Reprinted with permission of the News-Register. Find more News-Register stories about Linfield College here.
Yamhill County fourth-graders listen to the Linfield College band perform in Ice Auditorium on the college campus. Band members demonstrated the various instruments between songs.
April 24, 2014
By Starla Pointer of the News-Register
Fourth-graders tapped their feet, clapped their hands and mimicked the director with their arms as they listened to the Linfield College band perform Wednesday.
They especially loved the familiar melodies — the “Star Wars” theme, the Mickey Mouse march and tunes they might not know by name, but instantly recognized, such as “Colonel Bogey March,” which was used in “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and the overture from “Marriage of Figaro,” used in movies such as “Racing Stripes” and “Willy Wonka.”
“Yes!” kids cried when band director Joan Paddock introduced yet another movie theme, this one from “Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Professor Paddock and her band, made up of student musicians and community members, interspersed movie music with classical pieces during the special concert for fourth-graders. Linfield students conducted some of the numbers, including, in senior Zach Davis’ case, an overture he’d written himself, featuring the band and piano soloist Albert Kim, a Linfield music professor.
Youngsters from McMinnville and other parts of Yamhill County attended the concert in Linfield’s Ice Auditorium. The Yamhill Enrichment Society paid for the musical field trip.
In addition to listening to music, the fourth-graders got to hear and see the various instruments that make up the band. Clarinet players showed off their fast fingers, percussionists tapped chimes and smashed cymbals and a trombonist demonstrated a glissando, using his slide to play up and down the scale.
“Whoa!” kids cried when the tuba tooted, way down low.
“That’s what we call heavy metal,” Paddock joked.
Fourth-graders, who also learn about instruments in their school music classes, will have a chance to join band in a year or two — in McMinnville, for instance, band starts in sixth grade. The director encouraged them to do so.
“Who can play which instrument?” she asked, first the men in the band, then the women to stand up and show the variety of instruments they had chosen.
“It doesn’t matter —women can play tubas, be conductors,” said Paddock, an Emmy Award winning trumpeter as well as a conductor and teacher. “Anyone can make music.”
