Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • September 2014
19
Marching Band at
Claudia Taylor Johnson High School
What We Like and What Works For Us...
Jarrett Lipman, Phi Beta Mu Young Bandmaster of the Year 2014. Lipman and the C.T.Johnson
HS staff presented three clinics at this summer’s convention to standing room only crowds.
“What We Like and What Works
for Us” is designed to share a few of
the exercises and concepts that we
use for Claudia Taylor Johnson High
School’s Marching Band. Most of
our techniques reflect current trends;
many are variations on a theme.
These are the practices we execute
on a daily basis that we continue to
adjust and refine...and the techniques
we find that work for us, we like! I
also want to share a bit about our
approach to seeking out role models
which has made a huge impact on
our program over the last six years.
When Johnson opened in the
fall of 2008, we began the process
of seeking out role models who
experienced success in their various
fields and have continued this
process through to the present day.
We define success as an end product
that we can take pride in… in other
words, if Alan Sharps and I can sit
and watch it or listen to it, and like
the way it sounds and looks, we
feel we have achieved success. This
attitude applies to those schools
we study as well, and it is not
necessarily connected to competitive
achievements or accolades.
Alan Sharps and I opened the
band department together in 2008
as the band directors. Jordan
Stern (2012-present) and Manny
Maldonado (2008-12) rounded out
our team. Alan moved to Texas in
1997 after teaching in the public
schools inMiami, Florida andVirginia
Beach, Virginia. During my final
semester at Mason Gross, Rutgers
University, I moved to San Antonio
(fall of 2007) in order to complete my
student teaching at Ronald Reagan
HS. While at Rutgers, we studied
the videos and recordings of many
programs in Texas including L.D.
Bell, Spring, Westfield, and Ronald
Reagan when they came onto the
scene. I was enamored by how these
programs could produce concert
bands that I felt rivaled professional
groups and marching bands that so
closely resembled Drum Corps.
Excited by this prospect, I
contacted Mark Chambers at Reagan
HS to request an opportunity to
come to student teach. Following
Reagan from 2002-06 and listening
to the impressively creative
arrangements, the incorporation of
electronics on the field, and the
visual ideas that people still copy
to this day, I saw they were clearly
something different and fresh. At
the same time, I was also inspired by
listening to Westfield, Spring, and
Winston Churchill who have their
own distinctive styles.
I share this history to illustrate
how I have developed an eclectic
style in “what I like.” Alan Sharp’s
experiences mirror my own. In
pursuit of mentors and role models,
I have pulled from many different
camps and thought processes in an
effort to discover what I like and how
to transfer that style to students.
Our process has been to respect
what our role models do well, learn
from that, and invest as much effort
as possible into shaping it into a
final product that our kids enjoy,
and take pride in our endeavors.
We have found one constant across
the board from each role model
we study:
an extraordinarily
high standard
. Each school we
have studied holds their students
accountable for learning their music,
invests energy into producing a
marching show that is interesting
and technically challenging, and
expects a great deal from their
students in terms of both individual
preparation and commitment to
good ensemble fundamentals.
Cindy Lansford presented the Phi Beta Mu
Young Bandmaster of the Year Award to
Jarrett Lipman at this summer’s convention