By:Michael Arges
An exchange band trip last month took 126 Hightstown High School students to Belfast, Maine, to complete a music exchange with students at Belfast Area High School, said Thomas Juzwiak, band director at Hightstown High School.
Students from the Maine high school visited with their East Windsor counterparts in April, then HHS students traveled north May 4-7. Mr. Juzwiak described it as "a simple trip" that helped expand students’ horizons and build bridges of understanding and affection with students from another part of the country.
Adam Levinson, a junior at HHS, commented that "there was a lot of bonding, a lot of friendship."
"The kids were great!" Mr. Juzwiak said. He was pleased by the way they followed instructions.
"They always do a great job with the music; it’s these other things that make me feel good!" he added, noting the parent chaperones "had nothing but great things to say about these kids."
Fourteen adults, including teachers and parents, joined student members of the band, choir and jazz band at HHS.
"The whole concept behind it is that the kids stay in the other kids’ houses," Mr. Juzwiak said. "So when they came down here our choir and our band kids opened up their houses to them, and they did the same for us."
That practice "seems to nurture a lot of long-lasting friendships," he said, adding that many Hightstown students are planning to return to Maine this summer "because they made such good friends."
Mr. Juzwiak also said that "it’s a nice trip for the kids to understand that kids in Maine are like kids in Hightstown. They’re playing the same kind of music, they live in the same kind of houses, they have the same kind of parents and they live by the same kind of rules. They’re high school is like ours; they’ve got good things and bad things in the town. So it’s important for the kids to understand that it’s not this little bubble of Mercer County here."
During the April trip, the Belfast students "did some sightseeing" during the day, including New York and Philadelphia. The centerpiece of the evening program was a concert mainly performed by the Belfast band with a few "combined" pieces in which members of both bands performed together.
Another of the evenings was a rehearsal night, in which band students worked playing those combined pieces, and there was also a "rec night" in which "we opened up the school, we had the pool, we had the gym for volleyball and basketball, we had a DJ for a dance and stuff like that," Mr. Juzwiak said.
"We basically do the same thing when we go back up there," he added.
One day they took a train ride through the hills of Maine, and a harbor cruise from Port Clyde, which included the sighting of some seals. The students spent another day in Bar Harbor and the Acadia National Park. The students also enjoyed a bus ride up Cadillac Mountain.
In the evenings, it was Hightstown High’s turn to give the main part of the concert with combined numbers, a rehearsal night and "rec night" as before.
Performing music together enhances the sense of camaraderie and common bonds, Mr. Juzwiak said.
"We can call up the same music publisher and get the same piece of music, we practice it separately, and then we meet for one night and we put it together and now we’re making music together," he said.
The music exchange is organized every four or five years, Mr. Juzwiak said. The relationship with the Belfast high school goes back to 1991.
The exchange relationship with Belfast High School began through a process in which music students at Hightstown High School would informally choose about 30 prospective high schools and send letters inviting them to join HHS in a music exchange, said Milton Richey, retired Hightstown High School band director.
"I’d take a group of kids down to the library, and we’d get an atlas and I’d have a stack of envelopes and a form letter, and we’d pick a spot on the map," he said.
The students would pick locations where they would like to visit, and send a letter to the band director at the high school there. Usually they looked for spots about an eight-hour drive away.
Under Mr. Richey’s tenure, the Belfast exchange was one of several exchange programs with high school bands from other areas, including high schools in or near Lewiston and Akron, N.Y. and in Culpepper, Va. Hightstown High School would exchange with these high schools about once every four years, so "there would be different parts of the country in the kid’s four year experience," Mr. Richey said.
The exchange is just one of several spring trips the HHS music department sponsors. Last year they went to Orlando, Fla. to march at Disney World and visit the theme parks.
