Bringing the Star Spangled Banner to Life

Bringing the Star Spangled Banner to Life by Lori Hutton

Back in November, we celebrated a wonderful Veterans Day Assembly at our school put on by our local Veterans Association.  The Marshfield High School Band was asked to perform several patriotic selections throughout the service.  The highlight was performing the Star Spangled Banner.  After hearing some of the military bands perform this at Midwest and in D.C., I decided to take our marching band arrangement and rearrange it for concert band.  After looking at the words to the first verse, it occurred to me that to follow the meaning of the words, we should play the opening stanza as a slow chorale with no percussion, “Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light….”   Traditionally, the bridge is played without percussion and at a softer dynamic level.  However,  we did a crescendo into the bridge, “and the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air…”,  adding in the snare drum roll, bass drum and cymbal crashes playing at a forte level and sustained this until the end.  It was a very dramatic performance and one of our students made the comment  “that we brought the words to life.”  One of the joys of directing and teaching music is the freedom to make music out of music.  This was a great teaching moment!

Lori Hutton is in her twenty-first year of teaching instrumental music. She has taught in the Marshfield school district for the past sixteen years and has previous teaching experience in the Seymour and Lebanon School Districts. She earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Drury University. Lori was the recipient of the 2004 Marshfield Teacher of the Year Award, Who’s Who Among Teacher Awards, and the John East “Spirit of Orpheus” Mentor Award; and also been nominated for the Grammy Teacher award. She is a member of National Association for Music Education, Missouri Music Educators Association, Missouri Bandmasters Association, South Central Missouri Music Educators Association, Phi Beta Mu Honorary Band Organization, Jazz Educators Network and Missouri Association for Jazz Education. She is also an active adjudicator and clinician. You can reach Lori by email at lori.huttton@marshfieldbluejays.org.