It is a high note in the very successful career of a Jordan School District music educator. On this episode of the Supercast, meet Majestic Elementary School music teacher Lisa Blodget who just returned from marching in the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade.

Find out why Blodget was one of more than 300 band teachers and directors from across the country selected to march in the prestigious parade, and what it felt like to be on the national stage cheered on by thousands along the five-mile route.

Audio Transcription

Lisa Blodgett:
I was invited to participate with the Saluting America Band Directors Marching Band for the Rose Parade.

Anthony Godfrey:
Lisa's skills go well beyond her abilities as a musician.

Marianne Johansen:
Expectations without a doubt. That's what makes you such a great band teacher. That's what makes you such a great teacher overall. She expects greatness out of the kids.

[Music]

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a high note in the very successful career of a Jordan School District music educator. On this episode of the Supercast, meet majestic elementary school music teacher Lisa Blodgett, who just returned from marching in the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade. Find out why Blodgett was one of the more than 300 band teachers and directors from across the country selected to march in the prestigious parade and what it felt like to be on the national stage cheered on by thousands along the five-mile route. We're talking today with Lisa Blodgett, a teacher at Majestic Elementary Arts Academy. Lisa, thanks for talking with us.

Lisa Blodgett:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Anthony Godfrey:
You had a pretty exciting week. Tell us about what happened last week.

Lisa Blodgett:
I was invited to participate with the Saluting America Band Directors Marching Band for the Rose Parade on New Year's Day and was one of 360 band directors from across the nation. Actually, every single state had a representative plus there were some people there from Canada and Mexico also. So it was kind of a North America thing. We were all invited to come march in the parade, but it wasn't just we just showed up and march, we actually had a lot of preparations that we had to do beforehand to get ready for this event.

Anthony Godfrey:
So who was the director of the directors?

Lisa Blodgett:
So that's crazy because when they walked up and said, “Who's the director of those standing the line, everybody raises their hands.”

Anthony Godfrey:
Everybody raises their hands. Like, I'm the director.

Lisa Blodgett:
A gentleman that teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. So this whole project started with a lady named Karen Suelle. And her husband was a band teacher and he passed away. He had taught for many, many years and he had passed away and she wanted to keep a memory of him going. So she created this foundation and they had this band march back in 2022. It was going to be a one-and-done deal. But it became such a thing and people across the nation started asking for it. They went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and then it came back and the Rose Parade wanted it again. So they put the band back together again.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. We're getting the band back together.

Lisa Blodgett:
Yeah. They said getting the band back together and I had been it in 2022. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. And so I kind of had reached out a couple of years ago and said, hey, there's another event. You know, I'd be interested in being part of it if possible. And so I received notification a little over a year ago, “Hey, we've been invited to the Rose Parade” and there was an application process. So it wasn't just like, oh, yeah, I want to go do it. I actually had to submit an application. And so I put that in and sat and waited and waited and waited and waited. And a few months later, I got a “you've been accepted to come march.”

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. That's exciting. So what sort of preparation did you do? How did you guys get together and practice when you're from far and wide?

Lisa Blodgett:
Yes. I never played with any of these people before.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Lisa Blodgett:
And so they sent us out the music back in August, actually, and they let us choose a part or assigned us a part. And so we all pulled up our music and we had five songs and so we had five songs that we rotated through. And so we had to memorize each one of those because we were going and we're just playing no music in front of us. So it is a process of listening to the music, getting familiar with the music and then starting to memorize it. It's not something you can sit down and do overnight or in a week or two. So it's a matter of . . . And then not only it's a five-and-a-half-mile parade. And so there's the endurance of walking also. So they they encourage us to get out, start walking, get out, start walking 120 beats a minute. That's two steps every second. You don't understand.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's not a stroll and it's not a run. It's walking at a particular pace for a long time.

Lisa Blodgett::

And breathing and playing an instrument. So they're like, get out and start conditioning yourself, get the music memorized so that we show up that we're ready to rock and roll. So everybody shows up ready and prepared. So it's like when I'm teaching school too, you know, talking to my kids about, you know, we need to be prepared. If you're not prepared and you don't know your music, you know, your stuff, you know, we're not going to be as good of a group. So everybody that expectation is there is everybody showed up prepared. And so day one rehearsal, we're ready to rock and roll and just put everybody together into one piece.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did your neighbors say anything when they saw you walking down the street playing the trombone as a, you know, preparation for the parade or did they just figure, “oh, that's Lisa. There she goes.”

Lisa Blodgett:
I actually didn't take my trombone out in the neighborhood.

Anthony Godfrey:
OK. OK.

Lisa Blodgett:
I walked and I actually walked around the band room a couple of times in between classes.

Anthony Godfrey:
Was it more of a workout or less of a workout than you were expecting when you actually did it?

Lisa Blodgett:
Actually, the walking part wasn't too bad because I like to get out and I like to walk a lot. The part that was the hardest for me was the holding the horn and the horn angle up. You get a lot of kind of . . .

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, yeah. You've got the upper body strength. That's a whole body workout.

Lisa Blodgett:
Yeah. So, holding the instrument up and then the first part of the parade, we continually played for the first mile and a half without stopping just because of all the TV cameras. You don't want to cut away. So as we went through camp, the first day we were rehearsing in California, I was like, oh, man, what did I get myself into? And day two was better day three. By the time we did the parade day four, it was great.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did everyone seem well prepared? I'm assuming so.

Lisa Blodgett:
Yeah. People came very well prepared. The first night we got together, they actually opened up three big ballrooms in the hotel and they set the block in chairs. So the block is as long as a football field. Essentially, that's how long because there's 360 people in the band, 12 people in a row. So they just set us in the hotel room and we all sat in chairs and watched the conductor and just sat down and started playing. And it just came. It came right together right away.

Anthony Godfrey:
So how many beats per minute, did you say?

Lisa Blodgett:
One hundred twenty beats.

Anthony Godfrey:
One hundred and twenty. Do you now walk at one hundred and twenty beats per minute just automatically?

Lisa Blodgett:
When I, when I go out, I would when I go walk, I'd actually sing the songs in my head. So yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
OK, let's go walk a hundred and twenty beats per minute. Let's walk out of the office here for a second. OK, let's just walk at one hundred twenty beats per minute. I'll follow you. And while we're while we're walking at one hundred twenty beats per minute, what were the songs that you were playing?

Lisa Blodgett:
So we played a song that was actually put together for this particular parade called “Strike Up the Saints.” So it was a little bit of mixture of “Strike Up the Band” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

{SINGING]

Anthony Godfrey:
OK. All right. I'm holding my horn up. I'm already exhausted. So this is it's not like a super-fast walk, but it feels faster as you go along. You're keeping a good steady beat here. All right. Now I'm lost in the school as we're walking. I don't know where to go. So I'm going to keep following you. So everyone was well prepared. How many times did you practice and how much time did you spend practicing?

Lisa Blodgett:
So we practiced the first evening for two hours and then the next two mornings we got together. Actually three mornings and we spent about two and a half hours . . .

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Lisa Blodgett:
Average actually practicing through. But then we had other events we went to play to in the afternoon. So morning was rehearsal time and then afternoon is performance time.

Anthony Godfrey:
So that's a that's a lot of preparation leading up to not very much time together and a lot of opportu...

Episode 332: Majestic Elementary Arts Academy Music Teacher Marches in Pasadena Rose Parade