Posts Tagged ‘band’

School Days

Saturday, May 22nd, 2021

They are tearing down my high school–Upper Arlington High School–over the summer, so I went back last month, and I took Noah, one day shy of turning 11, with me, to a walk-through day sponsored by the alumni association. It was the first time I had been back to most of the facility since I graduated, although I had been to the music area and the auditorium a couple times, mostly associated with the 2008 premiere of the piece I wrote for the band to commemorate the career of my high school band director, John Blevins.

I was surprised how much was the same. The building had not undergone any major renovations since before my time there, and even some of the fixtures were memorable. The light was the same—too little. The halls were surprisingly at once bigger or smaller than I remembered, and some doors seemed to be labelled with their original markings from the 1950s. It was a good day to be there, as the building was still very much in use, the final packing up for the summer still to come. In fact, there were signs asking us to stay out of classrooms. When I came to the band room, though, I couldn’t help myself, and Noah was shocked when I stepped over the caution tape to walk through the rehearsal space one last time, peeking at the locker that I had shared with Jay Moore during our junior and senior years, and snapping a couple of photos. Crossing lines put in place by authority is not something my son is accustomed to seeing me do, but I assured him that it would be alright, even while also telling him not to get any ideas.

Overall, I had a good four years in high school, from 1990 to 1994. I excelled academically, found my place in several groups of my classmates (band, mostly, but also the honors students, the gifted program, briefly the drama club, and too late the quiz team), and discovered the passion that would lead to my career. I wasn’t bullied, and I don’t think I was a bully, but neither was I a standout in the social world of my high school. My family lived a comfortable life, but I was surrounded by people whose parents were wealthier than us: lots of my friends were given a car when they turned sixteen, but I was given a set of keys to the family car.

What I am amazed by, these years later, is the quality of my teachers, especially after spending more than twenty years trying to be a teacher myself. I wrote once of the importance of every teenager having a role model who isn’t their parents—an uncle, spiritual guide, or teacher—and Upper Arlington High School had an embarrassment of riches among its faculty. If I hadn’t found that person in Mr. Blevins, there were easily three or four other teachers each year who could have been that person, and frequently were for my classmates. Even students who didn’t seem to fit could—and did—find these people. The huge number of clubs and sports coached by teachers meant that there were plenty of chances to interact with them in less-formal ways than in the classroom.

Upper Arlington High School was—and is—a well-funded school, attended by students who had all the advantages that wealth brings, and I’ve truthfully struggled my entire life to reconcile that experience with what I have seen and heard elsewhere, as a teacher, as a college professor, and as I’ve listened to the experiences of others in high school. In a negative sense, I have come to see what I often felt as entitlement, and white privilege, and I am frustrated that we can’t find a way to give what I had—and took for granted—to all kids.

Some things I would have done differently. Coming into high school, I had a pretty good network of friends, and leaving it, I had at least one close friend, but I don’t think I engaged in building relationships as much as I could have, and I didn’t manage to maintain those relationships in any kind of real way after graduation. On graduation day, I went home with my parents, and didn’t have any plans with the people I had just spent four years with. My father told me to go seemy friends, but I didn’t have anywhere to go: all my friendships but one were essentially situational, and when high school ended, they basically did, too. This was in part what I wanted—I was very ready to go on to the next thing and start living my life, and I viewed going away to college and leaving everything I knew mostly behind as a big part of that. It wasn’t until I got onto social media (nearly 15 years later) that I found out what happened to most people. Mistakenly, I had thought that the only important part of high school was high school.

I have also come to realize that for many of my classmates and peers at high schools of all types, the high school experience was not a good one. For a place that should be dedicated to learning and knowledge, too often there is very little of either. There are those who placed their trust one or another teacher, only to have that trust betrayed in often horrifying ways. There are people who were bullied, or ostracized, and they carry the damage with them into their adult lives—adulthood is high school with money, as the saying goes. There were people who simply had to wait and endure that four years in order to be able to go and pursue their visions, goals, and dreams in a way that didn’t fit in with a bell schedule, semesters, homework, and hall passes, and resented it. There were people who injured themselves in lifelong ways, either on the athletic field or otherwise, trying to come up to what was expected of them. As Hesse suggests, education is a way of placing us beneath the wheel; the Bildungsroman is almost always written while wearing rose-colored glasses.

As my children approach this world—Noah is headed into the minefield of middle school in the fall—I try to see what I want for them. The high school they will attend is most certainly not Upper Arlington in 1994, and I would like to see them aim higher than most of that school’s students who I seem to meet. I realize now that I am a very different person because of the people I was around in high school—the artists, musicians, and honors students. It was nothing in the water—it was constantly being around people whose parents shared the same goals as me. I want my children to be able to assume that they can use their minds to earn a living, to be able to provide a good life for their children, to not be afraid of books or art or people who are different (although there was plenty of that at Upper Arlington, too). I want them to know success, and to know a world where they believe success is possible, and where people are willing to at least give them a chance to succeed.

Twenty-seven years out of high school, I am still thinking about high school. As the physical evidence of the school is being torn down and replaced with something new, what happened to me in those four years—good, bad, indifferent—carries on, more than a look through old yearbooks (I am shocked at how many strangers stare back at me from those pages), or posts on social media, or the reunions that I’ve never been to.

I never wanted to be a nostalgic person, and I detest the kind of nostalgia that sees the past as better. I refuse to engage in golden age thinking (or gold-and-black age thinking, in this case). But the Greek roots of nostalgia refer to pain—pain for one’s home. There is a part of me that does ache for that time—to put on the band uniform, or learn fresh some way that the world works, or for once feel like I am meeting the world’s expectations. I shouldn’t, because that was all an illusion, and it was all designed for someone else. I wouldn’t go back—most days—but walking through that doomed building reminded me of what a time it was, and how it continues to make me who I am today.

Begin the Ohio Period

Monday, September 10th, 2012

I’m not a huge fan of the music of Arnold Schoenberg, unlike a certain friend of mine who claims to listen to Pierrot Lunaire to relax.  Don’t get me wrong–it’s great music, just not for every day.

What I love about Schoenberg is that his music kept changing throughout his career, with the biggest change of all being the one that happened with his move to America in 1933.  At this moment, Schoenberg backed away from the “pure” 12-tone works of the ’20s and early ’30s and started to compose in a more eclectic, less dogmatic way.  These late works aren’t his best-known, but some of them are wonderful–the Theme and Variations, Op. 43, for example.  It was as though after moving away from Vienna, ending up in Los Angeles, Schoenberg could no longer be everything he had been and had to be what he would be next.

This summer, I finished the last piece of my “Oklahoma” period–my Suite for String Orchestra, which will have multiple performances over the next nine months.  Reflecting, I’ve written some good music over the last five years–several pieces that I am really proud of and that have gotten some favorable attention: Starry Wanderers, South Africa, Ode, and Moriarty’s Necktie have all had performances in multiple states and get me to thinking that I just might be a good composer when I think about them.  My Piano Sonata is also slated for second and third performances this fall, and my concerto for clarinet and band Daytime Drama is slated for a premiere in November.  It’s been a good five years.

The Oklahoma pieces are, by-and-large, practically conceived–shortly after arriving in Oklahoma, I decided that I wouldn’t write anything without a commission or at least a promise of a performance.  I’m starting to feel able to make more out of less–creating a piece using developmental techniques rather than stringing together sections of music based on different material–Moriarty’s Necktie feels like a leap forward in that respect.  My study of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Mahler’s symphonies a few years ago helped me see this–as a theory teacher, I am often inspired by my teaching, but we don’t always spend a great deal of time on large-scale works.  I’ve become less of a vocal composer than I used to think I was–and I’m coming to terms with that, in a way.  I don’t think I’ll ever be a songsmith of the likes of Ned Rorem or Roger Quilter, but again, if the right levels of interest come along, that’s fine.  Except for a little bit of fiddling with Pure Data, I haven’t done any electronic music since leaving Ohio State in 2007, and I have to say that I don’t miss it.

In Oklahoma, my music became more focused, more diatonic, more image-driven.  I saw things and places that were inspiring, and I became a father.  There was longing, and there was hardship–as though, like Schoenberg, I was an exile, but like Schoenberg, who played tennis with Gershwin and ran into Stravinsky at the market, there were times of living, as well.

So, what will the Ohio period bring?  I hope to have time now to focus on the post-compositional phases of each piece–publication, promotion, building the brand, as it were.  For me, this is not the fun part.  I spent last weekend composing a new work for clarinet and percussion for Jenny Laubenthal in a white heat, and it was a great time.  I had been thinking about the piece for a month, and it was pure joy to see it come together.  I want to make a sincere effort to get behind my works and send it out to the world more often.  Moriarty’s Necktie is headed to a conference and two awards juries–big awards, the Ostwald and Beeler Prizes, that would put me on the map in a very significant way.  There need to be more subsequent performances, more publications.  I want to be less distracted by other projects.  It was great to write a book in 2010-2011, but it was enormously consuming.  I’m glad to be able to say that I did it, but if I do it again, I need a better reason than “It will look good on my CV.”

I’ve been exploring quintuplous meter, and I’m not sure where it’s going to go, or what the potential for it really is.  But, just as a composer can’t write everything in 6/8, not every piece will be in quintuplous meter.  So far it has been sections of pieces, or short pieces within larger groupings.  What would it mean to have an entire symphonic movement in quintuplous meter?

I’ve taken on the orchestra position here at Lakeland, and I one day hope to write for orchestra again.  Mahler became a great orchestral composer by being a great orchestral conductor.  I have the benefit of being able to learn from Mahler’s scores and recordings, of course, but it’s good to be back in an environment where I will see those instruments on a regular basis!  Will there be orchestra music?  This has always been a question for me.  I have a love-hate relationship with the wind ensemble–bands commission and play my music, but they aren’t orchestras.  There is possibly a piano concerto in my future… would it be too much to hope for a symphony?

It will be interesting to read this post again in five years, to see what has actually happened in this part of my life–until then, Keep Fighting Mediocrity!

Band Music You Should Know

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

This is a one-off post for my students who may be pondering what to do with their Concert Band-free weeks that are coming up after tonight’s concert.  Why not make a Winter Break resolution to seek out and listen to some of the best band music ever written.  Here are twenty-five pieces to get you started:

1.  British Classics:

  • Gustav Holst:  First Suite in Eb and Second Suite in F for military band
  • Gustav Holst:  Hammersmith
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams:  Toccata Marziale (we’re playing this one next semester)
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: English Folk Song Suite
  • Gordon Jacob: William Byrd Suite

2.  Absolute Must-Hears:

  • Percy Aldridge Grainger:  Lincolnshire Posy
  • Karel Husa:  Music for Prague 1968
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:  Serenade No. 10, K. 361/370a, “Gran Partita”
  • Aaron Copland:  Emblems
  • Alfred Reed:  Russian Christmas Music

3.  Symphonies for Band

  • Paul Hindemith, Symphony in Bb
  • Vincent Persichetti, Symphony No. 6
  • Vittorio Giannini, Symphony No. 4
  • Alan Hovhaness, Symphony No. 4
  • Morton Gould, West Point Symphony

4.  The Last Thirty Years

  • Michael Colgrass, Winds of Nagual
  • David Maslanka, A Child’s Garden of Dreams
  • Ron Nelson, Passacaglia (Homage on BACH)
  • Mark Camphouse, Watchman Tell Us of the Night
  • Joseph Schwantner, …and the mountains rising nowhere

5.  Great Transcriptions

  • Dmitri Shostakovich (Hunsberger), Festive Overture
  • Leonard Bernstein (Grundman), Overture to Candide
  • Richard Wagner (Caillet), Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral
  • Charles Ives (Thurston), “The Alcotts” from the Concord Sonata
  • Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Hindsley), Scheherezade

This will get you started, anyway.  Mahler this weekend.