Cosburn Middle School will cap an outstanding year in music with a season-ending concert Wednesday, June 3, at East York Collegiate Institute that will feature both the considerable talents of its music students as well as some special guest performers from the community, including former top-four Canadian Idol contestant Chad Doucette."We've got Chad Doucette at our school right now, he's working with our choir," Cosburn's instrumental music teacher Kevin Hrycay mentioned during a phone interview last week.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with a fundraising raffle and the concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 and are available on a first come, first served basis in advance from the school and at the door while supplies last.
Cosburn's outstanding school year kicked off with one of its Grade 8 students, Robert Fraser Burke, placing second in Hockey Night in Canada's theme contest back in October and it concluded in May with its senior Grade 8 concert band not only earning a coveted spot in the invitation-only MusicFest Canada but then being awarded elite gold level status by the adjudicators.
The 64-member Cosburn band qualifed for MusicFest Canada with a gold medal at the Ontario Band Association (OBA) festival in February - the first time the school has ever appeared at either of those two levels - and also recorded similar success in the Kiwanis Music Festival of the GTA.
In between, there were many highlights for the school, involving dozens of students:
* the Grade 7 concert band "got a 95 per cent at Kiwanis (Music Festival for the GTA) which is one of the highest marks if not the highest marks in the elementary band category," said Hrycay.
* the Cosburn choir was awarded silver level in the Kiwanis Music Festival of the GTA "and also performed at Massey Hall this year."
While Cosburn has a growing trophy case, equally impressive is the growing numbers of students involved in the music program.
"We have 300 kids of our 580 (total enrolment) who are involved in extra curricular music," said school principal George Rowell.
"So the bands come in at 7:45 a.m., sometimes as early as 7:30 a.m. We don't have a huge space to fit them in. We've made some alterations to our music room. We've got a jazz band permanently set up in another music room. And we have kids who are jamming together so they book the jazz room as well. So they're groups of four and five kids who will work with Kevin and we even have a couple of garage bands who do that. We've got an amazing jazz combo of five or six kids and Kevin who play. We've had a couple of parents come in to play. There's lots going on."
Rowell said credit goes "to our personnel."
"Kevin Hrycay is outstanding ... He shows them that love of music and he gets them involved, and he's so encouraging.
"Some of our more reluctant kids have really shone because they've been given an opportunity, they've been given chances ...
"And we have a choir person, Jane Agusta who does the same."
They've been bolstered by the rest of the staff, added Rowell, who have "had to really step up in terms of their flexibility, because kids will be drawn out of class at various times for performance and practice so it has really been a team effort here and I've been very, very gratified to see that happen."
Even the community has joined in on the act with the school's parent-teacher council augmented by a parents group formed specifically for the music program. Success does, after all, bring with it, its own problems (even if, as Hrycay, notes they are "good problems").
For instance, Rowell said entry into the provincials was about $300 and into the recent nationals about $3,800 (which did include with it many invaluable workshops and concerts with noted Canadian musicians).
And next year, the nationals are further afield in Ottawa.
Plus, there are band uniforms and instruments needed.
As Hrycay notes, for the June 3 gig he still has to solve the problem of up to a dozen alto sax players - but only five alto saxes.
One interesting performance will feature a super band merged together from the senior and junior concert bands to play Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
"So there's going to be about 140-150 kids playing this one piece at once. It's going to be a fantastic, huge sound," promised Hrycay.
Added Rowell: "It's the best deal in town, you're going to hear some very great quality music, a couple of surprises."
SIDEBAR ...
Achieving gold medal status at MusicFest Canada, held in May in Markham, put the Cosburn Middle School concert band in exclusive territory.
Of the 31 schools in its category (for elementary schools), Cosburn was one of only 12 schools to earn gold status along with private schools such as Country Day School from York Region and Upper Canada College from Toronto.
The only other school from Toronto was Bayview Glen School, a private school, which earned two silvers with two entries.
"They played in front of five adjudicators, and all five of them gave us a gold, and that's five different opinions from adjudicators across the country" said band teacher Kevin Hrycay.
It's a pressure-packed format.
"The infamous five minutes of glory - literally. Six weeks of work for five minutes. No pressure," quipped Hrycay.