CHIMACUM — The students in Karen Gambel’s Chimacum Elementary School class were quietly working at their desks when the door opened.
Heads came up, and the students, seeing who the visitor was, called out his name.
But Gambel didn’t mind.
“When Andy wheels through the door, it’s a breath of fresh air,” Gambel said. “I feel the kids relax, and joy comes into their faces.
“They know it’s time to make music.”
Wherever he goes, usually on his motorized scooter, Andy Mackie is recognized as the man who brings the gift of music to school children, passing on the legacy he received as a boy in his native Scotland. Mackie said he can’t put into words what the students have given him in return.
But the kids can.
Wednesday concert
On Wednesday, students who learned to play music on three-string strum sticks, pint-sized violins, ukuleles, guitars and mandolins in Mackie’s after-school and in-class lessons will join two school string orchestras to present a concert at the Chimacum auditorium from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The Highlanders also will play at the spring concert, located at the school at state Highway 19 — or Rhody Drive — and West Valley Road. Admission is by donation.
The spring concert also will feature the Pi String Orchestra and the ICE Strings, whose instructors are provided by the Turtle Bluff Orchestra Board and the instruments by the Andy Mackie Foundation.
The young musicians who will pay tribute at the concert to Mackie range from kindergartners though seniors, beginning players to advanced.
Each group has prepared a piece that transcends age and skill.
“Every class learns one song for Andy,” said volunteer Diana Wiklund.
Wiklund is a Pi parent who helps with the alternative education program’s music classes.
The youngest group is called the “hatchery,” beginning violin students who just picked up their instruments last fall.
The child-sized violins are provided by Mackie’s music foundation, with the Turtle Bluff Orchestra Board paying for the instructor, Kristin Smith.
So far, Smith has taught the hatchery eight songs, including “Boiling Cabbage” and “Lightly Row,” two ensemble pieces.
In Mackie’s honor
The hatchery will join second-year students, called “fingerlings,” intermediate “alvins” and advanced students to play “Skye Boat” in Mackie’s honor at the concert.
“That’s our surprise song,” said Linda Draper, a Pi parent who is learning to play the violin along with her son Will, 6.
The class also includes a Chimacum teacher who wants to learn to play the violin so that he can teach his class to play.
Meanwhile, Gambel’s third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students are practicing a song Mackie taught them to sing, “Coulter’s Candy.”
The song, which he learned as a child, is about a child wishing for a “wee penny” to spend at the village candy store.
“They are using the old Scots words in the song,” Mackie said.
The whole class also plays strum sticks that they made in class from kits Mackie put together.
So far, he’s outfitted whole classes of students at Grant Street Elementary and Swan School in Port Townsend, plus Quilcene and Brinnon schools.
At Chimacum Elementary, he’s also built strum sticks for Mary Foster’s class and is working on having strum sticks for every classroom there.
Teacher workshop
This August, he is planning a workshop for teachers to give them hands-on experience in helping students build strum sticks and other stringed instruments.
After Mackie and a dozen of his young musicians played on the main stage at Seattle’s Folklife festival, he met a shop teacher from Clallam Bay who is interested in getting kits and making instruments for his students, Mackie said.
Combined with students in Sequim and Kitsap County, he’s taught far more children that he thought he’d reach when he decided nine years ago to take the money he would spend on heart medicine and buy harmonicas for Quilcene second-graders.
“I was so sick at the time, I honestly thought it was the last thing I’ll ever do,” Mackie said. “Then I did one more class.”
Now on weekdays, he drives his van to a different school, gets on his motorized scooter and rides into a classroom to watch, listen and encourage.
He also stages monthly concerts at local restaurants to give students the experience of playing to an audience, puts on an annual summer music festival, holds jam sessions at the Chimacum Grange and organizes a spring concert.
“I don’t know where I get the energy,” Mackie said, then paused, thinking of the smiling faces that greet him when he enters a classroom.
“Oh, yes, I do.”
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
