Western Springs Elementary District 101 band student Drew Escamilla loved the chance to get instruction from a conductor with more than 40 years of experience in music.
“It’s pretty cool,” the 5th grade trombone player from Forest Hills School said of guest conductor Ronald Polancich, who worked with district students. “Having a guest conductor is a chance to learn from somebody different. I feel we are getting better because of this opportunity.”
Polancich, retired director of bands and music department chair at York High School in Elmhurst, has been working with students from the district’s four schools to help prepare them for the district’s Winter Band Concert, which will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at McClure Junior High School.
Polancich worked with Escamilla and other 5th graders who make up the district’s Intermediate Band on “Anasazi,” an arching piece by John Edmondson.
“Recognize the music?” Polancich, who has been a guest clinician and conductor throughout the United States and Canada, asked the students. “Measure 3 is the same as measure 43.”
Teaching the students about music construction and that “Anasazi” was an arching piece with identical parts played during the song, he asked them what the separate section that came after section A would be called.
“B,” a chorus of students called out.
“That’s right. It’s not rocket science,” Polancich joked.
Polancich, a Buffalo Grove resident, got involved with helping the district when a former student, Dawn Fiebrandt, District 101’s band director, connected with him on Facebook.
“Many of my friends on Facebook are former students,” Polancich said. “It is very rewarding when they send you a message or a note that what you taught them meant something; and these are not all people in music professions. There are a lot of life skills you learn in music.
“You have to be on time. There are plenty of people who you don’t like that you will have to find a way to work with at a job. You have to work together. You can be in math and that person next to you could not care and flunk and that’s not going to affect you. But, in music, that same person next to you doesn’t care and it affects how the whole band sounds.”
He said music can be a lifelong pursuit, like sports, but doesn’t depend on the participant’s health the way sports does.
“Your knee goes out and you can still play the flute,” Polancich said.
Fiebrandt said that sometimes it takes a while for the musical light bulb to go off over students’ heads. Sometimes, she said, it comes years later, after they are out of the district.
“You can have [music] students for five years and they aren’t getting it,” Fiebrandt said. “Then you see them when they are in high school and they are first chairs, they are superstars.”
Fiebrandt said it great to have someone of Polancich’s caliber come in and give her students a different perspective, a different teaching style.
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She said Polancich also mentors her, helping her to determine if she is missing anything in her own instruction.
“I am the only one in the district who does what I do,” said Fiebrandt, who directs band students at all four district schools. “The principals will come in the room and say ‘That sounds good,’ but it is nice to hear from somebody with a music background.”
Polancich, who is an adjunct professor of music education at the Roosevelt University Chicago College of Performing Arts, for 14 years conducted the 85 adults in the Palatine Concert Band.
He said he loves teaching about music to students, although the work can be chaotic at times.
“I say it’s a lot like building an airplane in flight,” Polancich said. “The plane is going to need a front wing and you have to be ready to help.”
Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.