FEATURE SPOTLIGHT: ”Celebrating the Power of Music” —
AN INTERVIEW WITH Dr. McKinley Stinson Jr.

This month, we sat down with Dr. McKinley Stinson to talk about his work as a long time band director

and musician. Dr. Stinson, Jr. is a South Fulton County Resident and is the band director at J.C. Booth Middle

School in Peachtree City, GA. His responsibilities include directing the 6th, 7th and 8th grade concert bands,

BMS Warrior Pep Band, Jazz Ensemble, Chamber Winds, and Percussion Ensemble. McKinley is the co-founder

of Atlanta based trio, North Star Percussion. Dr. Stinson has also performed with Tim Zimmerman and the King’s Brass, Habib Kiote, The Marcus

Young Jazz Quintet, and Aretha Franklin at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, GA.

Nathan Jones: Tell me about your history as a musician, what inspired you and when did you start?

Dr. McKinley Stinson Jr.: I started playing in middle school band, but a little before that I started taking piano lessons which I really enjoyed through middle school, then I joined band in 6th grade. I was going to play trumpet and wanted to play trumpet, but I was concerned about how that would work out with the allergies, so I went with percussion because I thought it would be a lot less maintenance which has not proven to be true at all. I played through middle and high school and went to the University of South Carolina for my undergraduate. [I] got off to a rocky start, but I had some phenomenal teachers and some great support and kept pushing through, so I was able to participate in groups like Carolina Crown Drum and Bugle Corps and eventually Aspen Music Festival which was a really great experience just to be in an environment of excellence and support. I went on to do my master’s at Florida State University for Percussion Performance and then took some time to continue working and then, when the pandemic started, I decided that it would be a good time to begin a doctorate in Music Education and completed that about a year ago and did some studying on middle school bands and covid just to figure out and get ahead of how we can respond as musicians and teachers to the unintended consequences of how we responded to covid.

NJ: What do you think has been the biggest challenge since the pandemic?

MSJ: Focus. I’ve spent some time thinking about this. Based on interviews, there are a lot of well-intentioned approaches of how we’ll get kids back in the building and when they get back how are we going to nurture them while still trying to achieve former excellence, but also moving forward. The world has changed, and the classroom is not exempt from that. In my experience, we’re back at it more than ever. It’s hard to stay focused enough to remember the lessons when putting students first and considering the art and getting passed excuses and reasons. It’s been hard as an educator and a performer to see that some things are going to be hard to get back to but the whole premise of the study was “do we really want to go back to the way things were?” Or is this a great opportunity or a catalyst for something better that we may not have had the courage to strike out on had we a choice.

NJ: Do you think that your experience in middle school band was a catalyst to where you are now?

MSJ: You know middle school is funny in the way that there doesn’t seem to be a long line of student teachers and college graduates that want to teach middle school [or] wanting to teach middle school band at that. It’s messy both literally and figuratively, and you must learn a lot of those hard lessons in the room but one of the things that I still find exciting is that the students have no idea how good they can get. I was talking to a group of people last Sunday about the lack of belief in progress and you know it’s this thing that we kind of take for granted; but you think about progress and you think about a lot of students and how well set up they are, and they show up, and they make really good grades and they play on travel teams, but then you put a horn in their hands and it’s an amazing equalizer. It doesn’t matter how much money you come from or how much support you have - everybody sounds bad. It is like violence through their instruments, but everybody has the opportunity to take a little ownership and practice and I think it’s a really cool thing to be a part of and it’s really hard. Unlike a lot of other grades Kids have been taking math since 1st grade so if a student gets to you and they have some baggage with math you don’t necessarily have to take all of that responsibility but the longer the students are with me the more its my fault if things aren’t working out because they came to me knowing nothing and it’s up to me to set up a system that’s going to make them successful. It’s still interesting to me, I’m still curious about this teaching station.

NJ: How do you see music as a catalyst of change in your community?

MSJ: Through covid I think we saw that we need to behave in a way that makes us dependable. People can count on me to not only act [in] my own best interest, but in the best interests of others, and that’s tricky teaching band because there are so many different instruments in the room and sometimes, you’re the star with the melody and sometimes you’re in the background but we need you as well. Regarding the arts, I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with the drama department because kids are just as excited about being in the lead role as they are about being a stagehand or building costumes. And there are some proven business principles to building great teams of hungry, humble and smart people, and I think we see that and apply it every day in band. It’s not just another class, and not to pick on math, but with other classes if it’s not a group project you can kind of just focus on yourself whereas in band everyday is a group project. It doesn’t matter who’s hitting the wrong notes or who is not prepared, the band gets one score and one review, and the audience has one experience. Teaching our students to take care of someone’s experience because that is time they can’t get back. It’s one of those things that we care about people, and we care about time, and we do that and demonstrate that through our preparation and our care for how we play and how we treat one another and the compassion that we demonstrate as we learn and get better together. I think that the world would be a better place if we practiced empathy with one another - that we have to practice in the arts.