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THEBACHA/FORT SMITH - When Trudy Quiller started to form a band at Fort Smith's Paul William Kaeser (PWK) High School five years ago, many students were not quite sure what she had in mind.

Quiller said the students thought she was planning a rock band or an aboriginal band.

"I said, 'No, that is not what this is,'" she recalled.

Trudy Quiller - holding a new tuba - is director of the Paul William Kaeser High School Concert Band. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Instead, she formed the PWK Concert Band and became its director.

Five years later, the band now features about 40 students from Grades 7 to 12.

Quiller's dream is to see the band membership grow as students in junior high, where most of the musicians come from, enter the higher grades.

"Gradually, it's going to become bigger and bigger," the high school teacher said.

Through Quiller's efforts in obtaining funding, the band has also expanded its number of musical instruments.

"We've got almost everything," she said, listing flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, French horns, trombones, tubas, baritones, chimes and percussion instruments.

The new chimes and tuba each cost about $5,000.

"That's what people don't realize, just how much money it costs to get an instrument," Quiller said.

Over the years, she has obtained funding from a number of sources to obtain instruments for the band, including a grant from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. She estimated that tens of thousands of dollars have been spent buying instruments.

"It keeps growing," she said, adding she would like to add oboes and bassoons. "Every instrument is unique and it adds more colour to the band."

Quiller explained a concert band does not have strings, such as violins, no guitars and no piano. It only has woodwinds, brass and percussion.

In the beginning, said Quiller, the students didn't know a thing about a concert band, and the first year was spent educating them in the intricacies and demonstrating all the instruments.

"I can play all of them, but at different levels of expertise," she said. The school's last band was in 1980.

Quiller said there are many benefits for students who learn to read music and play an instrument, saying it teaches discipline and a work ethic.

Plus, she said, while participating in the band develops a student's artistic side, it also helps with math skills.

Musicians are very strong students, she said. "It all connects together."

She also teaches piano and guitar at the school.

Quiller was hired as a teacher at PWK seven years ago and became the music teacher when the former music teacher left the school. She still teaches other courses, such as math and sociology.

The 59-year-old, who has a bachelor of education majoring in instrumental music, previously taught at a number of Alberta schools where she also directed bands.

"I've always had band programs," she said.

Her experience as a band director goes back to 1971 and includes high schools in the Alberta towns of Drumheller, Grande Prairie, Westlock and Innisfail.

While in Innisfail in 1979, she was named the Canadian Band Director of the Year by the Canadian Band Association. For several years in the late 1970s, she also played French horn with the Edmonton Philharmonic Orchestra.

She even sang professionally in a Christian music group.

In Fort Smith, Quiller joined the Fort Smith Community Choir and has been its director since 2002.

Quiller is originally from Colorado, but is now a Canadian citizen. Before coming to Fort Smith, she spent 14 years in Japan. She said she had planned to go to the Orient for a year for the adventure and to teach English as a second language.

"I loved it," she said of her time in Japan, where she learned to speak Japanese.

While in the East Asian country, Quiller was also director of the Tokyo Baptist Church's choir, which had approximately 600 members.