Lincoln Middle School Bands Play Up A Storm

When Tyra Ingram Cable was in 5th grade in a small town in Alabama, the local high school's band director brought instruments for all the kids in her class to try out. After letting Cable try several, he announced the 10-year-old would be a good clarinet player.

"In my town, the band director was an idol," Cable says. "If he said I should be a clarinet player, I knew I should be a clarinet player."

Cable went on to become what she calls a "total band geek," playing in the concert and marching bands at her middle and high schools until she graduated. Then she continued playing clarinet in her college band, while studying music education to learn how to be a music teacher.  “My high school band director was such an inspiring and motivating figure in my life, I knew I wanted to teach band," she says. "But I think there was only one other woman in my college band education classes. Back then it was very unusual for a woman to become a band director."

Now the music director at Lincoln Middle School (LMS), Cable has directed bands in middle schools for 38 years and knows how to play (and teach) every instrument that makes up those bands.  As of this year, LMS has beginning, intermediate, and advanced band classes. When students join the band at Lincoln, they also have opportunities to play in a wind ensemble, a symphonic band, a marching band and a jazz band; next year Cable will be offering a beginning strings class as well.

"The great thing about middle schoolers is that they're eager to learn," she says. "They have an amazing ability to stretch to accomplish anything you offer to them. If as a teacher you love it and have passion for it, they'll love it and have passion for it, too."

This year, the love of music shared by Cable and her students has garnered LMS bands an unprecedented number of awards, including:

• 1st Place, Middle/High School Marching Bands Division, Southwest Airlines 2014 Chinese New Year Parade, San Francisco, February 15, 2014
• 1st Place, Middle School Marching Band Category, 2013 America’s Children’s Holiday Parade, Oakland, December 7, 2013
• “Superior” Rating, 1st Place and "Top Overall," Concert Band Category, Music in the Parks Festival Competition, Anaheim, April 12, 2014
• "Excellent" Rating, Concert Performance, California Music Education Association's Large Group Festival, Danville, April 25, 2014
• “Superior” Rating, Sight Reading, California Music Education Association’s Large Group Festival, Danville, April 25, 2014

The advanced band was also selected to lead the Disneyland Main Street Parade  on Thursday, April 10. "They marched tall," Cable says. "They marched proud and they marched in step. And they played magnificently."

Cable herself has received a remarkable honor this spring:  She was chosen to play alto clarinet in a concert at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France that will commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Dignitaries expected to attend the concert include President Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

"Ms. Cable volunteers countless hours in her devotion to the Lincoln band program," LMS Principal Michael Hans says, "hours that are above and beyond the expectations of a music teacher. And our band students have been recognized for their ability to exceed anyone’s expectation of what a middle school marching band could perform.  It is Ms. Cable’s commitment to excellence that motivates her students to excel to such high levels.  I am very proud of the fact that the Lincoln Middle School Marching Band is a highly regarded ambassador of our Alameda community.  Our band does an outstanding job representing our school and our city throughout out the Bay Area and across the state of California."   

—Information submitted by Alameda Unified School District