Aptakisic Junior High alums get band back together
By RONNIE WACHTER rwachter@pioneerlocal.com January 26, 2012 4:20PM
Aptakisic Junior High School graduates perform along with the eighth grade band during the school's Alumni Reunion Band Concert in Buffalo Grove. | Michelle LaVigne~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: March 3, 2012 8:01AM
He summoned a crew of teenaged musicians, a group that had never played together before, and told them to learn six new songs in an hour and a half.
In the end, the only thing about the performance that was out of whack was his back.
Tom Eifert, band director at Aptakisic Junior High School, conducted the first Alumni Concert Jan. 24 while sitting down, resting the vertebrae he beat up in a fall two days earlier. About 50 students attending Stevenson High School returned to their former junior high, joining the 47 present members of the eighth grade band for an event Eifert said he hopes to repeat annually.
“It was, from my point of view, a huge success,” he said the day after the show. “I couldn’t ask for the evening to go any better than it did.”
After more than a month of calls for musicians, those who wished for one more show at Aptakisic attended a single rehearsal after school, then played together for family and friends at 7 p.m. Eifert had tried an alumni night once before, when he taught at Elgin Junior High in 1987; he said he got the vibe again after visiting Stevenson and seeing its halls filled with his former pupils.
“The thought occurred that it would be fun to have them come back,” he said.
And, he added, the graduates could put on display for his current students their ability to absorb new music quickly. Eifert gave himself a list of 10 songs for wind and percussion instruments, then narrowed it down to six that night, springing the set list on the group without warning.
“They had to learn music in a very short amount of time,” Eifert said. “It was really a good situation for my junior high kids.”
But not the best situation for his health, he admitted. Days before the show, Eifert tried to get out of his car with both hands full of books and a laptop.
The ice under his feet loved that. He spent the entire weekend in bed, resting his herniated fourth and fifth lumbars, but was not about to miss conducting the performance he planned.
“I shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “Obviously, I had to. I sat down when I conducted, which was very unusual.”
At the end of the show, one of his graduates made a special effort to thank Eifert for his special efforts. After the last song, Kevin Rho, now a senior at Stevenson as well as a drum major and principal clarinet player, walked to the microphone to make a spontaneous speech about his former teacher.
“As the concert was coming to a conclusion, I realized that Mr. Eifert kept making references to how grateful he was for the opportunity to play with his former students,” Rho wrote in an e-mail. “When I realized that there was no one that would tell others of Mr. Eifert’s effort of pulling this event together, I wanted the parents as well as the other students to know that he truly is a wonderful teacher and a director.”
Rho thanked both Eifert and his middle school teacher, Allison Rakickas, who was also in the crowd.
“Because I had not planned on speaking, I was not able to say much about how much in depth Mr. Eifert had an impact on the value of music in my life,” Rho added.
Eifert said he is planning another alumni night for January 2013 — earlier in the month, though, so he can catch college students who are home for Christmas break.
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