The first issue of the magazine arrived in the summer of 1946, with the embers of World War II flickering. Our grandfather, Traugott Rohner, already teaching full loads at both Northwestern University and the Evanston (Illinois) public schools, had a long simmering project to begin. He had published a small number of articles in existing publications and liked seeing his name in print. He decided that he could produce a better magazine for music teachers than what was available. Sharing the post-war optimism of the time, he put a second mortgage on his home and got to work. We have often wondered how that conversation went with our grandmother with whom he had three (soon to be four) young children at the time.

Evanston Township High School Orchestra under the direction of Traugott Rohner, with

My sister, Ann, and I recently looked through our grandparents’ check ledger from 1946 and found a mysterious notation for a $200 check that read “The Instrumentalist.” It isn’t clear what expenses this check (now worth about $3,300 today with inflation) would have covered. A new journey began.

The first issue – September 1946

Over the next few years, our grandfather knew his idea was starting to catch on with educators across the country. After a stretch of small annual losses, the company made money for the first time in the mid-1950s. Around the same time, he came up with a second brilliant idea that continues today. While early profits remained lean, he continued his busy teaching duties, which included leading his outstanding high school orchestra program. As his musicians accompanied annual graduation ceremonies, he was annoyed that athletes from every sport received awards while outstanding band and orchestra musicians received little recognition for their many years of effort. He fixed the problem by establishing the John Philip Sousa Band Award and later the National School Orchestra Award. By the end of the 1950s, The Instrumentalist was thriving, and Traugott Rohner retired from teaching to focus on the business.

Sousa Award announcement – Nov. 1954

By the early 1970s, the magazine was continuing to excel and marked its 25th anniversary. Our grandfather’s creative mind continued to churn out ideas for various new endeavors. Unfortunately, his stamina and good health were starting to wane. Our father, James T. Rohner took a year-long leave from his law firm position to streamline operations at the magazine and never returned to the law. Father and son shared high intelligence and deep stubbornness and had different ideas about how to run a business. As happens in so many businesses, one era ended and another chapter began.

Traugott and James T. Rohner

In his 40 years at the helm, our father contributed to many high points in the history of the magazine. While our covers rarely changed much in the early years, covers from the 1970s and later regularly won awards. Interviews became a staple component of our coverage, and the range of people we interviewed was astonishing, including all-time great symphony conductors and performers, gifted composers, university conductors and teachers, and innovative middle school and high school directors.

While our father held the title of publisher, he acted for many years as more of an editor-in-chief, employing his disciplined legal mind to the task of wordsmithing. No edited article was approved a minute before it was ready. Sometimes, a particularly desultory editing job earned a dreaded comment in felt pen on the cover sheet: “Just start over.”

There are countless Instrumentalist alumni who have passed through our institution – some for an afternoon and others for a career. One who lasted a bit longer than many ended up hiring several former employees shortly after their time here ended. She remarked without sarcasm that anyone who could make it through an entire year with us could thrive as an employee in any job. She had a point. We are grateful to so many who have worked late nights and long weekends.

In past anniversary issues, we have given significant space to the early years of our history. While there are many interesting early articles that have stood the test of time, other articles and well-liked features in their day have aged less gracefully. That is inevitable. However, we used this anniversary as opportunity to shine a light on successes during our father’s four decades at the helm. Ann and I have learned so much working for him, even though we occasionally do something differently than he would suggest. He will still call us periodically from his home in warmer climes and complain about an article or an editorial choice we made. He forgets sometimes that he is the one who taught us to make up our minds and act. “Make choices,” he constantly implored us when we were waffling and uncertain.

Thirty years ago, our father wrote with good cheer and a slightly wistful tone about reaching the 50th Anniversary:

“Celebrations are often tinged with sadness because of the people who are not there or because the celebration will never be repeated. Many of the people mentioned in this issue died before some of the current subscribers were born, yet the ideas and achievements of those who came before live on. We would not have school music programs (today) if some of the legends had not worked, shared, and succeeded. This issue focuses on the ideas and achievements in instrumental music over 50 years. Although The Instrumentalist occasionally was a catalyst, it generally chronicled the achievements of others. What they accomplished made it possible for you, and for us, to start at a higher plane.”

The 50th Anniversary – August 1995

One activity our father has enjoyed since his teenage years is sailing on Lake Michigan. After long days of work, the goal on many nights was simply to unwind, but there were still lessons. When the water wasn’t too rough, he’d hand the tiller to one of his three kids and tell us to pick a point on the horizon and steer for it. When the boat veered slightly off course, we learned to make an infinite number of small corrections. Steer and correct, again and again. We are no longer young, but still aim for perfection, always beyond our grasp. We know what to do because we were taught. We hope you enjoy the issue.

James M. Rohner/Ann Rohner Callis
Publishers

The post Time Remembered appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

We were saddened to hear of the passing of our long-time colleague and friend, Vicki Jicha. She was editor of Flute Talk from 2001 to 2011 and made countless contributions to our work as an author and editor. She grew up in Hillsboro, Oregon, and began pursuing her love for music as a member of the Portland Junior Symphony. She studied music at Portland State and Oberlin College, ultimately earning a degree in Flute Performance from Indiana University. She was also an accomplished pianist and organist and completed a Master of Music degree with a specialization in Organ Performance at Northwestern University.

In her final column for Flute Talk, she recalled a humorous job interview with us shortly after orthopedic surgery. “I explained to the publisher that I was in no condition to make a decision about future employment, but he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. The general tenor of his message was that, if I took the job as editor of Flute Talk, I would have the opportunity to teach thousands of students every month. Ultimately, I said yes, and he was right. Every issue for the past decade has been planned and prepared with as much care and concern for presenting accurate information as possible.”

One of her early projects as editor was an interview with flutist Jim Walker. “I remember putting off calling him to request an interview for several days. I was afraid to ask and couldn’t imagine that he would want to talk to me. Of course, he agreed to the interview immediately and talked openly about his life with the flute. Like him, many other wonderful flutists have crossed my path over the years, and if I have learned anything about flutists it is that, by and large, the flute community is made up of good folks – from the high and mighty to the lowly and meek.”

We were so grateful to have Vicki as our friend and colleague. We will miss her.

We would like to remind readers that many of the issues of Flute Talk magazine, overseen by Vicki Jicha and Patricia George are available as a resource for directors and their flutists at theinstrumentalist.com under Flute Talk Archives. An article Vicki originally wrote in January 2007 (/may-2020-flute-talk/how-to-get-it-back/) describes the joy and challenges she faced coming back to playing the flute seriously after years away.

In 1962, just out of high school, she played at the Peter Britt Music Festival in Southern Oregon.

The post Victoria R. Jicha appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

The legendary Ron Modell passed away on June 10, 2025, at age 90. He was a good friend of the magazine and penned a regular column for us over many years. We reprint this interview from August 1994 in full as a tribute to one of the essential figures in the development of jazz education over the last several decades.

At age 18 Ron Modell was principal trumpet of the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra and became principal trumpet of the Dallas Symphony in 1960. He has also played lead trumpet for Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, Vic Damone, and Della Reese. Modell taught at Kansas State Teachers College, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Tulsa, his alma mater, before joining Northern Illinois University in 1969. He founded the NIU Jazz Ensemble, which has won the respect of artists, educators, and audiences for its musical achievements. While celebrating the 25th anniversary of his leadership of the jazz ensemble, Modell reflected on the past and shared his thoughts about future plans.

How have you consistently maintained outstanding ensembles over the years?
The consistency of the program stems from the philosophy that we are servants to the music. Egos have no place within a group, and band members should treat each other like family. When the lead player of a section can’t handle a particular type of playing, it is his duty to switch parts with someone. These attitudes and achievements, once in place, motivate the new members of the band to feel they must reach the same level of the previous year’s group.

My goal was to make the first jazz ensemble as good musically as possible. The enthusiasm of the students was incredible. When I announced auditions, 60 students showed up. I picked 20 students, and we began rehearsing on Wednesday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight. This was the only time slot the music department would allow.

As the program developed, I guess my enthusiasm for the music rubbed off on the students because without any prompting from me, they asked the chairman of the music department to schedule more than one two-hour rehearsal per week. The second semester the band met from 5:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., three days per week. By the second year the band was given a legitimate rehearsal slot, 10:00-10:50 a.m., four days a week.

In those years, I would call the band together for three days at the end of the school year – not to rehearse, but to talk. The first day I would talk to the band about what we had and hadn’t accomplished, what I thought should’ve been done and didn’t get done. Then the following two days I allowed them to suggest whatever they thought would improve the program.

Was your classical training a help or a hindrance in teaching jazz?
After studying classically for over 20 years, I suddenly discovered the Count Basie Orchestra through recordings and was converted to big band music in the mid-1950s. Mel Tormé had great musicians with him, particularly the Marty Paich Dek-Tette, which had my all-time favorite trumpet player, Don Fagerquist, plus Pete Candoli, Herb Geller on alto, and Red Mitchell on bass. This was a great group.
After listening to Basie and Tormé for hundreds of hours, I found that my symphonic training under some five conductors merged with my new interest in big bands. I was amazed that even in the first three years of teaching, all of the classical training I had as a child came through. I already had learned how much dedication and devotion it took to reach a high level of playing. When I came to Northern Illinois University, there had never been a note of jazz played on campus. Once a year the members of Phi Mu Alpha pulled out what we used to call stocks, such as an old Johnny Warrington dance arrangement of I’ll Remember April.

Not long ago I took out the tapes of our earliest ensembles and was surprised at how they sounded. The repertoire was very simple such as Cute by Basie and the theme from The Pink Panther. The most difficult chart that we did the first year was a piece Woody Herman recorded in 1963 called Watermelon Man. I’m not sure if Quincy Jones did the chart, but it was half what I remember of Watermelon, and then it went into a swing thing – it was fairly challenging.

What changes did you make in the early years of the jazz ensemble?
Earlier in my career I fell into a common trap for directors, featuring only one or two outstanding soloists. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, a student disagreed with my approach to improvisation. He said that while the best soloists should appear during public performances, every student ought to have the chance to learn improvisation with the band. This comment was an eye-opener for me because he was absolutely right. Our jazz ensemble is not a professional band but part of an educational institution. The next semester I made sure that every student played a solo. When handing out music, I still instruct students to give any solos to the players who feel most comfortable with that style of music.

Now, if students ask for a chance to work on a particular style, I give them an opportunity to rehearse the solos. The support players give to each other is one of the most beautiful things that has happened in my bands. On our tours, students will frequently pass up solos on certain nights to give others a turn in the spotlight. Whenever a student has a relative in the audience, I try to feature them on the concert. Many people are astounded by how much fun students have on stage. I am never surprised, because the musicians are doing what they love best. For 25 years I have told the players before every concert to go out there and have some fun.

How do you decide which music to program?
When we traveled to the Elmhurst Jazz Festival in the early 1970s, the festival director, Jim Cunningham, said that the Northern Illinois band was the only one he took time to hear. He explained that the band was the only one that picked music to please the audience rather than to win the contest. I have always believed in performing all types of music well, not in competing with other bands.
In some years, half the band was absolutely nuts about Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and the other preferred the multi-rhythm work of Don Ellis. My job was to bring together both groups by persuading the Ellington-Basie people to enjoy playing in the 3316 time of Don Ellis, while convincing the Don Ellis faction to understand that musicians who can’t play older charts well will never make contemporary music sound good. There’s a groove to all jazz. Players have to develop the groove with Basie and Ellington before graduating to Stan Kenton. For 25 years I have encouraged every student to approach each chart with integrity, to master it regardless of personal preferences.

Did you plan from the beginning to use guest artists in your program or did that gradually develop over time?
In the beginning I invited our faculty members to play with the ensemble, but we started bringing in soloists after an appearance at the Elmhurst Jazz Festival in the early 1970s. One of the biggest names in jazz judged the festival, and the students were thrilled to meet him. Later, I saw that his evaluation sheet was blank except for his signature. I learned that while the band performed on stage, this star was in the hall talking with a friend.

On the bus that night, the disappointed band asked how much it cost to travel to Elmhurst. On learning that our expenses were $1,200 the students urged me to spend that money to invite a guest artist next year who would work only with our band.

In 1973, I invited Mike Vax, the lead trumpet and road manager with the great Stan Kenton Orchestra, to join our band for a week-long tour of small towns between DeKalb and St. Louis. This tour gave students a chance to experience life on the road, staying at a different hotel every night. Over the years, our tours have helped students decide between a career in music education or performance. We would travel on a bus, set up the band, give an afternoon clinic/concert, and then an evening concert. We now take a four-day tour in November and an April tour, but these are scheduled so students rarely miss more than three days of school in a year. The teachers don’t mind the missed classes because the jazz program has been a great recruiting tool for the university.

As soon as I arrived at Northern Illinois, I called Chuck Suber, publisher of Down Beat, and asked where I could recruit good high school jazz players. He suggested District 214 in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago because several high schools had great jazz programs. I called each school and offered to play an assembly in exchange for our bus costs. These early high school tours were a big success, partly because we had a young singer who captured the essence of the popular 1970s rock groups, Chicago and Blood, Sweat &Tears.

How do the artists react to performing with your band?
Over the years Louie Bellson has done more tours with our band than anybody else. While we performed in Harlan, Iowa, in 1978, Louie said, Your band plays my charts better than my band.” I was flabbergasted because his group included some of the greatest players in Hollywood. He said that once pros get to know the book, each performance just becomes another night of music to them. “With your students, it’s brand new very night. Their enthusiasm makes me play better than ever.” Through the years, I have heard similar comments from Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, and Slide Hampton.

Most guest artists have been completely taken aback by experiences on the road with us. While traveling for a week on the bus, the artist and students have an opportunity to talk about music and life. The guest artists share experiences and wisdom that students cannot ever get in a classroom. These guys have been out and done so many things they are encyclopedias of knowledge about jazz and what life is all about. Thank goodness, in practically all cases, they are more than willing to share these thoughts.

Where do you find the money to pay for guest soloists and tours each year?
Our program of soloists has continued to expand even with only a tiny budget of one or two hundred dollars a year. The only way to raise money for guest artists was to spend hours calling high schools and colleges trying to book concerts. The point never was to make money. All I wanted was enough funds for the bus and solo artist, putting the band up in a decent hotel with no one sleeping in the same bed. I’d arrange for seven triples: two double-beds and a roll-away in each room, plus separate rooms for any ladies in the band, another for the sound engineer, one for the artist, and one for me. With those eleven rooms, I could usually obtain a discounted room rate. In many cases, we just made it through without going into the red. A couple of times in the beginning years, I took my checkbook out in order to balance the books. Recently, the university has given us more financial support. It was becoming difficult to stay on the phone for two or three hours a day trying to find places to perform. While the administration didn’t give us additional money each year, we now have permission to go into the red temporarily.

For your 25th anniversary tour, you brought in your mentor, Leon Breeden, as guest soloist.
Anyone who knows Leon thinks of him as the dean of jazz education. Between the years 1959 and 1981, he brought the college jazz band to prominence. His North Texas State group was the first college group to play at the White House. In those days, when you heard college jazz, you immediately thought of the North Texas State One O’Clock Lab Band. From the outset at Northern Illinois, I followed Breeden’s goals. He said that when a band could play every concert with over half of the compositions being written or arranged by students, it had reached the pinnacle. Our first recording includes some marvelous student compositions and arrangements, and student writing has dominated every recording after that. Leon also urged me to be honest to all arrangers and composers by reporting all recordings to ASCAP and BMI, so the composers receive royalties. We never copy music unless the parts are unavailable, and the composer gives permission.

For 25 years students have had to audition each year for a place in the band. Just because a student played last year does not guarantee a spot this year. In most cases we have long nights of auditions. This approach keeps the door open for young players who want to make the group. Occasionally I’ve let people go because another student played a much better audition.

How has jazz education evolved over the past 25 years?
The writing has gone through several transformations, and the difficulty of the music today is astounding. I would be completely out of it if I tried to play some of these charts. When we started in 1969, Sammy Nestico had written his first Basie album, including That Warm Feeling and Basie Straight Ahead. For a long time all the colleges and high schools played Nestico charts because his writing was great. Then, for a period of time, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band became popular and schools across the country played Central Park North, Us, and Groove Merchant. Through the years, Bob Mintzer’s charts have been widely played. The new kid on the block is this wonderful writer from New York, Maria Schneider. I can tell from the pulse of my band how much they enjoy playing her music, and we’re trying to introduce her work to a broader audience.

The level of performances by high school ensembles has improved dramatically. We have worked with Janis Stockhouse at Bloomington North High School in Indiana for several years, and I get goosebumps over how she handles students and teaches improvisation. She’s not the only one. This year I judged Jim Culbertson’s band from Decatur McArthur High School and Don Shupe’s band from Libertyville, Illinois. These people and others consistently turn out some of the best high school jazz groups in the country. I’ve always said when high school programs play on such a high level my job becomes easier. By the time these students reach college, I don’t have to spoon-feed them on playing particular phrases. My work then becomes polishing their skills.

On the negative side there are still many directors who pick music their bands cannot play. With abundant repertoire there is no excuse for this. At some festivals I want to ask certain directors, “What’s wrong with you? Give your band challenges, but let the students reap the rewards of a great performance by selecting music they can handle.” It is also frustrating when bands play a chart in the wrong style. Many band directors have no knowledge of correct jazz styles and never take the time to study recordings or play them for students. When some bands perform at contests, the adjudicators almost want to laugh because the style is so completely wrong for the chart.

Though you’re most visible as a jazz ensemble director, you continue to teach classical trumpet, and that field has evolved, too.
I played principal trumpet in the Dallas and Tulsa Symphonies for 15 years before coming to Northern Illinois. The number of people auditioning for a symphony orchestra job is perhaps 100 times higher than in my day, and now there might be 300 applicants for a third trumpet job in North Carolina. When a student expresses a sincere desire to learn orchestral repertoire, I am eager to help. However, every trumpeter studies with the other trumpet professor at Northern for half the time, and half with me. I certainly don’t know it all, and giving a student another slant on playing is one of the greatest things you can do.

I usually do not teach freshmen or sophomores because my expertise is in polishing the music. I am less well-equipped to resolve the major playing problems that some young players have. Over the years I have sent several students with radical playing problems to work with Vince Cichowicz and Burt Tobias. Cichowicz is the recognized trumpet doctor in this part of the country. He can figure out the problem immediately and send the student on the path to success.

I am still excited by talented students who are serious about their studies and come prepared for each lesson. For 25 years, I have played at every lesson with every student because it is important to set an example for students. When studying with Arnold Jacobs, I once asked what he does for a player with poor tone quality. Jacobs responded, “Make sure you play at least 50% of the time during each lesson with that student so your skills rub off by osmosis.” As he would say, the old stimuli are pushed down, and new stimuli are brought in.

In addition to teaching private lessons, I like to get out and solo at least three to six times a year. Not a year has passed that I didn’t play a solo with either our wind ensemble or philharmonic. Performing shows people what’s happening with my playing.

As for trumpet method books, not much has changed. My colleagues and I still use the Clarke technical studies. My favorite is an out-of-print method by a composer named Gatti. This book has some of the most musical studies and duets ever. I also use the Clodomir method book. Although a tremendous amount of material exists, I find that most teachers go back to the basics. The Schlossberg book is the bible of trumpet, and my uncle Louis Davidson’s book Trumpet Techniques has excellent studies.

I never really got into 20th-century techniques. Even 25 years ago I decided that some of the 20th-century trumpet compositions and techniques were just not for me. The great Russian trumpeter Dokschitzer was asked about what solos he studied when he was young. Translated from Russian to English, here’s exactly what he said: “I try to practice every solo that I can get my hands on, but I only play those in public that like me.” I think that was a great remark, that we should stay in our own ballpark and do what we do well but to have the opportunity to play through everything. If I’ve been lax in anything, it is in the area of 20th-century playing techniques, but I am getting better.

What are some of your fondest memories?
The 1978 tour with Dizzy Gillespie included a concert at the National Association of Jazz Educators convention, which was hosted by one of my dearest friends, the late Don Jacoby. That Saturday night concert brought us to national prominence. People came up afterward and asked, “Where in the world is DeKalb, Illinois?”

My dear friend and mentor Leon Breeden had never heard the band in person, and it was a great thrill to hear his compliments. He said, “Not only did the band play great, but your programming was absolutely sensational.” I was pleased by his comments because I take so much time planning the pacing of our concerts and albums.

In 1981, PBS produced a one-hour special by having a professional producer follow the band around for the year. I always hated the title: A Year in the Life of The Greatest College Jazz Band in America and argued that there are 10 or 15 great jazz bands, but the producer said it wouldn’t work to sell us as the second best.

It was a personal highlight when you and I took the band to Switzerland for a program sponsored by Motorola for 115 executives. We explored creativity and motivation in music and in business, and I was able to share with them how the love of music and the students is so important to this ensemble. This has been foremost in my rehearsals and performances.

The most challenging repertoire during my career was the charts of Bill Dobbins when he toured with the band in 1991. I didn’t want to scare the students but I told them it was the hardest music I’d ever seen. Dobbins went home exhilarated after his week here. Coming from Eastman, Dobbins was treated to a new experience on the tour bus with an outpouring of love from the students. They picked his brain just as they did with Louie Bellson, Dizzy Gillespie, and James Moody. So there are the thrills. I would have to sit down and write a book to capture the memories of all the great artists. Every time an artist such as Clark Terry walks on that stage it is a thrill of a lifetime for me.

The worst moments of my career occurred when three evil students made it into the jazz ensemble. Their negativity spread throughout the band, and it was the only year-and-a-half of my career that was miserable. I didn’t even want to go to rehearsals. I approached these three as a father and a teacher and tried to show them that their attitude was wrong.

The more I did, the worse the situation became. I finally called these students into my office and told them to change their ways or leave the band. You can’t save everybody. I have followed these students’ careers and found that they are causing similar problems years later. They were talented and could have become fine musicians and human beings. To avoid the heartache and miserable rehearsals, I would have been better off going with lesser musicians and avoiding that kind of poison going through the band.

One year four saxophonists wanted to skip the January tour because of problems with the fifth member of the section. I convinced them to make the trip because we had signed contracts and made commitments. I also asked each of them to invite the problem student out for a cup of coffee or a coke during the tour and to have a little compassion. Perhaps they could find out why the student acted so abrasively. Each night of that tour a different saxophonist spent time with this student. This person changed completely and won the student-voted award the following year for making the greatest contribution to the success of the band.

With many rumors over the years about your retirement, what are your plans for the coming years?
Despite these occasional problems, I decided 15 years ago that if anyone ever offered me another job, I would not leave Northern. I love the faculty and the staff. I will stop teaching full-time in May 1995 but have agreed to lead the N.I.U. Jazz Ensemble for two additional years. In May 1997, I will retire completely. After some 40 years of teaching, I will have paid my dues and hope that some high school and college directors will invite me to work with their jazz ensembles or to solo with their concert or jazz bands. Perhaps some directors will want to pick my brain about what makes a jazz program a success.
Our success with the jazz ensemble is not only a tribute to me but to the faculty, administration, and mostly the kids who put in the time and effort to bring it to the highest level. It has been a wonderful 25 years; and except for that year-and-a-half, I wouldn’t change a thing.

The post For the Love of Jazz appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Ties – One Thing Leads to Another
The following story is my story about the magazine and me. Growing up, I had a great uncle who was then a retired policeman. He loved band music and one evening took me to hear a concert by the Milwaukee Police Band.¹ The program ended with a performance of The Stars and Stripes Forever complete with an American flag unfurling above the stage at the end. That did it. The thrill of hearing that march and being a part of the audience’s response was electrifying. Right there, I fell in love with the music of John Philip Sousa.

By the time I graduated from college to begin my teaching career, the novel idea of such a musical group called a wind ensemble was taking hold in this country. One of its champions was Frederick Fennell, and his hero was the same as mine – Sousa. I owned the Eastman recordings of Sousa marches and wanted to know as much as possible about the music and the man. Also just at that point articles by Paul Bierley were appearing in The Instrumentalist.

In short order as he published his landmark books about the life and music of Sousa, I acquired each, especially poring over the descriptive catalog of his works.² With the bicentennial approaching in 1976, I wondered if I could program a full concert of Sousa’s lesser-known marches, suites, and novelties. I needed to acquire the music.

After consulting the University of Illinois Sousa Archivist and the Library of Congress, I was referred to a man by the name of Robert Hoe who could perhaps cut through the red tape and help. I recognized his name from The Instrumentalist in connection with a comprehensive recording project underway by the United States Marine Corps Band entitled The Heritage of John Philip Sousa.

I telephoned him immediately, and within days, I had all the music I was seeking. In a letter inside the box of parts, he explained, “Your phone call was so plaintive I am compelled to aid you all I can. You sure as hell picked some wild ones, for this is rough stuff.” I was excited to meet Bob at the Midwest Clinic that December and told him how we were already rehearsing the music for the upcoming winter concert in March.³

The band played beautifully, and the concert was a huge success. I decided to write and submit an article about it to The Instrumentalist. To my delight, the article was accepted and published along with a portrait of Sousa that I had done as a program cover. Shortly thereafter I was surprised to receive a wonderful letter from Paul Bierley saying, “Wish I could have been at your Sousa concert. You’re some artist, I mean to tell you. That portrait of Sousa is great.” That eventually led to an ongoing friendship and my doing the cover portrait of his Hallelujah Trombone!, the first edition of his Henry Fillmore biography.

Original cover of Paul Bierley’s book Hallelujah Trombone! The Story of Henry Fillmore

Some years later my wife and I spent a great afternoon visiting Paul and his wife Pauline in their home in Columbus, Ohio which was filled with mountains of Sousa and band research materials. He graciously signed my copies of his books, one inscription which read, “Every possible good wish to my dear friend Tom Trimborn. Sousa can’t sign this so his high-priced biographer (in the low-priced field that is) will. (stop laughing).”⁴ Cherished memories to be sure.

In my 16 years at Palatine (Illinois) High School, the Symphonic Band presented three formal concerts a year. Every one included a Sousa march with only one repeat, The Stars and Stripes Forever. As I worked toward earning a PhD in Music Education at Northwestern University, I was sure that a dissertation topic would be Sousa related in some way. Even though that did not happen, my focus shifted to identifying and establishing a curriculum of cornerstone wind literature for school bands in large part due to Frederick Fennell, who in my opinion was second only to Sousa in the influence he was having on the concert band medium in establishing a foundational repertoire.

I devoured his 16 Instrumentalist articles on basic band classics and the stunning landmark recordings he made with the Eastman Wind Ensemble. In the fall of 1981, eager to begin a yearlong residency at Northwestern University, I looked forward to discussing this topic with Director of Bands John Paynter, another early and important champion of contemporary wind literature and whose reviews I regularly devoured. But then bad news. He had had a heart attack and would be recovering for quite some time.
However, just as suddenly, it was announced that none other than Frederick Fennell would be stepping in for Mr. Paynter during his recovery. To my delight, I got to observe and chat with Dr. Fennell regularly about wind band repertory. In one memorable conversation, he told me that the stunning recording of William Walton’s Crown Imperial was done in one take. Thankfully, when John Paynter returned for the spring semester, he graciously agreed to supervise my independent study of Sousa’s Songs of Grace and Glory, and also to discuss what he considered to be cornerstone literature. I was indeed learning, observing, and interacting with the movers and shakers of the wind band world – the ones I had first met in print.

During my 21 years at Truman State University, I had the privilege of doing the artwork appearing on the cover of the Missouri Music Educators Association magazine. For an issue with the theme Legacy, I simply had to do a portrait of the Frederick Fennell I knew. He indeed was aware of the direct line back to Sousa when he wrote to me, “My three days with him (at Interlochen) left their mark which still shows.”⁵

Original portrait of Frederick Fennell now in the Bonisteel Music Library at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, Interlochen, Michigan.

Talk about full circle and how one event or meeting often leads to another and back again. For me, the connection always was The Instrumentalist. Today, as communication tends to be exclusively via the internet, fine as it is, having concrete printed documentation of the world of music also remains of paramount importance. Pioneers, innovation, and creativity abound and chapters still will be written. In this 80th anniversary year, it is good to look back, but also look forward to a future 100th anniversary. The past we are creating now, without question, will be an extension of a heritage to be celebrated.

Sousa Still A Somebody?⁶
Is Sousa still important? Relevant? If so, why? Over these 80 years, the magazine has in many ways kept the spirit of Sousa alive. Just in the last 20 years, books, articles, scholarly papers, authentic recordings, and full scores, have appeared and are underway testifying to Sousa’s continued importance. He is relevant because his music is not only universal but is imbued with what might be called the American spirit. His masterful marches are what some compare to a three-minute egg – the all in one perfect food – having proteins, vitamins, and minerals – or in the case of his marches “clear structure, rhythmic drive, great melodies, dynamic contrast” – and much more. And all in three minutes. In his day, Sousa programmed his popular marches, suites, descriptive pieces, and novelties along with the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Puccini. He played Wagner’s Parsifal in Grand Forks, North Dakota 10 years before it was heard at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

With the arrival of Frederick Fennell, the importance of playing Sousa along with the music of Holst, Grainger, and Persichetti reminds us not to forget the past, but to cherish it, embracing the present while looking to the future. Contemporary pieces and composers, orchestral transcriptions, and yes, the important music of John Philip Sousa, can and will always make interesting, educational, satisfying programs. And surely, we have read about all of this and will continue to do so making all sorts of connections via The Instrumentalist for many more years to come.⁷ For me, I will always be thankful for my Instrumentalist ties.

The many portraits of Sousa by Tom Trimborn

End Notes
¹The Milwaukee Police Band is the oldest police band in the United States, established in 1898. In 1923 at the conclusion of a performance at the Milwaukee Auditorium, Sousa conducted his Sousa Band plus the Police Band in two marches, his Sabre and Spurs and Comrades of the Legion.

²These books and those that followed firmly established Bierley as a preeminent Sousa authority. Bierley, Paul E., John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon, Prentice Hall, 1973 is an authentic comprehensive biography of Sousa’s life, work, and literary output. Bierley, Paul E., John Philip Sousa: A Descriptive Catalog of His Works, University of Illinois Press, 1973 not only listed for the first time Sousa’s original compositions, but his arrangements, transcriptions of other composer’s works, plus magazine and newspaper articles by and about him. Copyright history, publishing data, and the whereabouts of his manuscripts were also included.

³The Heritage of John Philip Sousa refers to 9 volume set of 18 LP records of his music, performed by the United States Marine Band under the direction of Lt. Col. Jack T. Kline from 1974-76 funded and released by Robert Hoe of Poughkeepsie, New York. The collection includes not only Sousa’s well-known marches, but also waltzes, suites, fantasies, and selections from his operettas.

⁴Bierley, Paul E. Hallelujah Trombone! The Story of Henry Fillmore, Integrity Press, 1982 has my portrait of Fillmore on the cover and a dual portrait in chapter 66 Twilight of the University of Miami President Jay F.W. Pearson with Fillmore receiving an honorary doctorate.

⁵Fennell played bass drum in the National High School Band under Sousa in 1931 at the Interlachen Music Camp. My portrait of him is now housed in the Bonisteel Music Library there.

⁶The title of an article written by Frederick Fennell appeared in the March, 1982 issue of The Instrumentalist.

⁷A select list of those authors, conductors, and ensembles who have essentially told the story of Sousa, his music, and shaped the wind band ensemble as we know it today includes but is not limited to: Berger, Kenneth; Bierley, Paul; Bourgeois, Col. John; Brion, Keith; Byrne, Frank; Dvorak, Thomas; Foster, Robert; Hunsberger, Donald; Lingg, Ann; Revelli, William D.; Schissel, Loras; Smith, Leonard B.; Trimborn, Thomas; Warfield, Patrick; Dallas Wind Symphony; Eastman Wind Ensemble; New Sousa Band; Philip Jones Brass Ensemble; Royal Artillery Band; United States Marine Band; University of Michigan Band.

The post Just Suppose appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Francis McBeth was a great friend of the magazine and shared his thoughts in many articles written for us. He was talented, opinionated, and hilarious in equal amounts. In addition to his prolific composing, he taught at Ouachita Baptist University for four decades. This excerpt is from his 1991 article on Band Music and the Paper-Plate Mentality.

I think we would be shocked if we knew students’ reactions to much of the music that is played. They are really quite bored with it, and I don’t blame them. Too many directors choose music that neither they nor the students really like. It’s chosen because it fits a minimum instrumentation or shows off a few skilled players at contest.

When my son was in junior high school his band played a concert of canned rock, which the kids loved; marches, which they thought were all right; and folk song suites which bored them but which parents thought they should appreciate. It was that night I decided to write Canto with its clapping and wood clackers. If composers do not write exciting concert music for junior high students, we will lose them.
It is important to show young players that concert music can be more exciting than pop by our choice of literature. There are wonderful junior high works not played anymore, such as Clifton Williams’ Arioso, which is easy, wonderful, and 20th century.

I think many composers take the wrong approach to junior high music. The direction should be writing more musically challenging music but tailoring it to the ease of fingerings and the characteristics of each instrument. In other words, simplicity of mechanics as opposed to simple music. This is the difference also between Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. Prokofiev wrote at the piano and then scored the music, which is very hard to play. When Tchaikovsky wrote, he wrote for each instrument and knew what that instrument could do.

Some years ago, I conducted the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto and the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony on adjacent concerts with the Arkansas Symphony. The beginning of the Prokofiev had simple rhythms – quarters, eighths, halves – but was difficult to play. With the Tchaikovsky, the first reading sounded like we had worked on it for a week because when Tchaikovsky wrote for the clarinet he wrote for the clarinet, and when he wrote for the trombone, he wrote for the trombone. Young players don’t need simple music. They need more complicated music that entails simple mechanics.

When Clifton Williams won the first Ostwald competition in 1956 for Fanfare and Allegro, band music was getting exciting. Williams promoted band music with a missionary zeal. At his annual Southwestern Symposium at the University of Texas, he would alternate bringing in Vincent Persichetti and Paul Creston because they were the major conductors with true band interest in those days. John Barnes Chance and I were students at the University of Texas during that time, and we wrote mainly for orchestra. Williams convinced us of the necessity of writing for band.

One noon at an Austin restaurant, Williams said, “The orchestra is the Cadillac. I know that, but they don’t want you. They don’t want anything past Debussy and truly dislike 20th Century music. The winds are where you want to go because they want new music. They are ripe for it because they don’t have a repertoire. They’ve about folk-song suited themselves out of business.

Then came Barney’s Incantation and Dance, more Persichetti, then Martin Mailman’s Liturgical Music and the Geometrics series, a few things of LoPresti, then Claude Smith’s Incidental Suite. You notice I left myself out of this period because of Southern modesty. Hanson, Schuman, Mennin, and others were seeing the possibilities of wind music. The biggest spurt in the literature came from Nelhybel – a real European into the fray. His Symphonic Movement and Requiem are two of the very best works ever written for band. I use the Symphonic Movement each year to teach my students about the art of organic growth. What an exciting time for us, and it lasted well into the 1970s.

The post Francis McBeth on An Exciting Time for Band Music appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

The Art of Conducting

By Donald Hunsberger
May 1998

Donald Hunsberger was conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble from 1965 to 2002.

Ideally, conductors would not say a word. They would stand on the podium and physically demonstrate how the music should sound. Although this ideal is unattainable, talking should be kept to a minimum. If the first oboe player has a solo, I let them play it several times before saying anything so they can first become comfortable with the line. When I do speak, it is usually to present options rather than to give instructions. I may suggest working on the solo with their teacher, who will probably open more options. Even if the teacher doesn’t know the solo, they can offer an objective point of view. I don’t dictate how to play a solo because it will sound better if the performer develops an interpretation rather than reproducing by rote a version given by another musician.

My goal is to produce musicians who can play anything. At Eastman, I introduce students to a lot of good literature, from Sousa marches to aleatoric compositions, and some they may never play again. I don’t try to teach students every composition they might play in the future but try to give them the ability to sit down and play anything put in front of them. Students switch parts on almost every piece within a concert depending on the instrumentation. The intention is that a flutist, for example, will become as comfortable playing principal as performing piccolo, second, or third part. The faculty prefers to use and assign different groups of students for each concert.

Overconducting

By Maurice Faulkner
August 1988

Maurice Faulkner taught in Department of Music at Santa Barbara State College from 1940 until his retirement in 1979. He was also widely published as an author and critic.

The young conductor should select a first-rate example of a conducting specialist whose work satisfies them and try to copy the style. For my taste, Herbert von Karajan, with his easy, soft beat and infrequent cues, expresses the essence of the scores with little excess motion. His program of Wagner masterpieces at a Salzburg Festival, all conducted without a score, reached the peak of sensitive interpretation. A less graceful baton wielder, Carlo Maria Giulini, creates the same feeling of serenity while developing the power essential to the fortissimos.

At the Salzburg Festival some years ago, von Karajan was responsible for conducting the Cleveland Symphony one evening. After the performance of one of the works on the program, a Clevelander told me, “We certainly had a difficult time following his beat, but he sure let us play with our hearts.”
Depend upon your musicians and realize that they are talented, even when they are only beginners. The finer the musician, the less help is needed from the conductor. A well-trained orchestra or band should be able to play effectively without a conductor. Try it sometime on a concert, and you will soon discover whether you have taught them properly.

Col. Arnald D. Gabriel

October 1981

Col. Gabriel was Commander and Conductor of the United States Air Force Band, United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra, and Singing Sergeants from 1964 to 1985. He has conducted hundreds of major orchestras and bands and recently turned 100.

The older I get, the more I realize that you don’t have to be a tyrant. If you’re secure with your art and your profession, it’s unnecessary to talk down to anybody, or to berate, or to raise your voice. If I do, it’s only because they’re being inattentive or something of that sort, It’s not related to our ability to make music together. We conductors have to realize that we are not the most important elements. The composer is, the truth that is in that score. We are just the re-creators. The performing organization and conductor together make the music, and there has to be mutual respect and admiration. I admire my groups, and I hope that they have respect for the knowledge I have of the score. By working together, we can re-create the work.

I don’t use a baton. It has become smaller and less important since Lully hit himself in the foot, developed gangrene, and died. That made him stop pounding the floor. It still seems to me that too many conductors use the baton as a symbol of authority, and I don’t think we need that. I believe a baton invokes a certain fear, and there should be no fear in making music. There should be respect. We should get away from the stick, which seems to be that symbol of the kind of authority that people resent.

Teaching Other Conductors

By John Paynter
July 1979

One of the most influential band directors of the 20th Century, John Paynter was Director of Bands at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1996. He was the original new music reviewer for The Instrumentalist.

Each teacher and each conductor is really an individual personality, and it’s within that personality that the band has either its successes or its problems. Two things often stand out as general weaknesses. The first is musical – the failure to recognize the things that don’t sound like music. A good conductor must be able to hear what is going on, while it is going on, and suggest what to do to change it. So many of our people are well-trained to read the score, and well-trained to lead with a baton, but they are not really well-trained to hear what’s going on and change it. As a consequence, some basically unmusical, inflexible, and unnuanced things continue to happen. The other thing is personal. A lot of potentially wonderful teachers aren’t doing a very good job because they are too frustrated by all of the mechanical and personal things that can get in the way. A band director must enjoy what they are doing, be head-over-heels in love with it, to work around the technical problems and push through to the job of having fun and making music.

Advice for Conducting Students

By Cynthia Johnston Turner
October 2018

Cynthia Johnston Turner was appointed Dean – Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2021. When this interview took place, she was Director of Bands and Professor of Music at the University of Georgia.

Be yourself. I see a lot of posturing on the podium as students try to look and be like somebody else. Figuring yourself out can be a life-long journey. I know it took me a long time. The self is constantly changing and evolving. The process starts with some soul-searching. Often it involves writing down their thoughts from rehearsals, watching conducting videos, and determining what they like and don’t like. Students often conduct a certain way, but when I talk with them in a relaxed setting, they speak differently.

Conducting students also have to become more aware of the different ways their bodies move on the podium. I encourage my students to take classes in movement, whether that is dance, yoga, tai chi, Alexander technique, acting, or public speaking. Often the things that make people better conductors aren’t related to conducting. They are related to psychology, self-analysis, body awareness, and mind awareness. These areas help people become more intuitive about who they are. As young conductors grow more comfortable on the podium, they learn that it is okay to be vulnerable.

A Lesson from Stokowski

By Legh W. Burns
January 1977

When this article appeared, Legh W. Burns was the music director and conductor of The Saratoga Chamber Orchestra. He was also Professor Emeritus of the University of Oklahoma School of Music and former first trumpet with the United States Air Force Band in Washington DC.

We were all there. The University of Miami Symphony Orchestra, rehearsed, capable, and hot. The concert was to take place the following weekend, and our guest conductor for the occasion had just arrived. Leopold Stokowski. He stood quietly on the podium, dignified, powerful, and with the awe of us all surrounding him. He was being introduced by John Bitter, our regular (not to say ordinary) conductor and former pupil of Maestro Stokowski. The day was especially hot and the introduction, because of the circumstance and association, extra long. Accolades like “superior musician” and “pioneer” began to make their way back to the trumpet section where I sat. “Inspirational,” they continued, “influential.” The maestro looked down at the music (among other pieces, this concert was to feature the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4). His face was expressionless, the thin strands of white hair in careful disarray.

Finally, the introduction came to an end. Mr. Stokowski was presented to us, and the applause burst forth from the orchestra with a spontaneity and obvious sincerity that impressed me very much. We waited for the acknowledgment from the maestro. A “thank you” for certain, followed by the usual “nice to be here” and perhaps a story or two of the Stokowski-Bitter association that would start the rehearsal off on a cordial and familiar footing. We waited. Still, the gaunt, lined face looked at the stand. Silence. Then, the head finally lifted and he spoke: “Tchaikovsky please, 1st movement.” After that, things happened so fast our heads spun. No one had his music ready, and the resulting shuffle of parts was clearly annoying to Maestro Stokowski. “Letter A,” was followed all but simultaneously by a downbeat. Letter A? Half of us hadn’t found our music yet. The trumpet section, never noted for being on top of things, grumbled the loudest.

Well, it went on like that for the entire week. We were angry at first, half at Mr. Stokowski for moving at an intolerable speed and half at ourselves for letting his half make us angry. The second rehearsal found us determined to stay with him, and towards the end of it we were all speed readers. You would have thought Evelyn Wood was on the podium. Well, it got better and better. Rehearsals became a challenge, and the intensity with which Mr. Stokowski approached each note began to be infused in us as well. Everything improved. Everything! As this transformation was taking place, I began to develop a warm affection for him. He had a technique of rehearsal I had never seen before. It moved very fast but always with a purpose. We soon learned to stop when he did, for the direction (which soon supplanted correction) was only given once.

By concert time, we were all inspired as we had never been before, and speaking for myself, as I have not been since. The concert was outstanding. I have played many concerts since, but will remember that one above all others.

Score Study

By H. Robert Reynolds
May 1973

H. Robert Reynolds is Principal Conductor of the Wind Ensemble at the University of Southern California and was previously Director of University Bands at the University of Michigan for 26 years.

The question is often asked, “How do you study a score?” There is no system that applies to all scores and all conductors. One approaches a new score as one approaches a crossword puzzle – by trying to discover several key ideas that will lead to a complete understanding of the work. Each composition is a new experience and presents a challenge to the conductor. And it is here that the conductor calls upon the study of theory, counterpoint, form, history, and other aspects of formal and informal training. Naturally, knowledge of the composers complete works, styles, and biography is of vital importance, as are specific facts regarding the piece under study and its relation to the other works by the composer.
Implicit in the knowledge of the score is the conductor’s personal concept of all details such as balance, weight, emphasis, and phrasing that make one conductor’s interpretation different from that of another. Most composers expect the conductor to use his musical judgment to interpret the idea of the composition. As an example, several years ago I was rehearsing Emblems by Aaron Copland while the composer himself was present. When I looked through the score in my study, I felt that the tempo marked in one section was too fast. During the rehearsal of this section, I turned to Mr. Copland to ask if the section was too slow for his liking. He commented that he would have conducted it faster but that it was musical and should not be changed to the faster tempo indicated. I offered to change the tempo to suit him, but he insisted that it be an interpretation that I felt best for his piece. Composers, with the exception of Stravinsky and a few others, expect the conductor to bring his own interpretation to the work, as long as it is consistent with the stylistic traditions of the period and other guidelines already mentioned.

Communicating Better

Anthony Maiello
March 1994

Anthony J. Maiello is Professor of Music and University Professor at George Mason University.

If you could retrain every director in the country, what would you want to teach them?
How to communicate. Conductors are supposed to be great communicators, yet we don’t know how to communicate. Many directors have become guarded. I have witnessed brilliant musical minds who are walking music encyclopedias but lack the ability to communicate their knowledge. Communication skills are one of the topics I cover in conducting clinics, and it certainly would head the list of subjects for teachers returning to the classroom. All the knowledge in the world is useless if you cannot share it.

How can directors become better at communicating?
During clinics, I emphasize that aside from the musical aspects of the score, conductors should have experience in acting, dance, and mime. Familiarity with these areas will teach a conductor to use their body. After all, conducting is a silent art. Directors have to indicate what they want to hear through gesture, acting, and body language, and anything other than speaking. At clinics, I ask people to start an ensemble and conduct a piece without using their hands. A posture or facial expression will do. I’m big on facial expressions: the eyes, eyebrows, or mouth. The conductor can use any of these except the spoken word. I show clinic audiences how to use gestures instead of words to convey instructions. Unless a conductor can demonstrate the sound they want, it will not happen. If inspiration does not come from within the conductor, it will not emerge in the music.

Teaching Expressive Conducting

By Craig Kirchhoff
June 1994

Craig Kirchhoff is professor emeritus of conducting at the University of Minnesota and a past president of the College Band Directors National Association.

All conductors should have a distinctive body language. I have no interest in changing students into carbon copies. I take their gestures and clarify them. Some conductors use so much motion that it is hard to identify what they want to achieve. Less motion is best for communicating with players and for hearing the ensemble. Most directors have discovered that they hear better off the podium, as when driving home listening to a recording, than when standing on the box waving their arms.

I recommend that every conductor get a videotape of Carlos Kleiber conducting. He is probably the single most remarkable conductor I have seen. I specifically remember a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh with the Vienna Philharmonic. He never used a discernible time pattern. We are taught that conducting is time patterns, but his gestures were almost child-like. His motions simply described the pure essence of the music.

How do these concepts of conducting affect the way you structure a rehearsal?
I try to project how the rehearsal will proceed and what we should accomplish, but I always have a plan for each session. I often deviate from the plan to deal with whatever problems arise, but rehearsals should have an architecture. The most effective conductors change the energy level at various points in a rehearsal. There should be moments of incredible, white heat as well as moments of wonderful quiet. The different energy levels keep everyone involved in the music. When the energy level never varies, rehearsals become predictable and concentration fades. I have found over the years that the best rehearsals have focused on musical issues and not technical matters. A certain of amount of rehearsal time should be spent on developing the technique to express music, but the key is for musical issues to drive the technical issues. If I give students musical reasons for improving these technical issues, I find that they are more motivated to conquer the technical problems.

It is helpful not to start at the beginning of a piece every time. This heightens concentration and suggests the importance of being extra careful here. Simply starting at the beginning of every piece has a different effect on rehearsals. There has to be a plan. By always focusing on the micro-aspects, conductors strip the ensemble of all responsibility for the music. With less difficult music, conductors can rehearse the broader musical issues in a work. By teaching students how to listen using this approach to rehearsals, conductors will find many technical elements improve as responsibility shifts to the musicians. I do not stop every time something sounds out of kilter. Students quickly realize that they have to listen more and take greater responsibility for the rehearsal process. One of the best rehearsal techniques is not to conduct. Every time I analyze what was different when I didn’t conduct, the answer inevitably is that students listened more.

Score Study

By Gary Green
January 1998

Gary D. Green is Emeritus Professor of Music and Director of Bands at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

In a score with any number of parts playing actively at the same time, I study each part and sing every single line in the score. To imagine exactly what a flute and oboe will sound like together is very difficult, but it is important to know how a combination of instruments will sound. You have to enter every rehearsal with a precise image of sound for the players, and it’s hard work to do that. If a score is extremely complex, I will ask a graduate student to sing along with me so I can hear how the parts fit together. I work with a metronome all the time in score study to acquire a good feel for the tempo and the rhythms.

Musical phrases are not necessarily musical sentences. They can also be questions, comments, or exclamations. Compositions can be viewed as musical conversations. The woodwind section may make a statement, the brass may interject something else, and so on. Each section takes part in the conversation. At a party, if everyone talks at the same time, the sound is overwhelming, and the ideas become nonsense. If everyone in the room focuses on a single thought, each comment is distinct and makes sense. I see music the same way. Each voice within the composition has to fit in with a preceding part and perhaps with another that occurs five minutes later. There should be a design, a reason behind the style in which each musical phrase is played. This is why I sing each phrase while learning the score. Balance stems from how each line is sung and how it fits in with the others.

Rehearsals

By Michael Burch-Pesses
February 1999

The career of Michael Burch-Pesses includes long tenures as a bandmaster in the United States Navy and as Director of Bands at Pacific University.

Use humor to cut tension.
Students do not have much fun when struggling with a difficult passage, but a humorous comment may ease the stress of a tense moment. Some conductors believe that humor has no place in a rehearsal. A certain degree of intensity is essential, but there is no need to be grim about. Anyone who doubts the effectiveness of humor in rehearsal should attend a clinic by W. Francis McBeth. His humor always relates to the music and often illustrates a musical point without ridicule or sarcasm. During one clinic a chord was out of balance. He said, “I hate that sound, and I wrote it!” The audience and the band laughed, and the clinic continued in a more light-hearted manner.

All too frequently conductors barrage the ensemble with insults throughout the rehearsal. I once heard a conductor say, “That note just sits there like a dead fish. Put some energy into it.” For many students, sarcasm and fear will impede their progress. Most students respond better to encouragement and respect than to intimidation. Humor can sometimes create the right atmosphere.

End upbeat.
Never end a rehearsal with difficult material but with a piece the group knows and can play well. Review material that reflects the progress the ensemble has made. This ends the session with the rewards of intense rehearsing instead of with frustration.

Good directors teach students how to work hard and become disciplined, but they also celebrate and enjoy the achievements of the ensemble. The process of creating music should be a joyful experience for everyone.

The post Conducting Ideas Over the Years appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Chamber Music All Year

By Greg Snyder
April 2009

Gregory Snyder is the founder and conductor of the Nashville Youth Wind Ensemble. He is Director of Bands Emeritus for Lakota West High School in Ohio. He taught at Lakota West for 27 of his 35 years as a high school band director.

I have always believed in the solo-and-ensemble process for developing musicianship in students. Years ago, in January and early February, the other directors and I encouraged as many students as possible to enter the Ohio solo and ensemble contest. Every year following the contest, I was pleased with the improvements I heard in each band, realizing that the students’ work, whether they polished a solo or participated in an ensemble, had a direct, positive influence on the overall sound of each band.

Students learned to listen more intently to one another as they adjusted pitch, turned a phrase, and added dynamics to their performances. The increased improvement through chamber playing was all the more inspiring because students did it with a minimum of coaching from the staff. After years of preparing and polishing ensembles for chamber performances in just two months of the school year, I was curious to see whether the level of achievement would increase more if students prepared chamber music throughout the school year.

Last year, I had a remarkable sax group. The members liked playing together so much, they would practice all the time and come in to perform for the band. Their arrangements were always 10-15 minutes long, not the two-minute variety. They would play and play and play. Finally, I would have to say, “Sorry guys, we have to go to lunch.” One of the students is now a college composition major.
Actually, the group went to contest asking for comments only, because Ohio students have to select repertoire from a prescribed list, and the composition student had a newly composed piece that wasn’t on it. They decided that there are more important things than just getting a rating.

That is one of many stories that I associate with the chamber music program. No band is perfect, but I have heard the bands at Lakota West get stronger every year, with a great deal of improvement coming from the chamber program. A chamber program alone does not make for a stellar band program, but combined with private lessons, participation in honor band, support from the administration, and a daily plan to strive for the best performances, great bands are possible.

My Mentors

By RoAnn Romines
October 2009

RoAnn Romines has taught instrumental music for 40 years in Germany, Texas, and now, Maryville, Tennessee.

My mentors were fine directors who knew conducting, music history, and had extensive knowledge of each instrument. I can recall one mentor, Ray Cramer, whose knowledge continues to surprise me. While he ranks high in stature in our profession, he never shies away from sitting beside young band students, helping them review the fundamentals of their instruments with a genuine smile and caring for their success.

Music educators have to become private instructors on all the instruments. It is time to turn back the clock and return to the era when directors had the knowledge of professional players and teachers at their fingertips. Today, many directors seldom play an instrument; many want to be only conductors and usually hire students to teach festival music.

As I did years ago, some directors fear approaching students and giving them precise instructions to develop as trained musicians. This has weakened our ability to teach. Bands seem to have excelled across the globe, and many have changed the perception of arts in the school; but in years to come, without good pedagogy, there will be no one to perform in bands or orchestras.

Listening Objectively

By Ray Cramer
August 1993

Ray Cramer was Director of Bands at Indiana University from 1982-2005 and served as President of the Midwest Clinic for 13 years.

I try to maintain objectivity by recording rehearsals and having others listen to my group. Even when I taught in high school, I recorded every rehearsal because when listening to the tape with the score in front of me, I could objectively hear all the mistakes. The key to being a great rehearsal technician and a musician is hearing everything that goes on.

When teaching in Cleveland, I observed George Szell rehearsing the Cleveland Orchestra. I was fascinated to see that even with the fine musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra, he rehearsed with great detail and had fantastic expectations. He also had incredible ears and could identify minute details in the mass of sound created by this fabulous orchestra. The key for any conductor is hearing as much as possible, but realistically, directors need to sit back and listen to a tape recording to evaluate what actually happened.

The Sound We Imagine

John Lynch
April 2010

John Lynch was Director of Bands and Professor of Music at Director of Bands and Professor of Music at the University of Georgia. He is currently Director of Bands at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Conducting is an interesting discipline because conductors make no sound. Conducting teachers often talk about looking like the music, but Robert Spano, the conductor of the Atlanta Symphony, says, “More importantly, we want to create the gesture that elicits the sound that we imagine.” That could mean that a gesture doesn’t really look like the music, but it gets the sound that you want. The most important thing is the sound we get, not how we look. Even before I work on technique with students, I make sure they have a strong aural image. Only then does conducting become a matter of using gestures and the body in the most expressive and communicative way possible to get the desired sound.

Student Perspectives

Barbara Lambrecht
June 1991

Barbara Lambrecht has written many articles for us, sharing her wisdom from a half-century of teaching music at every level. She is a cheerful force for good in this profession.

Like all teachers, I have a few students I want to adopt, one or two I want to choke with my bare hands, and many others who come and go without much fanfare. In their own way, each band member is focused, concerned, and creative. I know this because in a recent written exam I asked students to complete this sentence: “If I’ve Learned anything in life, it’s…” The answers were astounding, running the gamut from delightful to desperate, exhibiting everything from boundless faith to crass cynicism. They were often humorous, sometimes sad. Here’s a sample:

“Life is not always fair.”
“You can usually get away with putting things off.”
“You can’t trust a lot of people.”
“You can never win an argument with a certain band director.”
“A trophy isn’t the most important way to prove you’re number one.”
“Mom knows more than I think she does.”
“If you can’t forgive other people for things they’ve done, life is pretty miserable.”
“There is no end to the mysteries out there.”
“Learn from our mistakes. Life goes on.”
“Don’t take life too seriously, and brush after meals.”

Reporters may suggest that teenagers across America lack direction and forecast continued educational decline, but I can report the young people I see daily are turning out just fine.

Project What We Expect

By Amanda Drinkwater
October 2010

Amanda Drinkwater spent 23 years as a highly decorated director in Texas and now is Director of Fine Arts for the Lewisville ISD, which includes 61 campuses.

Students have to feel that there’s a sense of respect, expectation, and trust towards them. They tend to rise to the occasion, so if you project to them a sense of low expectation or lack of trust, they will fill that order easily. When they first get into high school we have to recognize that it’s going to take some time before they become model Marcus High School band members. They’ll get a lot from the upperclassmen simply from watching and learning, and we always speak to them in a calm tone of voice. We try to project the expectation before we demand it. The role of a teacher is to define expectations and only then demand them. The only times we get into trouble with students are when we forget to define first.

Mentors

Alfred Watkins,
December 2017

Alfred Watkins was Director of Bands at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Georgia, for 31 years. Ensembles under his baton have performed five times at the Midwest Clinic.

My mentors included four or five middle school band directors in the Atlanta public school system who were good husbands, fathers, and bandmasters. They taught in deprived communities but with a high level of musicianship, and their ensembles were very good. I learned that poor kids can learn with good instruction. These mentors taught me to be a future husband and father. My college directors, William P. Foster, Director of Bands at FAMU, Julian E. White, Classroom Methods Instructor at FAMU, and my classical trumpet professor, Lenard Bowie, were extremely excellent mentors for me. All were well-trained African-American classical musicians who developed a community of musical excellence for us. The small college program was based as much on character development as it was good musicianship. I owe them everything.

I also sought out Harry Begian, William Revelli, John Paynter, Fred Fennell, and Arnald Gabriel. They were my five mentors outside of Georgia. I called them every month or two and became very good friends with all of them. They heard my groups over the years and offered advice on how to build a program and select literature. All of these directors conducted in my rehearsal room at Lassiter at some point. None of these men ever gave me any formal education, but they were the best in the world at what I was doing, and they shared information with me forever. Harry Begian would come to Lassiter and always stayed at the house with my family. This allowed us to talk shop late at night.

Advice for Music Students

By Harvey Phillips
November 1990

Harvey Phillips was a force of nature in support of the tuba and musical excellence. He was a valued member of The Instrumentalist braintrust for many years.

As you develop your mind and skills, try to become an expert in self-analysis. Learn to know your strengths and weaknesses. Displaying your strengths in public opens the door to many opportunities. Work on your weaknesses in private and endeavor to make each weakness a strength before displaying it in public. Consider the following questions and answers:

Why do you practice? Because you want the option of a career in music as a performer. (Improving your performance is a by-product of practice and not a reason.”

When should you practice? At every opportunity. Don’t limit practice time.

What do you practice? Everything you cannot yet play on your instrument. Plan each session so you know what you wish to accomplish before you begin. Be consistent and tenacious.

Where should you practice? In the most private, isolated place you can find. Practice time is not rehearsal, performance, or audition time.

Don’t limit the exploration of your performance potential. Music is a language with many dialects. The more dialects you can master – baroque, classical, romantic, contemporary, avant garde, jazz, folk – the more you expand your performance potential and enjoyment of music.

Building Trust

By Jason Fettig
April 2019

Jason Fettig served as the 28th Director of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and Chamber Orchestra. He is currently Professor of Music and Director of Bands at the University of Michigan.

What are your objectives when you step on the podium with a new or different ensemble?
I think the most important thing when musicians are getting to know each other is establishing trust. It is certainly important musician to musician, and it is equally important conductor to ensemble. Trust is one of the most difficult things to build, but when there is trust in each other, it inspires a freedom of playing that I think is essential to music making.

Trust relates to preparedness. Conductors will trust an ensemble if they feel like that ensemble is prepared and ready to work, and an ensemble will begin to trust conductors they feel are competent, prepared, and committed to what you’re about to do. After that, the trust is an ongoing process rooted in allowing each other to do your jobs. If I am conducting an ensemble and I trust the musicians to play, I am not going to over-conduct or micromanage them. I will instead allow them to be artists, put their stamp on the performance, and collaborate and negotiate without frequent intervention by the conductor. When you empower the players to be part of that process and you trust them to do what they are trained to do, they enjoy what they are doing more, they appreciate the conductor’s work more, and the music is simply better.

Photography

By Milt Hinton
August 1993

Bassist Milt Hinton played on recording sessions for more than 1,000 jazz and pop music singles. He also took remarkable photos of the musicians in his world. We were fortunate to share some of them in our pages.

This is a specialist’s world. You don’t find too many people doubling on saxophone, trombone, bass, and clarinet. You’ve got to do one thing and do it very well or you won’t survive. There is no room to delve seriously into different activities and become professional in any one.

With my photography, somebody gave me a $25 camera for my birthday when I was a young man. Evidently my mother liked photos because I have many pictures my family took as far back as when I was three months old. It was easy to stick a camera in my pocket during my travels. Between sets, on the train, and in the bus, I would take out my camera. For some reason I decided to take pictures of musicians. You will not find very many pictures that I have taken of trees or bridges. My photos are of musicians; they are what I was around and are great to study. Every snowflake is different so there’s no problem making every man different. I wanted to photograph musicians the way I saw them, not the way a photographer sees them. That’s been the preface of the success I have with photos: I am a musician taking pictures of musicians.

The Most Exciting Year

By Robert Foster
September 1993

Robert Foster was Director of Bands at the University of Kansas for 31 years. He is a past president of the National Band Association and the American Bandmasters Association.

Teaching and Phrasing
The most exciting year of teaching in my life will be the next one. There are things I can’t wait to do. I have spent my whole life getting ready for next year. The great fun in teaching is in the learning. The better you learn how to teach, the more fun it becomes….

The best teachers I have known were the senior faculty members who were still enthusiastic about learning. I have a friend in New York who frequently calls to talk about a piece that excites him and that he can’t wait to share with his students. In order to succeed, a director should be competent enough as a musician to make musical judgments while continuing to grow musically.

I’m absolutely convinced that most teachers should spend more time shaping phrases. In performance after performance at contests, ensembles have learned the notes and play most of the dynamics as printed, but they never seem to realize that a piece of music is just a broad set of guidelines, that all notes are not created equal. Some notes inherently have greater value than others and different relationships with other notes to form a phrase. Music communicates through phrases. Merely playing notes does not produce music.

Watching the Audience

By Robert Spevacek
November 1993

When this article first appeared, Robert Spevacek was Director of Bands at the University of Idaho’s Hampton School of Music. He was previousy a high school band director in Delavan, Wisconsin, and is a member of the American Bandmasters Association.

Several years ago, while watching a percussion ensemble perform all of the latest percussion compositions at a state music convention, I happened to turn around and look behind me. What I saw there was a crowd of people with eyes glazed over. They looked like hundreds of deer staring into car headlights. Although the percussionists played splendidly and had worked hard to prepare for the concert, no one in the auditorium wanted to listen to that music.

After this experience, I wondered what the audiences looked like during some of my performances, so I videotaped the next several concerts, but I aimed the camera at the audience from backstage. They were unaware of the taping. I just wanted to find out what held their attention and what turned them into transfixed deer. The results were not entirely startling, but there were enough surprises to make me think about how each piece of music will be received and whether anybody will want to come to the concert to hear it.

In judging the effectiveness of the programming for a concert, directors should not rely on the comments from those in the audience, as these are often misleading. Any audience, and particularly one comprised of parents, will generally praise a performance even if the program consisted of musical genres that were difficult to comprehend. Until fairly recently it was good formula for having no one show up at a concert to program new music. In recent years, however, band and orchestral composers have produced some wonderful new music that educated audiences will come to hear and feel confident that they will be intrigued if not thrilled or entertained. The key to a satisfied audience is to give an excellent performance, one with the right notes played at the right time with good tone and musicality. If those elements are missing, an audience may pay attention to the peripheral details but will not be entranced by the music itself. This is true regardless of what music is on the program.

It is important to remember that audiences like melodies. At the 1984 International Brass Congress at Indiana University, many of the programs were quite traditional with lots of the Carnival of Venice type of music. This was a very sophisticated audience that loved every bit of the tuneful and masterfully played fare. At one time players avoided those old chestnuts and preferred to stay on the leading edge with avant-garde music. If that brass congress had occurred in 1968, the program would have been entirely different.

My programs tend to consist of 50-75% new music that has features that will make people want to listen. My colleague, Daniel Bukvich, has an amazing ability to write pieces that reach across the footlights. His well-constructed compositions frequently incorporate visual elements that excite audiences without being trite. I also include traditional pieces that are proven crowd pleasers.

Reflections at Age 91

William Revelli
December 1993

The legendary director passed away just months after this interview appeared.

Teaching demands a correct attitude and standards that are uncompromising. I had a reputation for being tough, but let’s define tough: an alligator has tough skin. Does being demanding make me tough? I want the music just right. In music, just about right isn’t acceptable. Musicians can’t play a little out of tune or almost in rhythm because that sounds horrible…

Looking back I don’t agree with all of my philosophies during my first year of teaching. One idea, however, that I have never given up is the search for perfection. I didn’t achieve perfection often, but the uncompromising search for it has been the greatest journey of my life.

Great Expectations
I expect every student to give the best he has not to me, but to the composer, the composition, and to the art of music. Music has to be serious, and a player has to do the very best he can…. You should rehearse to learn the piece well enough to put your whole self into recreating a score written 100 years ago. You have to forget everything else. Your mind has to be focused right there. I don’t want to rehearse a person whose mind is thinking about something else. The Italian word for rehearsal is probo – prove – and that means to prove you are ready. A rehearsal is not somewhere to sightread music. That would be a sightreading session.

Coaching
One of the finest men I’ve ever met is Bo Schembechler, who coached at the University of Michigan. Inside, he’s a marshmallow who cries as quickly as I do. Outside everything has to be right. When he started at Michigan, I was the first faculty member he met. I went to his office to talk about the football activities that were upcoming. He came to one of my rehearsals and stayed for 45 minutes when I thought he would be there for only five minutes. The next day he asked me to talk to the team. I replied that I knew nothing about football, but he countered, “I don’t want you to talk about football. I want you to say exactly the same things to my team that you said to that band yesterday.” I still talk to the team every year. I did it this fall for the new coach. I relay my philosophy to the team. If you don’t love football, don’t play it. Do something else.

The post Sharpening Your Skills appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Room for Improvement

By Jeff Jarvis
April 1998

Jeff Jarvis is a trumpeter, composer, professor, and music publisher. He was co-owner of Kendor Music Publishing from 1985-2015

The rhythm section of a school jazz ensemble usually has the most room for improvement, perhaps because most directors played wind instruments and are reluctant to cope with the rhythm section problems. Secondary school rhythm players generally have a good concept of rock, funk, and Latin styles but have not developed a good swing style. Often changes in equipment and a better understanding of these styles can make a great difference.

The only thing more troubling than watching a jazz ensemble set up a synthesizer as a grand piano is wheeled off stage is the sound that follows. Even the best sampled piano sound on a synthesizer is less satisfying than a real piano. It is absurd to spend thousands of dollars trying to imitate the sound of the instrument they’ve just pushed to the side of the stage. I often write contemporary charts with a synthesizer part in addition to piano to enhance the overall sound. Either instrument can be effectively used on contemporary Latin, funk, or rock charts, but the piano is the best choice for swing, jazz waltz, and jazz ballad styles.

The pianist should provide chordal accompaniment with rhythmic, percussive comping patterns and lean, resonant voicings. Novice jazz pianists tend to overuse the sostenuto pedal, which reduces clarity, but the greatest deficiency in young pianists is voicing chords. If charts do not include suggested voicings, inexperienced players often simplify the chords and produce harmonic clashes. An aspiring jazz pianist who sees a C+7 and doesn’t understand anything beyond the letter name of the chord will simply play a C major triad. However, the natural fifth played against the ensemble’s augmented fifth will create an unpleasant dissonance. Some jazz piano books to assist jazz pianists includes Voicing by Frank Mantooth (Hal Leonard), The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine (Sher Music), and The Chord Voicing Handbook by Matt Harris and Jeff Jarvis (Kendor Music)

Aspiring jazz guitarists tend to use equipment, settings, and concepts better suited for rock music. For swing charts the pickup selector should be set to the neck pickup and the tone control to a medium setting. When comping in the swing style, guitarists should use a basic rhythmic pattern of down-strums on each beat with a slight emphasis on the even beats. The entire forearm should be used in the strumming motion, not just the wrist. Pressure on the strings should be released slightly between each strum, and up-strums should be used sparingly. When conflicts arise between pianists and guitarists, they should alternate comping roles, with one player using sustained chords or laying out while the other comps.

Novice jazz bassists often play with a boomy sound caused by too much bass response on the amplifier settings. Adding some mid-range and treble to the setting will improve definition and pulse. This alone can profoundly improve the band’s concept of time. An acoustic bass works well for most styles with the exception of rock and funk charts. Either an acoustic or electric bass can be used for most Latin styles. Bassists should always connect notes, especially to walking bass lines in swing charts, unless the composer calls for short articulations. A subtle emphasis on the even beats will help the group to swing.

Drummers unfamiliar with the swing concept tend to use the kit the same way they would on a funk or rock chart, where the bass and snare drums keep time. However, a heavy backbeat on the snare and loud quarter notes on the bass drum will bog down the feel on a swing tune. The solution to this problem is to firmly close the hi-hat on the even beats while playing a steady swing pattern on the ride cymbal. The snare and bass drum should be used only intermittently for emphasis and color.

Teaching Improv

By Clark Terry
April 1991

Clark Terry’s jazz career spanned more than 70 years. He was a trumpeter, educator, composer, and NEA Jazz Master and performed for eight U.S. presidents. His original compositions include over 200 jazz songs. He once made a memorable visit to the Instrumentalist offices.

I use the concept that the old-timers used. They knew that they could play a series of notes that they called the blue notes, which was the tonic, minor third, and the flatted fifth. They didn’t know whether these notes had names, and they didn’t care. If you can find those blue notes from any given note on your horn, you can play with the greatest rhythm section in the world. You’d be suprised what you can do with those three notes. I tell the kids at my jazz camps that anybody who plays anything other than these three notes owes me a quarter. This immediately instills in them the discipline that is necessary to play jazz.

After they are restricted to those few notes they see how a blues scale fits together. Beginners are told to listen, but if a kid sits down with Coltrane records, it doesn’t get them anywhere. Kids should learn the basics. It’s like building a house, the deeper you dig the foundation, the higher up you can go. Beginners have trouble with an eighth note followed by quarter notes. The longer the phrase, the faster they play it. It’s like a runaway train. I try to teach them to lay back and get the true jazz feeling.

Musical Peaks and Valleys

By Maynard Ferguson
February 1986

Trumpeter Maynard Ferguson came to prominence in Stan Kenton’s orchestra before forming his own band in 1957. His groups often included rising jazz talent.

When you go through different stages of playing, I think you have to stay on the middle path and accept what’s happening. Eventually it will become the positive path and be good for you. If you have to take ten steps backwards because you’re going to have braces on your teeth, look at it as if you’re lucky because you’re getting something corrected…. When you’re in a valley, leave the drama to Broadway, Hollywood, and Bombay, and don’t allow your brain to make a drama out of something that goes wrong.

I like what I do in life because I love it. I think students should play an instrument because they want to play, not so they will come in first in a competition. Anytime you hear a person do something incredibly beautiful on an instrument, you should love that person and what you just heard. If you think competitively, you do yourself a terrible disservice. I admit my non-competitive thinking doesn’t always work in America school systems, where we’re looking for budget for another teacher or better equipment. Coming home with a plaque or medal can make things a lot easier for the music educator.

There is something about being competitive that I feel is thankless. It has never been anything but a joy for me to hear any of the great players like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, or Wynton Marsalis. They are all a joy to me. I enjoy listening to them and playing with them, and at the same time I know they don’t want to sound like Maynard Ferguson. There is only one Maynard. There is also only one Bud Herseth. That is an important part of my teaching. What comes out of the horn comes out of your own mind, your own disciplines, and your own habits.

Teaching

By David Baker
December 1986

David Baker was a jazz composer, conductor, musician, and professor of jazz studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Teaching requires constant renewal. I’ve never been able to understand teachers who can use the same syllabus year after year, as though new information does not exist. People say, “Why do you continue revising a music history class? History doesn’t change.” I say to them that our perceptions of history change. Things that formerly were seen as footnotes to a period in history may emerge as major epochs. The opposite is also true. Because of our proximity to certain events, they may seem important. Ten years later, it may turn out that these things weren’t important at all.

Focus on the Basics

By Bob Lark
October 2008

Bob Lark is a widely recognized educator and performer and was Director of Jazz Studies at DePaul University for more than three decades.

During the early fall rehearsals, I often take all of the toys away from the drummer except the ride cymbal, hi-hat, and the snare drum. This forces the drummer to concentrate on what is important, instead of adding a variety of nuances. This works great with student ensembles, and I will even do this with graduate students. The most important skill for any drummer to learn is timekeeping, and this is true whether the music is a swing chart, samba, rock tune, or ballad. On the snare drum, the left hand can subdivide important figures to guide the horns if necessary.

At the outset, I want to train the drummer and band to listen to and think about how the time is kept. It helps the drummer to focus on the basics if there are fewer equipment choices. With junior high drummers, this works remarkably well. I may restrict the drummer to playing a simple pattern with the right hand on the ride cymbal and have the hi-hat close on beats 2 and 4. In my experience, many drummers feel that they need to use all of the drums on an eight-piece set. Many can’t handle this without changing the pulse. At first, drummers may claim that they can’t play with just three instruments, but they can. Gradually, I let the drummer earn the entire drum kit, one drum at a time. I explain that it is like a stew: the other drums add flavor, but the essential ingredients are the three pieces of equipment they start with.

When working as a guest director, I may say, “I bet your drummer gets yelled at by your director more than anybody else in the band.” Usually there is a round of chuckling until I remind them that this is because the drummer is the most important person in the band. My technique of taking instruments away forces the drummer to focus on the basics.

Directing a Jazz Ensemble

By Bob Mintzer
July 1998

Bob Mintzer is a saxophonist, arranger, educator living in Los Angeles. He is currently holds an endowed chair at the USC Thornton School of Music and is a 30-year member of the Yellowjackets.

Good rehearsal techniques can help students develop the skills to play in an ensemble, including learning as a group to prepare music for a performance. I like to take difficult spots in a chart and dissect them, slowing down the tempo and having the musicians play the melody and accompaniment one at a time, so that everybody has a clear idea of what is going on. It is essential that everyone knows who is playing the primary melodic material and who is playing the accompaniment.

When things begin to jell rhythmically, I start to work on blend and phrasing. A good thing to do is to take a tutti passage for the brass and have them play without the rhythm section at a tempo much slower than the marked tempo. You can even begin with the first chord alone. See to it that everyone is aware of who is playing the lead voice and remind students that if anyone can’t hear that person, they should know that they are playing too loudly. Try to tune and balance the first chord until you can hear the chord ring. You will know when it is right. You may need to stop several times in a piece to do this when intonation and balance seem wrong. Once the blend is right, take a short phrase and have the band play, listening so they hear how it should sound. Make sure everyone is playing under the lead voice and that they are phrasing with the lead player.

Straight Ahead with Sammy Nestico

By Jim Warrick
February 1989

Sammy Nestico’s music has been played by countless jazz players. He published more than 600 arrangements for school band programs.

[A] musical highlight was when he started to publish his own music. “My first publications were watered-down arrangements of my Basie charts. In those days Art Dedrick was the father of stage bands, and he was just starting Kendor Music. I’ve always regretted that we simplified the first Basie charts I published. We just figured they were too hard for kids. In fact, we didn’t even publish Magic Flea for quite a while, and I think it sold more than any of the others when we finally published the recorded version.”

Speaking of his current success as a published composer, Sammy says, “I’m very proud to be writing for the schools of America. I think that’s terrific. There is something exciting about being able to write simple and melodic, but not bland pieces. It’s a challenge and a thrill to write something that you know has some musicality to it and yet is playable by young people. I’ll come out of my little studio and tell Margie that I really enjoyed that a lot more than writing a professional arrangement. A lot of love goes into the music I write for kids.”

When Sammy writes for publishing companies he feels added pressure to get it right the first time. “My schedule in Los Angeles never gives me time to hear school groups play my music. It’s almost always the publisher’s promotional record that gives me my first hearing of my music, and then it’s usually only 32 bars before it fades out. As I write I can hear the band in my head, but there are a few things that surprise me when I finally hear my music played by a band.

Sammy tries to write music that musicians will want to play. “Their enthusiasm for my music will spill over into the audience and the audience will like it. I like to write a piece that has everybody smiling after they hear it. I’m a happy person, and I like to write happy music. I guess that’s why I don’t write many minor key things.” When asked to name his favorite big band compositions or arrangements, he names Warm Breeze, Basie Straight Ahead, 88 Basie Street, Satin Doll, and Sweet Georgia Brown.

Reflections

By Jamey Aebersold
January 2018

Jamey Aebersold is an internationally-known saxophonist and authority on jazz education and improvisation.

Improvising Without Fear
Improvising can be scary, and we should dispel the myth that someone might not have the ability to improvise. One way to do that is to put students in a situation where they start out playing just on a scale. They need to develop confidence. The reason for the emphasis on practicing scales and chords, as well as learning melodies like Perdido or Satin Doll and numerous blues in the keys of Bb and F is that these are part of the basic jazz repertoire. Everybody has to do this sooner or later. If you wait until later, that probably means that you wasted a lot of time earlier just beating around in the bush and trying to find something that sounded good or impressed others.

If all students were taught to improvise as they come up through school, I guarantee that musical instrument companies would love it. People would graduate from school and continue to play their instruments and not retire them because they know how to improvise. They could play anywhere just for the enjoyment. Some do continue, but I would bet that the 98% who did not learn to improvise, never play music anymore after graduation. They listen to it, but they don’t play it. That’s sad.

The ego plays a part in this, too. It does not want you to sound bad. Once you start improvising the ego does not want you to play wrong notes, get lost, and stop at the wrong time. Nothing could be worse. The ego will discourage people from signing up for jazz band due to the unknown.

The Initial Breakthrough
When I was a 21-year-old teacher in Seymour, Indiana, I had a flute player with a great sound and great technique. One day we had ten minutes left in her lesson, so I asked her to improvise on a D minor scale over two octaves. There was a little piano in the practice room, so I played a walking bass line and chords in that key and told her to play whatever she wanted to play. I had never asked anybody to do this before. Right away I realized she was playing nice two-bar phrases, which she was imagining in her head. We did that for a couple of minutes, and I stopped and said, “let’s go up a half step.” We went to Eb dorian. I had her play the scale two octaves, then we tried improv again, and she did just great. We came back down to D minor and played it again, this time with the chord progression from So What. That’s what got me started – a young girl who could improvise with nice phrases without ever having done it before. She didn’t have a stack of records like jazz players do and hadn’t heard jazz before. That made me wonder if everyone could do this.

The Sounds in Your Head
I discovered that if I sit at the piano and slowly play a random but logically flowing chord progression, anyone can sing a solo to go along with it. The voice is a magical instrument, and the mind can sing great solos if the tempo is not too fast and the chord progression is not difficult. I have done this many times and that’s where my “Anyone Can Improvise” words came from.

Once I was giving a clinic in New Hampshire. I asked for a volunteer to come up with their saxophone and try to play along with me while I played some random chords on the piano. The volunteer sounded awful. Then I asked him to grab the microphone and sing for me instead, and he sounded great. He included notes that with diligent practice might take three years to play on his instrument. It was very musical but he had no knowledge of scales or chords or jazz in general, but his musical mind knew. All of the other students applauded because it sounded like music. Unless someone is nervous, nine times out of ten people will sing a good solo. It made me a true believer in our inner musical mind. It’s the instrument that holds us back. An instrument cannot match what a person hears in the mind. While in the early stages of learning improvisation, that is just enough to make someone give up. The ego says, “I told you that you couldn’t do it.” However, the ego lies.

The post Teaching Jazz appeared first on The Instrumentalist.

Originally published: January 1994

Eugene Corporon was already well-known when this interview appeared in the January 1994 issue. At the time he directed bands that the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and later became Conductor of the Wind Symphony and Regent Professor of Music at the University of North Texas. His groups have released more than 150 recordings.

Courtesy of Bands of America, Inc. and Jolesch Photography

What aspects of musical performance should students learn in high school?
Listening is the most important aspect directors can teach musicians at any performance level. In What to Listen for in Music, Aaron Copland defines performing as the act of converting listening into an audible representation of the piece. As musical symbols are turned into sound, poor performances are usually the result of individuals who are locked into their parts and do not listen to the group as a whole. Instrumental musicians play from one line parts, while choir members see the whole score, removing any doubt about who has the important material at all times. Consequently, the biggest challenge for instrumental instructors is teaching students how to listen to the other parts as well as their own.
Students should also know how a composer wanted the music to sound and make a performance correspond. The form and structure did not happen by chance. Composers convert an idea into rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic elements. When students understand this, the can recreate the original intent.

Finally, there is feeling. Music making is more than analyzing music and playing the right notes at the right time. That is making it right, not making music. Performers make music by using all of this information. When students say they have to miss rehearsal but know their part, I give a long philosophical discussion about how knowing the part is where rehearsals begin. Taking someone out of a combination of people who all know their parts takes away from the whole. Even with the best reason in the world for missing a rehearsal, the group is incomplete because one person is not there.

Is it possible for directors to be too serious in rehearsals?
I intentionally use the word play when referring to interaction with music. Like playing a game, it should be fun. This is important. Conductors sometimes are too serious. There is a dark side to intensity in which nobody has fun because the musicians fear making a mistake. Sometimes older musicians are afraid to show enthusiasm. There is often a diminuendo in enthusiasm with age. Think about beginners as they learn to play notes. They are enthusiastic and cannot wait to take their instruments out. Somewhere between this stage and adulthood, we become afraid to share our enthusiasm. I’ve talked backstage with musicians who have looked at me deadpan and said, “Boy, this is so exciting.” They are being careful not to appear overly zealous. Older students mistakenly think that this is part of becoming a professional player.

I would prefer students to emulate Barry Green, principal bass of the Cincinnati Symphony. He gets as excited about music as a 12-year-old. When asked about his enthusiasm over playing the Beethoven 5th Symphony for the 200th time, he mentions that the hall is a little different or he is different or the conductor is different, so no two performances are ever the same. Each recreation is unique. That’s the kind of model music students should have: people excited about music.

How do you keep rehearsals moving at a fast pace and avoid becoming too serious?
Rehearsals are my favorite part of making music. The goal is to understand and express ideas and feelings in the music. The director’s job is much like an archaeologist on a huge dig, who variously uses a bulldozer, a shovel, and sometimes a very fine brush. Musicians should understand the differences between short and long, loud and soft, and fast and slow.

I try not to let a rehearsal become bogged down by problems. Although there is much to be done, everything cannot be corrected at once. Remember that students are in band to play, not to hear the director talk. Offering a quick solution to a problem spot is always more effective than bringing a rehearsal to a screeching halt. Directors should identify the problem, offer a solution and move on. In addition to paying attention to the problem at hand, it is important to monitor those who are not playing. They will let you know how much time to spend. While you may not be able to correct a problem fully, at least you can outline a method for practicing the trouble spot.

Rehearsals should be serious, focused, and fun. There is nothing wrong with being serious. I use an hourglass approach when rehearsing: large sections, specific phrases, and large sections. This guides my analysis and rehearsal plan. Directors should take a piece apart and put it back together quickly. Students need to experience success in every rehearsal. Keep changing the focus and use the zoom.

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