Musical Magic
Mission Valley students make melodies
Megan Strickland
Saxophone players from bands across Mission Valley came together to perform an ensemble with other instrument sections at the Mission Valley Band Festival.
Megan Strickland
Guest conductor Dusty Molyneaux directs students from across Mission Valley at the fourth annual band festival.
Megan Strickland
Musicians from across around the region unite for the Mission Valley Band Festival.
Megan Strickland
Musicians from across around the region unite for the Mission Valley Band Festival.
Megan Strickland
Guest conductor Dusty Molyneaux directs students from across Mission Valley at the fourth annual band festival.
Megan Strickland
Musicians from across around the region unite for the Mission Valley Band Festival.
Megan Strickland
Guest conductor Dusty Molyneaux directs students from across Mission Valley at the fourth annual band festival.
Megan Strickland
Ronan's Shannon Saint rehearses for the concert.
Megan Strickland
For trombone players, performing with 145 other instrumentalists on a medium-sized stage means taking extra care to not bump bells.
Megan Strickland
Guest conductor Dusty Molyneaux directs students from across Mission Valley at the fourth annual band festival.
Megan Strickland
Musicians from across around the region unite for the Mission Valley Band Festival.
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RONAN — Conductor Dusty Molyneaux spread his arms as wide and high as humanly possible, signaling to the 145 musicians in front of him to get louder and smoother in their playing. Molyneaux then curtly drew his hands together, shook his head, and signaled for the band to stop, as the motions didn’t have the desired effect.
Molyneaux explained under the yellowed lights of the Ronan Performance Center that the band had not done anything wrong. The notes they coaxed from their instruments were all the correct pitch. The performers needed to look beyond the A sharps and G flats to see the dynamic marks to take the piece from being mere sound into music.
“This is notation. The music lives inside of us,” Molyneaux said as he shook a piece of sheet music and pounded his chest. “This is like your GPS and sometimes it’s going to be a little bit faulty, but that’s okay. It gets us where we are going.”
Molyneaux and David Barr were clinicians for the fourth annual Mission Valley Band Festival. The Festival provides a place where students from Bigfork, St. Ignatius, Ronan, Arlee, St. Regis, Plains and Thompson Falls can come together and form a large ensemble.
“When the Ronan Performing Arts Center was first built one of the goals was to share it with the area,” Ronan Band Director Alicia Lipscomb said. “I really wanted to be able to utilize the space to share making music with not only students from Ronan but outside our community.”
Lipscomb attended a festival in the Bitterroot, talked to other band directors in the area and then decided to create a festival hosted in the Ronan Performing Arts Center.
“The intention was to bring in an outstanding guest clinician to work with all of our students as a large group,” she said.
Molyneaux is the band director in Great Falls and David Barr is the director for Glacier High. Having an outside instructor helps students better understand the criticism their directors give them year round, Mission Band Director Kendal Anderson said.
“It’s nice for them to have the opportunity to hear the things we’re saying from someone else,” Anderson said.
The festival also affords small schools the chance to play in a larger ensemble.
“It’s a way for the kids to get to play with a big band,” Anderson said. “We only have 20 kids in our band. It gives them the opportunity to play with more instruments. We don’t have a French horn player, but Ronan does. So they get to work with different sections.”
The schools receive music for the festival two or three weeks in advance of the festival. Students work in class on the pieces, and then rehearse together the entire day of the festival.
At the end of the day students spiff themselves up, don full concert apparel, and perform for the community.
“It’s a short concert, but it’s nice,” Anderson said.
