Flagler's two high school band directors have one mission

Palm Coast Observer
News

Depending on the traffic it can take 20 minutes or more to drive from one high school to the other in Flagler County, but the teaching concepts of the two band directors are as if they are in the same room.

The first thing John Seth, band director at Flagler Palm Coast High School, and Keith Dodson, band director at Matanzas High School, will tell you is they are not in competition and their bands do not enter competitions.

“I am anti-competition,” Dodson said. “I don’t believe in what it stands for. Our county philosophy is that music education gives the students the opportunity to be ranked on their individual playing. You can’t compare a band of 100 to a band of 300.”

Two weeks ago the bands, along with the Seabreeze High School marching band, took to the FPC football field in front of parents and judges, for an all-out dress rehearsal for the upcoming Florida Music Performance Assessments. The judges were there to make notes and offer last minute observations about the band and band member’s performances.

Matanzas will perform at Fleming High School in Orange Park this Saturday, Oct. 24. FPC’s homecoming is this weekend so the band will delay their assessment one week and travel to Columbia High School in Lake County on Oct. 31 for their music performance assessments.

PURPOSE FOR BAND MUSIC PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS

Florida Bandmasters Association

To provide opportunities for students and directors to perform in an environment, which provides critical evaluation of its performance by noted experts in the field of band performance,
To provide the opportunity for students and directors to perform for their peers in a formal concert setting,
To provide a performance opportunity, which will serve as a motivational goal for students and directors,
To provide an opportunity for students and directors to hear performances of their peers and learn from hearing those performances, and to provide a goal which is so compelling that the preparation for attaining that goal becomes the vehicle for continued growth and to demonstrate students' abilities to apply musical fundamentals and concepts in an ensemble performance setting.

Seth credits FPC’s resurgence in band participation to two retired band directors who came before him, Dean Cassels and Buddy Ball, who drove together from Starke every day to teach at the high school.

“We had 30 to 50 band members and in their first year they increased the number to 85. It was 130 when I came,” Seth said. “We now have 205.”

The FPC program has 40 seniors graduating this year which would logically drop the total down to 165, but Seth is not worried because he knows he has between 75 and 85 Buddy Taylor Middle School band members who will be joining the FPC band next year.

The Matanzas band is only losing 17 members through graduation, but the band’s numbers will explode as Dodson expects about 89 new members from Indian Trails Middle School, raising their band participation to 172 members.

Seth has been band director at FPC for the past nine years, while Dodson was hired this past July. Both are very active with the middle school programs because they know that’s where their future band members are tuning up.

“The high school band success is due to the middle school feeder program,” Seth said.

Dodson echoed the same sentiments, saying the high school bands wouldn’t survive without the middle school programs.

“They are teaching the kids from the ground up,” Dodson said.

Vince Mingils, a home-grown band director

Vince Mingils divides his time between Matanzas High School and Indian Trails Middle School, as the associate band director at both. But it wasn’t always that way. In 2009 Mingils was the Drum Major for the Flagler Palm Coast High School marching band.

A set of drum sticks poking from the top of another student’s backpack changed his course to a life of marching bands.

“As a freshman I started in the choir,” Mingils said. “But my IB schedule conflicted with choir. I was in the hall and this kid walked by with drumsticks sticking out of his backpack and I thought, ‘that looks cool.’”

Before long he was playing the snare drum in the drum line, becoming the drum major in his senior year. Then he was off to Stetson University where he interned at Winter Springs High School. Coming home to Flagler to teach wasn’t on the radar.

He headed north to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to work on his master’s degree and coached some college-level bands. He enjoyed the work, the winter – not so much, and he missed working with the high school students.

“Once I came back I realized how special Flagler was, especially for the arts,” he said. “It is so cool to call all my old teachers my colleagues. I looked up to them in high school. They made learning scales exciting.”

Both men spend time at their respective middle schools getting to know their rising high school students and planning the future of their bands.

Dodson and Seth agreed that student’s grades benefit from band participation, and that most of their members are A and B students.

“We are building a family here with the band programs,” Seth said. “We are fortunate to have the ability to see the kids all year for several years. That creates a unique atmosphere.”