Story and Photos by Sam Taylor ’29
“Entertaining.” “Unique.” “Free-spirited.” These are all ways MICDS students Rylan Gardner ’29, Cyrus Ziaee ’28, and Preston Robinson-Williams ’29 used to describe Stomp, an MICDS Winter Term class which turns everyday items into instruments. Led by Band Director Bernard Berry and Middle School Dean and Fine Arts Teacher Eric Taylor, Stomp is a fun way to learn music but with a twist: instead of using traditional instruments, they use their own handmade instruments with objects they find lying around their houses.
Inside the Stomp classroom it’s pretty hectic, but in a fun and exciting way. For example, in one room, two students were bouncing a basketball, while in the other room, kids were hitting a trash can with drumsticks. Alp Bozkurt ’29 even described it as “rhythmic.” Students are having fun, but they are also focused on making music for their performances on Friday, January 12. Students are together in groups of three or four, making up scripts and songs for their performances with all kinds of instruments. Objects like chairs, trash cans, cans, and even suitcases were used as instruments.
Mr. Berry described Stomp as “taking normal, day-to-day objects and turning them into musical instruments.” Mr. Berry said he made Stomp to create “a great opportunity for students to have a greater understanding of music.” While MICDS provides an amazing classroom environment, students don’t usually learn like they do in Stomp. One group of seventh graders had a choreographed scene where they used drum sticks as swords and trash can lids as shields and had a fight. But it wasn’t an ordinary fight: the seventh graders also used the materials to provide a song beat, making the fight rhythmic and musical. That is the whole point of Stomp: to turn scraps into a rhythmic scene.
