want to work with.” Wise said.
But the ultimate challenge? Starting a new program from scratch, with not one experienced musician. His idea was an instrument petting zoo, “where you have all the instruments lined up and the goal is to go one by one with the teacher to test out how quickly you [the student] can make a decent sound on that instrument. But no one showed up for those and it was six hours of waiting,” Wise said.
Plan B was “to bring it to them. I went through a presentation, just talked to all the classes so everybody knows about it.”
Students were introduced in class to each of the primary instruments and as a result,
“We have 35 to 40 signed up right now, which is a good percentage from a school that’s a little over 300 students total, and we’re only taking from those three grades [fourth, fifth and sixth].”
But even with the inauspicious beginning, Wise has administrative encouragement and award-winning experience touring the U.S. with a drum and bugle corp. He is creating a new drum line at West Sedona School.
“It will be mostly to pump up the crowd for [Sedona Red Rock High School’s] football games. We will rehearse twice a week and then perform on Fridays for all the football home games,” Wise said.
Eventually, Wise hopes to nurture a joy of performing in his young beginners.
“I think live music is really important for kids to hear, rather than just playing something on a screen everyday or CDs. If I can play something on piano with the kids and have them sing back to me while I’m playing the piano, that’s been really cool here this first few weeks,” Wise said. He hopes to inspire future confident performers from grade school novices.
“Wherever you perform there is something that’s going to stand out that you will never forget. Performing while wearing a Santa Claus hat, that’s going to stick with you forever. Creating memories as we go along is huge,” Wise said.
SRRHS does not have a band program, so Wise hopes he is forming the foundation for bands of the future in Sedona.
“I have so many experiences traveling the world playing everywhere, so I try to share that when I can with students to let them know what’s out there,” Wise said.
“Part of my philosophy of music education is I know not all my students are going to be professional musicians, or they might not even want to be, but its my job to help them realize and reach whatever potential they might have.”
