Chagrin Valley Today
If you walk down the halls of West Geauga High School on a Tuesday before or after school with your eyes closed, you might mistakenly think that you’ve been transported to an island in the Caribbean. There’s no salty sea air, warm breezes or white sandy beaches, of course, but you will hear the island melodies of West G’s new steel drum band.
Taylor Uveges, West G music teacher and steel drum band director, said she learned to play the steel drums as an undergraduate at Miami University of Ohio and started the program at West G High this past fall. She said while there are some high school steel bands in the Akron area, she believes West G’s is the only steel band in the surrounding area.
“It is a very unique program for our area especially,” Ms. Uveges said. “We started out by ordering 15 steel pans from a company in Trinidad, and once those arrived we were able to get the program started, but it started with a lot of research trying to figure out the best place to buy them, the best way to get all of that started.”
Students have overwhelmingly jumped at the opportunity to learn to play the steel pans, Ms. Uveges said, with about 60 students involved in two groups. The performance group meets Tuesday mornings before school and plays at concerts, and another group meets Tuesdays after school to learn the instrument and gain experience.
“We were definitely hoping for this reaction. Steel band is something I think that is really an exciting idea for students, and so we were really hoping that we’d get that reaction where a lot of students wanted to sign up,” Ms. Uveges said. “Students can always join the morning group if they want to perform later on, and so that’s kind of helped us to accommodate the number of students who have wanted to sign up.”
Seniors Giovanni Luciano and Ben Mihacevich and junior Sarah Harbert were already heavily involved in West G’s band program and are now a part of the performance group. They expressed interest upon hearing about the steel band.
“With the band program we have here at school, they’re encouraging us to do anything band and everything band,” Ben, 18, said. “So when we have new opportunities like this, like I said it’s strongly encouraged that we try these things out and I feel like almost everyone is interested. It’s hard to not join.”
Ms. Uveges said learning to play the steel pans is easy in some ways and hard in others. The different notes are labeled within each pan, and there’s no finger positions to remember like with wind or string instruments, but it takes muscle memory to remember where the notes are located within the pan.
“It’s really not like any other instrument that our students learn in band because besides percussion there’s no air,” she said. “(Students are) moving their whole hand to play different notes inside the pan and so that takes a lot of practice just to remember where all of the notes are and just to be able to read music at the same time.”
Giovanni, 17, said learning the steel drums is completely different than his experience playing clarinet and drums. Mastering the pans is a unique challenge, Sarah said.
“It’s different than any other instrument, so even if you’re the best trumpet player or the best percussionist, it’s totally different,” Sarah, 17, said. “So we’re all starting fresh and everyone is kind of on the same pace. We’re all practicing together and we’re all kind of equal in a way.”
“The hardest part of the entire program is getting up early in the morning,” Ben added. “I’d say other than that it is a challenge, but if you stick with it, it turns out to be really fun once you get the hang of it. It’s so worth it.”
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