At 7 a.m. on a recent weekday, students at Grover Cleveland Charter High School in Reseda were ready to practice, lifting trumpets, clarinets and flutes to their lips, picking up drumsticks and mallets.
Teacher Cameron Yassaman led in the front, pinpointing erring students for individual guidance and cracking jokes. “You play a wrong note, you move on,” he said. “Confidence!”
Partway into the exuberant “Clouds that Sail to Heaven,” Yassaman stopped the music. The percussion section was off. A missing set of bells was the culprit.
“So what you’re saying is if we could tell the world we need a new set of bells, you’d do that right now,” Yassaman said to the percussion players.
• VIDEO: Cleveland High students wouldn’t let the music die
“Yeah, I would,” a student said.
That got a laugh. The students recognize they’re operating on a bit of a shoestring. There’s a wish list of instruments, travel expenses for competitions and percussion and color guard coaches to hire for next year’s marching season.
Still, the concert band of 30-plus members and the marching band, even Yassaman’s hiring, are big achievements for the music-loving students who kept the band program going despite lacking a teacher to lead them.
For several years, Cleveland High School was without a music teacher, following budget cuts, Yassaman said. A small group, led by a former student, formed a band as a student-run club. They performed during football games, even working out their own basic formations on the field.
Twin sisters Maci (who plays trombone) and Zoe Mark (trumpet) and Jesus Santiago (saxophone) were part of that enterprising group.
“Being a student-driven group, it really, I guess it gave me an extra push, because to know that we run this all ourselves,” Santiago said. “You could say that we’re ambitious. But I say that it’s all hard work.”
When Maci and Zoe Mark were freshman, it was the school’s third year without a music teacher, Maci Mark said.
“If Mr. Y hadn’t come, the band probably would’ve died,” she said. “Our issue was getting people to join. We were like, organized enough to keep together and play the football games. But we couldn’t get people to join.”
Chudi Mbanefo, who has since graduated, led this early cast, with a little help from teacher and drill team coach Jolene Kuebler to file organizing paperwork. The students made do with what they had: four percussion players, a couple saxophones, one trumpet, one trombone, two flutes, one clarinet and one tuba.
By the time student Jordan Friedman joined the group, it had dwindled to 10 members. But he wasn’t put off. “As soon as I heard ‘music,’ I’m like, ‘I’m in.’ It didn’t really matter if there was a band director or not.”
Yassaman arrived in 2015. “When I got here, there were like nine or 10 kids in this little marching band,” he recalled. When football season was over, there wasn’t any other music group to join until the next fall. But once there was a teacher to formalize it, the marching and concert bands grew quickly. There are now more than 100 students between those ensembles and a jazz group, beginning band and beginning stringed instruments classes and a ukulele class.
“A lot of kids kind of came out of the woodwork, like, ‘Yeah, I play an instrument. I’d like to join,’” Yassaman said. “Now the word is out that Cleveland has a music teacher. Cleveland has a music program.”
Trophies from past band competitions at the school crowd a high shelf in the band practice room. But after a few years without a music teacher, there was, and still is, some rebuilding to do. After arriving at Cleveland, Yassaman spent months sorting through piles of mismatched sheet music to put together complete sets. The band has spent about $6,000 or $7,000 on music alone in the past two years, he said. In the summer, Yassaman and his mom try to extend the life of the 40 marching uniforms, making repairs and replacing buttons. But 65 students are expected for next season’s marching band.
So the band members, parents and Yassaman continually try to raise money. Through a personal connection, Yassaman recently snagged a $10,000 grant from the Sage Foundation in Brighton, Michigan. The kids collected coins for another effort, and parents have formed a boosters club.
“Marching band in Southern California is really competitive, and it’s really expensive. But these kids deserve to do it because they’re willing to put in the work,” Yassaman said.
Yassaman said he’s expecting even more students next year for all the ensembles, perhaps 120. That means they’ll need more instruments, resources for competitions and more than 40 uniforms.
“Now, it’s really difficult to walk from one end of the campus to the other without seeing a ukulele or a violin or a trumpet or something in a kid’s hand,” he said. “It’s pretty rad.”
