Western Oregon Journal

Western's music department has been on the rise, reaching a 23-percent overall growth rate this year.

While music majors only totaled a dismal 69 students last year, this year there are 85 students.

The department does not have a history of large groups or even diverse class offerings, but change in recent years has sparked growth.

The program was at a low in the early '90s. Its only purpose was music education, and the program had no musical groups to speak of.

The program has come back strong since then. Currently, it is in the final stages of adding a Masters degree. "I've noticed [that] even the level of the students has been growing by great amounts each year," said Music Professor Tom Bergeron.

Western's Wind Ensemble and Symphony has only recently come into their own. In past years, these groups have been frighteningly small and have been made up of few students. The other members of these groups were community members, members of staff and even the occasional hired professional that was needed to fill a key role in the group. The band program has traditionally had such little support that the program was only able to get performance times in Rice Auditoruim during dead weeks.

While the band and orchestra still contain several staff members and community members in under-manned sections, the groups are now mostly students, many of them music majors.

Even the pep band has grow by leaps and bounds in the past few years. In the past, the South Salem High School Marching Band has been brought in as the pep band partly to supplement the small Western pep band. Only two years ago the pep band could have expected to have only five members. This year as many as 18 have attended rehearsal, bringing up the question of whether the South Salem band will be needed in the future.

The bands are not the only part of the program that is growing.

Many music classes are now filling and requiring second sessions. "This is the second-largest theory class I have ever taught," Bergeron said. "There were 25 people in my class last year, and there are 35 this year."

Growth has also brought on new goals. One hope for new faculty member Dr. Ike Nail is that the ravaged music library will begin to heal after years of abuse so that the program can play a wider range of music.

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