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TEAMS — Chamber Music in your Band Program

“The gifts of our colors may be different, but God has so placed us as to journey in the same path.”

James Fenimore Cooper.[i]
small group in chamber rehearsal music as a team

Public schools, the idea of offering free education for all, represent one of the nation’s greatest ideas. Thomas Jefferson, often called a “father” of public education, considered it essential for the success of the young nation. He wrote: “There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards (school districts). I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.”[ii]. Jefferson’s core beliefs now educate our future farmers and carpenters, our philosophers and inspirational muses, our doctors and rocket scientists, and indeed our diverse society.

Jefferson’s vision laid the foundation for educating a diverse workforce—future farmers, carpenters, doctors, and scientists alike. The “common schools” of the early 1820s evolved into today’s public schools. By the mid-19th century, their graduates helped create a well-educated nation whose manufacturing capabilities quickly rivaled England’s. While there’s no direct proof that higher literacy rates improved American manufacturing, a better-educated workforce likely played a key role in producing superior goods.

Testing and Recognition: Individual Success vs. Team Potential

Testing is done to confirm that students, individually, are educated and meeting academic standards as set by and for each state. A by-product of this ‘testing’ is the identification of those individuals performing above median levels. Recognized and lauded for their accomplishments, this recognition frequently marks them for success and rewards them with benefits. The lone, rugged superior individual.

But what about the majority—those who test at average or below-average levels? What about their potential, their value, and their contribution to society?

Interestingly, most major workplace advancements and innovations come not from individuals but from teams. Yet, teamwork, particularly small teams, is rarely a formal part of school curricula, apart from activities like sports, band, and choir. For many students, their first experience in working with a team is on-the-job training, not in a controlled learning environment, and that can be painful.

But…suppose some ‘teamwork’ education was introduced earlier?

Enter Music Education: Bands, Choirs, and Chamber Ensembles

Public school music programs—bands, choirs, and chamber music—offer a unique opportunity to teach teamwork. In these settings, students learn to communicate, collaborate, and combine their individual skills into a unified performance. Unlike individual testing, music programs inherently emphasize group effort and interdependence.

Chamber music, in particular, provides a powerful model for teaching teamwork. These small ensembles require every participant to contribute equally, with each part essential to the whole. Students must listen, analyze, and adapt, learning how to rehearse and communicate effectively with their peers. This process teaches them how to work as a cohesive unit, a skill that can carry over into any future team-based endeavor.

“That’s better, it’s sounding better. Now, talk with each other.”  

The brass quintet was used to hearing “Talk to me” during our lessons, my way of eliciting comments about how they had just played. Getting them to analyze and think. I would ask about how or what they had done, going around the group in seating sequence, or by putting them on the spot in random order.

So, it was no surprise when they started talking to ‘me’ as they had before. Not the question I had asked. Lesson One begins.

“Stop.” They looked puzzled. “No, not ‘to me’. Talk with each other. Make sure you don’t talk ‘to’ each other. Talk about how you just played.” Now silent, they looked lost for how to proceed. “A few suggestions.. What each of you wants the piece to sound like, and what to do in specific spots Talk with each other about how the group played. How it might be better.” Awkward at first, it took several tries, but eventually they spoke with each other, while only occasionally looking at me for approbation. And they began to learn how to rehearse.

We had already covered the basics of the first two movements of Victor Ewald’s First Brass Quintet. Two trumpets, horn, euphonium, and tuba[iii]. Simultaneously, it was a challenge for them; each student, good high school juniors and seniors, could play their own part or would be able to do so by competition time. And there would be plenty for them to discuss in my goal of turning them away from playing together as five individuals and more towards becoming one team. 

Why Teamwork Matters

Many years ago, in my union negotiation chapter of life, I came across the phrase, “A team will almost always outperform an individual.” I wish I could cite where I saw the phrase, but alas – that book has long since gone to Goodwill or been recycled. Still, the phrase has stuck with me for years, and I’ve generally found it to be true.

Google’s top result for the phrase is: “Research has found that teams generally outperform individuals when attempting to create impactful innovations1. While individual performance is important, it is through team performance that exceptional value is possible2. The efficiency of task completion depends on complexity: simple tasks are best accomplished by individuals, while difficult ones are more efficiently completed by a group3.”[iv]

Cited within this result are three short papers/blogs by Sara Trane of ‘The Talent Company’[v], the team of Tian Heong Chan, Jurgen Mihm, and Mauel Sosa[vi], and Duncan Watts, 2021 Wharton Podcast ‘Knowledge at Wharton’. These papers lead to more material and conclusions which I hope will be useful to any music educator wanting justification to start, fund, or enhance their program with chamber music.

A Fixed Mindset

As I’ve written before, public school education trends towards teaching all students mostly the same, uniform curriculum. And while teaching is done for each student to learn materials individually, it is mostly done in a GROUP or class, rather than one-on-one. Each student within the class then processes and learns according to their own gifts, and for which they are tested and graded – individually. These tests supply feedback for a school system to know: 

  1. how well teachers have taught the materials
  2. for the state to know the level of class accomplishment within a school system
  3. for each student to know what they have learned, and how well.

These ‘individual’ tests all too often, in my opinion and perhaps through the competitive needs of society[vii], also categorize students. Labeling and sorting them to identify who will be the best, tomorrow’s geniuses and who won’t. The ‘win, place, and show’ folks, and the rest of the pack. Or, per Dr. Carol Dweck[viii], a ‘fixed mindset’ rewarding shown natural talent over a ‘growth mindset’ of believing in the improvement of individuals.

This ‘fixed mindset’ sets up success and rewards for those who learn and test well and society, consciously or subconsciously, builds an upward trajectory for them. Doors open for future careers and job interviews, to receive choice positions, higher salaries, and professional and social status. All because through testing they are recognized as the ‘best’. Or as Dr. Dweck writes in the foreword to Dr. Mary Murphy’s[ix] “Cultures of Growth”, “…a culture that believes in and values fixed ability, a culture that expects some people to have more of it and some people to (permanently)have less of it.”[x] In common vernacular, testing separates the ‘wheat from the chaff’.

But this belief, this ‘fixed mindset’, often ignores the possibility that less-gifted students, test-wise, may improve themselves in material which previously gave them difficulties. 

This mindset also fails to recognize, or downplays, the possibility of the combination of ‘lesser’ minds, and their knowledge and abilities when brought together, to grow and make significant, important societal contributions in team settings using that material. That they can be as good as, or better than, individuals who tested at the top. Or put another way, that “a Team will almost always outperform an individual”.

A Case For Music Education

In bands and choirs, students experience teamwork in a formal, methodical way. They practice, rehearse, and perform as a unit, dressed alike to symbolize their collective identity.

Chamber music offers a more intimate and personalized setting where students are accountable for their individual parts while contributing to the group’s success. Taught well, and usually in smaller group sizes allowing for more personalized instruction, it can appeal to the above-mentioned ‘growth mindset’ by helping those with an initially lesser interest or ability to understand and participate, knowing their own part is of importance to the group. This can encourage them to appreciate their worth in group settings and encourage the improvement of their personal skill levels, bringing a contribution to the larger ensemble they came from.

Written for at least two, and often more, parts, each individual is accountable and interdependent upon each other to produce the highest quality product. And each student, knowing they have and are depended upon for their contribution, learns and meets the challenge of being part of the team. 

It is this which suggests chamber music as a tremendous team teaching tool. 

Nor does chamber music try to teach too much. The end product as such already exists, its parts and instructions are also in existence, lacking only a ‘public display assembly’ of these parts by the students. And it is in learning how to cooperate in that assembly that teamwork can be taught. There is no competitive real-world pressure for creativity of new products. It uses skills and how to use them learned in other classes. What IS unique and required is for each team member, with their own unique knowledge and skills, to learn how to work together. Teaching and trusting themselves. And with that, chamber music becomes an education tool, an educational means to an end, rather than being the end product.

The Lasting Impact of Teamwork Skills

The skills learned through music education extend far beyond the stage or the classroom. Recently, in consideration of this writing, I met with internationally recognized chamber music specialist David Shifrin[xi] to discuss this topic of using chamber music as a vehicle to learn the team skills of interaction, communication, and performance.

David suggested that students could become engaged in chamber music as early as middle school, and for surprisingly timely reasons. Small, interactive groups of ‘chamber music’, whether they be sectionals or after-school practice sessions with friends provide a non-verbal way of communicating between youngsters. Learning how to listen, how to give and take comments. How to have fun. And a way to re-introduce socializing post- pandemic. 

I also related to David the experience of my band director, Gary Riler, and the successes earned and enjoyed by both the Cleveland HS Wind Ensemble and Jazz Band during the previous All-State Band competition, which Gary accredits in no small part to chamber music. To which David told me of an old interview done with George Szell, legendary maestro of the Cleveland Orchestra. Szell was asked why the Cleveland Orchestra played so well as an ensemble. Szell’s reply was “When the musicians play, they play as though it were chamber music.” This philosophy reminds us that the power of teamwork can elevate any group effort

As beneficial as chamber music may be to the overall improvement of a band program, and in addition to ‘win, place, and show’ trophies (and Gary has quite a few), the skills learned in the rehearsing and performing of chamber music as a TEAM educational experience go far beyond any concert or competition. 

These are also the skills that employers want and companies need. They are the purpose, in so many ways, of a complete public-school education for the future success of all students, and enough to suggest that every band director should explore a way to involve their students in chamber music in an educational environment where students/musicians can learn teamwork.


[i] James Fenimore Cooper from “The Last of the Mohicans”

[ii] Thomas Jefferson from “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.239  1829  It is also notable that Jefferson’s first attempts to create elementary level public schools begins in 1779, and that the 5-6 square mile subdivision of land into ‘wards’ (school districts in Virginia), was for the public education of boys and girls, that education to be funded by taxing the inhabitants of each district.

[iii] The original scoring is open – calling for cornet 1 and cornet 2 in Bb, alto horn in Eb, Tenor Horn in Bb, and Tuba, and indeed there is a 1912 (circa) photograph of Ewald himself playing a rotary valve tuba along with 2 piston valve cornets, a rotary valve alto horn, and a rotary valve tenor horn. There is a nice YouTube recording of the Art Of Vienna Brass using rotary trumpets and Tenor Horn.

1 “When Individuals Are More Innovative Than Teams” by Tian Heong Chan, Jürgen Mihm, and Manuel Sosa. Harvard Buisness Review

2 “Are Teams Better Than Individuals at Getting Work Done?” by Duncan Watts. Knowledge at Wharton Podcast.

3 “Why Teams Outperform Individuals” by Sara Trané. The Talent Company

[iv] Google, 2024, top result for “a team will almost always outperform an individual”. 

[v] Sara Trane “Why teams outperform individuals”, posted 2022 in ‘The Talent Company’.

[vi] Tian Heong Chan, Jurgen Mihm, and Manuel Sosa “When Individuals Are More Innovative Than Teams” 2019 in the ‘Harvard Business Review’ under Innovation

[vii] Perhaps, and merely my conjecture, for societies to know both: a) who is the strongest amongst them, and b) for comparative bragging rights between neighboring but separate societies. Not unlike sports.

[viii] Carol S. Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Author of the million copy bestseller “Mindset”, Random House 2006, and featured numerous times in publications with the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the New Yorker and Time.

[ix] Dr. Mary C. Murphy is author of more than 100 publications, professor at Indiana University, and was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest award bestowed on early career scholars by the U.S. government.

[x] Mary C. Murphy, “Cultures of Growth” Simon and Schuster, New York, 2024

[xi] David Shifrin, from his biography at Yale University: “One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award’s inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator… A sought after a chamber musician, he collaborates frequently with distinguished ensembles and artists. Shifrin has been an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989 and served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004.” Further accomplishments include being the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Ore., the Artistic Director of Yale’s Oneppo Chamber Music Series, and the Yale in New York concert series. Mr. Shifrin has also served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii.


John Cox, guest writer for Band Shoppe, holding a gold French horn standing in front of a brick wall

John Cox is the former Principal Horn of the Oregon Symphony. He is a long-time member of the Mainly Mozart Festival orchestra in San Diego, a frequent performer with Chamber Music Northwest, has been a faculty member of the Barry Tuckwell Institute, and has lectured at numerous IHS workshops, most recently in London. John also works in creative consulting with the Oregon Symphony in community relationship building and partnering with new audiences in underserved venues. He records as solo horn with the Oregon Symphony and as hornist with the Westwood Woodwind Quintet.


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