Cosburn Middle School’s annual concert June 1 to end its musical year was bittersweet - but mostly sweet. The concert which pretty much filled the cavernous auditorium at Monarch Park Collegiate celebrated the school’s award-winning bands - and the many students that comprise them. And also acknowledged the teachers that teach, lead and inspire them.
And therein lay the bittersweet part. The music teacher that almost single handedly elevated the instrument portion of the music program - Kevin Hrycay - will not be back after four years at the school. The news was roundly and spontaneiously booed when announced. He may be one of the top music teachers in the country - certainly he’s immensely liked and respected in the Cosburn school community - but being relatively new to the Toronto District School Board, he doesn’t have a lot of tenure. And so on he moves as the school board has to grapple with its annual staff deployments for the upcoming school year.
I should declare my conflict of interest here. Several of them, actually. For one I’ve got a kid in the school benefiting from the music program, and also taking part extra curricularly, along with roughly half the student population. And for two, I’m also in a workforce with a relatively similar arrangement on tenure.
Nevertheless, I blog about it, basically for one reason. The music program is such a good news story, and especially because I was right there in a crowded auditorium of hundreds of community members, it would be a shame not to give a shout out. I’ve actually seen all four of the yearly shows under Hrycay’s baton even though this is actually only the first year my kid has been in a band and only the second year in the middle school (Grades 6-8). But I was enticed to attend even prior to my kid being there because of neighbour friends who had kids in the show and because the program had received, quite frankly, some newsworthy results at Kiwanis, Ontario, and national band festivals.
And this year's concert was awesome again. I immensely enjoyed the show. And, you know, it probably would have been almost as awesome even if it wasn’t so good. For most parents, myself definitely included, it’s enough just to see your kids just become interested in music. Period.
To see them literally ‘band’ together in so short a time, as they do at Cosburn MS, is quite clearly just a bonus. Take my kid, for instance. He’s about as fond as getting up an hour earlier Monday to attend 8 a.m. practices as I am of dropping him off and going into work an hour early.
June 1 it paid off though. The 51-member junior jazz band he’s in - the majority who had not yet been introduced to their instrument before September - sounded great. And they weren’t even one of the award-winning bands - although they sure sounded like one.
As always, the Grade 8 concert and jazz bands were the highlight. Going into the evening I would have thought that there was no way I could actually enjoy another listen to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. But I was wrong. Four girls singing the song, backed by dancers as well as the award winning 99-member Grade 8 concert band – all from Cosburn – yeah, that definitely worked for me.
Oh yes, and I would be remiss not to mention the special guest group Drumhand who not only put on a riveting segment, but also worked with the students on percussion earlier this year along with teacher Adrian Goodman (also gone due to staff deployments) who ran the choir this year but also added his expertise on percussion. As a result there was some real neat percussive segments by students throughout the show.
A fitting finale for Hrycay. And my sense is that the Cosburn MS community hopes that if he can’t be waving his baton in front of Cosburn students - that at least come September he’ll be growing a program somewhere else for some other lucky kids.
And that’s about as much as I will say, as I definitely don’t want to make any past, present, or future staff at this or any other school feel uncomfortable because, as I understand it, staff at the individual level are somewhat like pawns moved around by the powers that be in board offices, who, in turn, are subject to a whole raft of criteria, such as board-wide labour agreements and staffing levels dictated by the province. As such, I would assume that Cosburn MS is hardly alone at this time of year with regard to staffing issues for September.
This column is just meant to salute another outstanding concert and a shout-out to a music teacher many parents and students think is amazing. And as for ‘Don’t Stop Believing’: sounds like good advice!
(The above YouTube video is from the recent guest appearance by the award-winning Grade 8 band at George Weston Hall. The school even has its own YouTube channel).