High school planning its first live musical in two years. Here's where you can catch it

GARDNER — The schools are alive with the sound of music again.

After two years of silence due to the COVID pandemic, local students are returning to the stage for live performances. Unlike school sporting events, which could be held with limited or no spectators, the lack of an audience forced musicals and recitals to be put on hold until capacity restrictions were lifted.

Jonathan Schmidt, band teacher at Gardner Middle School, said the past few years had been a real struggle for music students.

“There have been no music performance settings since March 2020,” he said. “And building back just takes a lot of patience.”

Joanne Landry, fine arts teacher at Gardner High School, said the COVID shutdown hit less than one week before the school’s musical, “Once Upon a Mattress,” was set to open.

“It was so disappointing for all those kids (who) did all that work on their musical performances, and all of the other big events we had prepared for, like the spring concert and the musical festivals. Everything just suddenly stopped. It was very strange.”

The high school will present the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” on March 17-19, 7 p.m., in Landry Auditorium, per the Gardner High School Music Facebook page. (Contact Landry at landryj@gardnerk12.org or any cast member for advance tickets.)

Although other classes went to virtual learning models during the shutdown with little difficulty, the switch was not as easy for music students, Landry said.

“Something like music is so hard to do online because when you’re on Zoom (students) have to be muted, so I’m in a room singing away and hoping that they’re keeping up to speed,” said Landry, who is the choral director at the school. “I could see what they were doing, but I couldn’t really hear it. It’s such a different experience because it’s not an ensemble or choral experience.”

Schmidt said middle school band members are typically at different levels performance-wise, but the recent lack of practices and performances means that everybody is essentially starting at square one.

“The only group that has had any experience on instruments or even had a concert is seventh grade, and they had (only) been playing for four or five months,” he said. “So, really, I’d say that 95 percent of my students are brand new, which makes for a very different program than we’re used to.”

But Landry said that despite the extended time away from playing live in front of audiences, she is happy with how much practicing her students have been doing during the pandemic.

“We are behind what we would normally be, but I’m actually very pleased with the progress they made this year,” she said.

Live performances are an important factor for students of music, Schmidt said.

“We spend all this time in rehearsal settings in the classroom working on this craft and we need to be able to share it with somebody,” he said. “Sharing it with ourselves is one thing, but the whole point is to reach out try to move people, whether it’s a fifth-grade band playing ‘Hot (Cross) Buns’ and just sort of plugging along, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It’s very important to include everybody in the process because the whole point of music is to make us feel something.”

Landry said her students are excited to be rehearing and performing again as a group.

“They’re just thrilled to be back in a room together, making music and hearing each other,” she said. “They’re actually stronger now because they want (to perform) so much because they’ve missed it so much.”

“I’m very excited to finally get things up and running and have concerts be able to happen again,” Schmidt said.

This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Live musical performances returning to Gardner schools