From the South Orange-Maplewood School District:
MAPLEWOOD, N.J. – The Columbia High School (CHS) Marching Band is scheduled to perform with Grammy Award-winning alumna Lauryn Hill as she launches her concert tour tonight at the Prudential Center in Newark.
About 40 student musicians, dressed in their full marching band, will join Hill for the first song of the concert, a specially arranged rendition of “Everything Is Everything” from her 1998 album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” The concert tour is a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of her release that won the Best Album and Best R&B Album Grammy Awards.
“We have always known that Lauryn Hill has never forgotten where she came from, but we never could have expected her to provide such a wonderful opportunity for our students to be a part of her monumental tour,” said Dr. Ronald Taylor, Superintendent of the South Orange and Maplewood School District. “On behalf of the school district, I thank Lauryn Hill for her generosity toward our students and we wish her all the best as she continues on her concert tour.”
The Columbia High School Marching Band in rehearsal Monday afternoon.
Taylor thanked the following people for their help in making the performance possible: Board member Johanna Wright, District Fine Arts Department Supervisor James Manno, and Marching Band Director Peter Bauer.
It was only yesterday, at about 3:30 p.m., when students played the song for the first time. On Friday, Manno had gotten word that an on-stage collaboration between Hill and the band was a possibility. Over the weekend, it got real.
Bauer had received charts from Hill’s arranger, Igmar Thomas, on Sunday. He received sheet music for the drum line Monday afternoon. The song’s original version does not feature a marching band or a drum line. Most of the students listened to an mp3 of the song, but all of the arrangements they had to play were new.
“This is as real as it gets,” said Bauer to his students, sounding more like a basketball coach at halftime than a bandleader at the Monday rehearsal. “These are top-notch, pro-level musicians. We have to get the mistakes out now.”
Igmar Thomas, Lauryn Hill’s music arranger, thoughtfully listens to the band’s performance of his arrangement.
The band sightread their sheet music. Bauer kept the 4/4 time by hammering two drumsticks together in rhythm. Then Bauer didn’t like what he heard from the trumpet section. They weren’t nailing the high note.
“Take that down an octave,” Bauer said. “Most of you don’t have that B in you.”
After a few run-throughs, Thomas entered the band room. The students greeted him with applause.
Thomas listened thoughtfully to the band’s performance of his arrangement and then gave his feedback. The tempo should be a little faster, he said. The rhythmic cut-offs should be sharper. The dynamics, the prescribed rises and falls of the band’s volume, should be exaggerated.
And the students were free to simply not play anything they did not understand.
“What we always say is, ‘When it doubt, lay out,’” Thomas said. “Just fall back for one bar and then get back in the fray.”
The band members are not the only CHS students scheduled to have an educational experience today, courtesy of Ms. Hill.
Twelve students from the high school’s vocal music and music tech classes are scheduled to attend a workshop on careers in live concert production from Hill’s concert staff. Students are also scheduled to have a meet and greet with one of Hill’s backup singers, Lenesha Randolph, who is also a CHS alumna. The workshop, meet and greet, and all access passes to the show for the students have been made possible by Prudential Center Director of Artist Relations and Programming Mark Conklin, according to Manno.
On Friday, a film crew came to Columbia High School to shoot video vignettes of Hill’s alma mater high school. The footage is slated to be used as background video for tonight’s concert.
