The Marching Scarlet Knights Help Prepare the Next Generation of Band Members
Rutgers faculty and students mentor young musicians from New Brunswick High School
Jessie Mersinger remembers her high school band days as “life changing.”
“I had a beautiful experience,” says Mersinger, a 2018 Rutgers graduate who earned a doctoral degree in French horn from Mason Gross School of the Arts. “I had a great band director, who I still talk to to this day, and I still hang out with my friends who I sat next to. It was such a special thing, and I feel like every kid deserves that.”
Mersinger is now working to create that same experience for her students at New Brunswick High School (NBHS), where she is the director of instrumental music and oversees the marching band as well as concert band, jazz band, and orchestra.
Under her leadership, the NBHS marching band, the Marching Zebras, has been steadily growing over the past two years after more than two decades of inactivity due to a series of budget cuts and changes in directors.
Around 50 students now participate in the band, and the larger music program in New Brunswick Public Schools is getting a boost thanks to a partnership with the Mason Gross music department, which provides an opportunity for Rutgers students to coach and instruct in community classrooms.
The Marching Zebras are eager to perform at football games and competitions – but most of all, they want to work hard together to rebuild what was once a high-achieving, highly visible marching band.
“Our kids are thirsty,” says Mersinger. “They want to learn; they want to get better.”
For inspiration and to learn from an established program, last fall Mersinger began taking her students to observe rehearsals by the Rutgers Marching Scarlet Knights as they practiced for fall home games.
The field trips have continued, and on a warm early-autumn weeknight this past October, nearly two dozen NBHS students sat in the stands high above the field at SHI Stadium in Piscataway, mesmerized by the movement and music swirling from down below.
As the voices of Todd Nichols, director of the Marching Scarlet Knights, and Julia Baumanis, assistant director, beamed out of the press box and bounced around the field, the marching band took their cues, refining a medley of steps and songs in preparation for Homecoming weekend and a halftime show during the game against Michigan State. They were excited to be learning from a band that would be performing in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“The Marching Scarlet Knights are awesome – they’re my idols,” declared junior Deandrae Robinson, who plays the tuba for the Marching Zebras. “I’m definitely feeling excitement being here.”
Robinson and his classmates were equal parts animated and quietly taking it all in as they moved around with Mersinger to get different perspectives of the rehearsal.
“We’re all brand-new band kids, so we’re all learning from each other,” said Yulissa Avila Martinez, a senior and the Marching Zebras’ drum major. “We don’t have any students before us to look up to, so we’re all learning from each other, from our band directors, and from the Scarlet Knights.”
Sophomore Isis Cox was inspired to join the marching band because her mother had done it in her high school days.
“It’s been the best experience,” said Cox, who plays the trombone and serves as the uniform manager. “My favorite part is all of us together, on the bus going to games or coming back from games. It’s like a little family in a way. We’re all singing, laughing, having a good time. You never know what’s going to happen at the game – if we’ll win or lose – but us just being together, even playing in the stands, is fun.”
Cox appreciated seeing the Marching Scarlet Knights practicing their drills, moving together and then changing directions in unison.
“It’s really cool watching them take steps,” Cox said. “Even though we practice, and we do it too, it’s nice to see it on a massive scale, and how it’s all synchronized.”
Good Neighbors
Mersinger wanted her students to not only get an idea of what marching band could be like, but also to familiarize themselves with Rutgers and the idea that music can be a viable career. She reached out to her connections at Mason Gross to build on nascent partnerships that had formed as part of a broader initiative within the music department to engage with local public schools.
The collaborations have included Jonathan Spitz, head of strings at Rutgers and principal cello of the New Jersey Symphony, teaching master classes at NBHS as well as Nichols presenting professional development sessions to Plainfield middle school and high school faculty and working with students in the Plainfield High School Wind Ensemble.
Ching-Chun Lai, director of orchestral activities and engagement at Mason Gross, sees these efforts in music education and outreach, especially early in a child’s schooling, as imperative to building both an interest in the arts and creating opportunities within a community.
“All of this is [beneficial] to us, because the kids doing music might go to Rutgers – or somewhere else – and somehow stay in music education or the music field,” explains Lai. “They feed back to their groups, too. You start with them, and they’ll come back to serve their own communities.”
Lai and five of her graduate students are working in fourth- through eighth-grade classrooms in New Brunswick to enhance string education programs in particularly understaffed schools. In February, Lai conducted the New Brunswick All-City Orchestra, made up of 100 public school students from third grade to high school.
Establishing connections with public school students also introduces those students to life beyond their own neighborhoods, including the idea of advancing their education at Rutgers – which, Baumanis points out, isn’t always viewed as a possibility because of financial concerns or uncertainty about how to transition from high school to college.
“We’re trying to break down that barrier, because here are people who are closer to your age, from all different walks of life,” says Baumanis, who in November was honored with the university’s Committee to Advance Our Common Purpose Torchbearer Award for her dedication to diversity and inclusion. “It’s powerful when you see somebody like you doing something that you want to do in the future. It makes you feel like it’s for you, that it’s possible—that if I can see it, I can believe it.”
Students Teaching Students
The collaboration between the schools has grown into a mutually beneficial program in which Baumanis’s music education students work with the NBHS ensembles in a series of observation, conducting, and coaching sessions.
Baumanis calls these “collaborative teaching projects,” and they’re meant to get Rutgers students comfortable in front of a class before they start student teaching in their final semester to fulfill degree requirements – “a little sweet spot where it’s a great time for them to hop in and interact,” Baumanis says.
“It’s really the middle point between being a freshman just figuring it out or you’re about to finish your full-time student teaching semester and hop fully into getting your first job,” says Baumanis. “It’s a nice stepping-stone.”
The partnership has been part of two programs funded through the Arts Institute of Middlesex County: the High School Development Program and Pop-Up Arts at Mason Gross, which brings together student artists and community organizations for meaningful experiences in the arts. These programs include training for Rutgers musicians in community engagement and culturally responsive teaching methods, led by Pop-Up Arts artistic director and theater faculty member John Keller MFA’10.
Amanda Corujo, a senior at Mason Gross, admitted she was nervous to begin her collaborative teaching project and lead the student ensembles.
“I don’t have very much experience with strings, so I just tried to help with the musicality and dynamics and making it sound fluid and like something the student wanted to hear,” says Corujo, whose primary instrument is flute. “I’d ask what they were looking for in their playing so that I could help them make that sound, rather than directing them and telling them what to sound like.”
Corujo even extended her time with the high school students after the spring semester ended at Rutgers, coaching a string quartet to play Brahms’s “Theme from Symphony No. 1 (Finale).” The four musicians performed the piece in June at their spring concert.
In addition to helping the students progress musically, Corujo says these interactions open the door to the university for the high schoolers.
“They’re getting more familiar with [the university], which I feel is important because there are so many opportunities that they can take advantage of that are 10 or 15 minutes down the road from them,” says Corujo. “They don’t have to go to New York to see a good group or meet a cool person who’s teaching a master class.”
This fall, Mersinger has taken her students to Rutgers Band Day and a dress rehearsal and concert by Rutgers Symphonic Winds and Rutgers Symphony Band.
On December 13, the NBHS orchestra will collaborate with the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra (RSO) in a side-by-side holiday concert at Nicholas Music Center – another idea Mersinger came up with and pitched to Lai, who conducts the RSO.
All of this has Mersinger’s students “feeling like a part of the Mason Gross community,” she says, cementing a positive relationship with Rutgers and the idea that music can be a part of their lives, no matter where their paths may take them.
“Even if they become a biology major, they’re still going to want to play with the symphony band or the concert band or play with the marching band, or do music studies,” Mersinger says. “These are the kids who really want to do this. And music is so important to people in this community, so we should foster that and make it happen.”
The Rutgers Symphony Orchestra will perform with the New Brunswick High School Orchestra on Dec. 13 at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public at Nicholas Music Center.
