Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Great Bend plans to build performing arts center
Great Bend Youth Chorale performs at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
It's never too late to join a choir or learn an instrument, and the Great Bend Center for Music in Union is an organization that hopes to help kids and adults find their sound.
Founder and general director Matthew Melendez described the organization as "an organization that explores the research-based ways that music can be used as a tool for community development." Melendez said he wanted to create the organization as an institute for applied research, figuring out how to "programitize" the research and get the research into the hands of community leaders.
Union and Shelton had a thriving classical music scene and Melendez has been helping Union reconnect people to that.
"Pretty much right from the very beginning, the community was like, 'Well, if you can pull it off,' and then really proud and really supportive and really enthusiastic," Melendez told the Journal. "In fact, I had another meeting this morning where the person I was meeting with was like, wow, you've done that too? I was like, yeah, really, here in the middle of Mason County of all places, the opportunities I've had here as a musician are just off the hook and my colleagues around the world are like how do you get these opportunities? How do you get the opportunity to go perform at the White House? ... The difference is this community. This community just rises to whatever challenges I put in front of them or have so far. It's been my process of falling in love with the community. I've been here since '98 and I just love Mason County."
Melendez has taught in every school in the county and it showed him the need for the programs Great Bend Center for Music offers.
The most popular program is the Sound Scholars Early Childhood Education program, which is a free virtual early childhood music education program for kids prekindergarten to third grade. The second most popular program is HighKey Kids, a live virtual music class for kids in grades four to 12 that offers specific instruction on topics, including music for video games or digital audio production.
"Once kids get to fourth and fifth grade, they begin to have instrumental and ensemble opportunities, I think that's crazy because here it is, it's fourth grade, I'm going to give you a clarinet or I'm going to give you a trumpet and in addition to all the physical kinesthetic discomfort of developing calluses or developing your embouchure while you learn to physically hold the instrument right, we're also telling you this is what a quarter note is, this is what a staff is, here's how you count to four and here's some Italian on top of it," Melendez said. "I think that's a crazy way to introduce kids to music. I kind of separate those but then once we get to fourth grade, what kids are interested musically now is not what they were interested in musically 50 years ago. Now, they have examples like Billie Eilish. I don't really need to be in band or be in choir to make music, I have all these tools on my parents' phone or on my Chromebook for making music."
Programs are offered through Zoom and some programs have the option to learn in-person. When the pandemic hit, he had to figure out a way to teach online and was able to teach the curriculum through Zoom.
"It's a really exciting place to be, just to watch this program grow," Melendez said. "I'm telling you, that's the way to get through a pandemic, singing 'If you're happy and you know it' every day with a bunch of three-year-olds is a very satisfying way to navigate the pandemic."
Zoom has allowed the program to go international, teaching five to 15 classes a day, five days a week. The early childhood program has more than 500 kids in 34 states and six other countries.
"I get to watch these Mason County kids I know so well in class right now, last week I was subbing for a teacher, I was watching Mason County kids I know in class with kids in New Zealand and in Scotland at the same time and I'm just loving that. Every Zoom screen is a box of crayons in terms of the different races and cultures there, there are intercity kids, there are suburban kids. I just love what that's teaching the Mason County kids."
Melendez said there's a lot more to accomplish with Great Bend, with the goal of building an $80-million performing arts center in Mason County. The organization created a capital campaign in January. Melendez said the organization hopes to break ground before 2025 and he believes it will be an 18-to-24-month construction timeline after breaking ground. The organization is in the property acquisition phase and received a large gift last year to be able to purchase a piece of property once they find an adequate location.
Gov. Inslee signed SB 5878 on March 30 with it set to become law on June 9. The bill is the arts equity education initiative, which means beginning in the 2023-24 school year, school districts with more than 200 enrolled students must offer at least one visual art or performing art class during the school year and each student must receive instruction in at least one art discipline from kindergarten to eighth grade and high school students must have the opportunity to take an art class each year.
"We're already in conversations with schools up and down western Washington that are single school school districts about how we can partner with them, not just with our Sound Scholars and Early Childhood program, but our HighKey kids program in terms of really helping them meet that objective," Melendez said. "Shelton School District had called us before it even passed and said can we partner with you on this? Absolutley, both of these programs are specifically designed to provide certificated, highly qualified, talented, enthusiastic teaching artists for rural kids because we don't have the access to art institutions out here that suburban and urban kids have so that alone, we have lower population densities which means everything is five times as expensive. This was Great Bends' answer to that. ... We're getting ready by the fall of 2023 to be serving thousands of kids just in Washington state, let alone what happens internationally."
Music is not only great to listen to and be a part of, but it also is a valuable tool and Great Bend Center for Music channels music as something more than just an art form. Melendez said any exposure to musical participation creates permanent improvements in neurological hardwiring.
"For kids in particular, if they only get six weeks, the improvements they get in everything from executive function to academic decision making to social IQ to all the more specific things in terms of math and language arts and all those improvements, they're all permanent for the rest of their lives," Melendez said. "There's just nothing that gives you that sort of impact, even compared to other forms of art and to sports, which are both great and this is not a competition. It's not an either or, but if you have to choose one thing where you're going to get the most bang for your buck, across all segments of the population, it's therapeutic forms of music."
For more information about Great Bend Center for Music, go to http://www.greatbendmusic.org.
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