Festival Spotlight: Battle Ground Academy

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Now in his sixth year as Director of Bands at Battle Ground Academy in Franklin, Tennessee, John Propper brought his BGA Jazz Ensemble to the Berklee High School Jazz Festival for the first time this past Saturday, where they competed as a jazz combo. A Berklee alum and multi-instrumentalist, Propper has built the jazz program at BGA from the ground up.

All Roads Lead to Nashville

Propper, a Connecticut native, found his way to Berklee College of Music in 1995 after spending a year studying journalism at a liberal arts college. While he entered as a guitar player, Propper studied music education and became more acquainted with other instruments to the point where he now considers himself a true multi-instrumentalist, taking gigs on guitar, bass, trumpet, and other instruments. After graduating from Berklee and student teaching in Revere, MA, Propper attended graduate school at the University of Connecticut before spending six years as a band director in Stanford, Connecticut.

According to Propper, he had a different vision for his program than the school did, so he decided to look for another job. Upon learning of the BGA opening during the middle of the school year, he decided to head to Nashville, where, “there are just so many people and so many players, and you don’t have to go far to find a Berklee grad.”

Upon arriving at BGA, Propper found a program that he simply describes as “not much.” Propper soon began to put his own touch on the program, incorporating teaching skills such as ear training, jazz, and commercial music into the Battle Ground Academy curriculum.

First “Giant” Steps

For Propper, the first step to building up the BGA band program was to create an after-school program in both the Middle and High Schools (Propper teaches grades 5-12). The programs are designed for students who want to put in extra time and effort into playing music, as well as to get all of the best players in the school playing together. Additionally, it introduced students to commercial music; Propper reports that they, “pull everything off the radio,” performing everything from Stevie Wonder to the Beatles to Taylor Swift. The program began under the name “Giant Steps” in the high school and eventually trickled down to the middle school where it is known as “Vanguard.”

Adding a Jazz Band

After about two years with minimal student interest in the school concert band, Propper made the bold move of replacing the concert band with a jazz ensemble, or, as is probably more correct, the BGA Jazz-Rock Ensemble. Propper received significantly more interest in the Jazz-Rock Ensemble, which also doubles as a pep band during football games. Propper places a lot of emphasis on ear training, and has his ensemble pull arrangements off of recordings to be played at the football games. When not preparing arrangements for pep band, Propper focuses on more straight-ahead jazz, as evidenced by their set at the High School Jazz Festival, which included renditions of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts” and Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.” According to Propper, focusing on jazz during the day and pop music outside of school helps give players a certain edge: “One of my philosophies is that I really like having them focus on jazz during the day, more pop music after school, because I really feel like the two compliment each other,” says Propper, “When you hear a rock player who is also a jazz player, you can tell. It gives him the smoothness that people who focus on one or the other might not have.”

Additionally, Propper focuses on music theory, giving out assignments about every other week. Propper stresses that he wants “theory geeks” in his ensembles because, “If I have to sit there and explain concepts, it takes away from our rehearsal time.” The combination of ear training, theory, jazz, and pop helps to give players in the BGA program a “fire” to play with and helps them to “work off each other and with each other,” which leads to the end goal of Propper’s preaching: creativity and making sure that the music “feels as though it comes from us.” This “fire” has allowed several students from BGA to proceed to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Belmont University on partial music scholarships.

2013 Jazz Festival

Propper decided to bring a select section of his jazz-rock ensemble to the Berklee High School Jazz Festival as sort of an “invitational” for his best students. The group consisted of Bo Kennedy and Rachel Arvizu on Trumpet, Jonathan Reiss on alto saxophone, Will Lamb on guitar, Benton Brown on bass, Hersheyth Aggerwal on piano, and Charlie Long on drums. As Propper is quick to point out, most of these players also play other instruments. Propper has nothing but good things to say about the talent, ears, and work ethic of his young corps of musicians that made the trip to Boston.

Propper wants to see the excitement and enthusiasm from the festival carry through the rest of the year and beyond. In addition to their attending the Greg Ward Clinic and the Metta Quintet’s performance just before going on stage, Propper says that he’s happy for his students to get to experience something outside the Middle Tennessee area and to get “motivated to be better than we are right now.”

Ultimately, for John Propper, it’s about improvement and giving his students the skills they need to be successful after leaving BGA. “Berklee was such a transformative experience for myself,” says Propper, “If they can just get a little of what I got, they’re going to be in a great spot.”