Interview with Dana Rothlisberger

Dana Rothlisberger graduated from East Texas State University in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in music education. He was a director of bands in secondary education before accepting his first position in higher education in 1980.

Doctor Rothlisberger joined the Department of Music at Towson University in 1983. These are his reflections. Dr.

Rothlisberger, thank you so much for coming in and taking your time to share with us your thoughts about your own preparation to become a teacher and your career and education that's followed.

I think a good place to begin is in the beginning. So if you would, would you share with us a little bit about your early social context, what you were thinking about as you were going through school towards high school, in terms of what

you might want to do, what kind of career you might want to pursue? Well, I grew up on ranches and farms throughout my early years and my father was in agriculture and so we were

involved in that. And so we lived in a little tiny town in Nebraska and we saw, in the fourth grade, the band director would come around and want to get us to be able to play an instrument.

And the instrument that I chose was one that I'd seen on the Lawrence Welk show. And it was, I didn't even know the name of it, but it was one of those instruments that went like this.

I see. And so I learned that that the name of that instrument was trombone. And I said, I want to play that trombone.

I have a twin brother and he decided to play the trumpet. So we started in the fourth grade and we had a wonderful teacher. And I think that that's been a hallmark throughout my career of hearing how important of a music teacher was in the life of

a teacher who ultimately begins to teach music, that there's a connection there with that with a person early on. And that was my connection. So, that was in the fourth grade, in the fifth grade,

in the sixth grade. And we just, we did a really... He was a great teacher, tiny, tiny little band, but we did pretty well. And then we moved to Texas, again, my father

changed positions and we moved to a big ranch in Texas and went to a small school as well. I graduated with 30 students in my entire senior class. That is small. But during that time we had opportunities

to audition for honor bands and for and play at Solo and Ensemble Festival. And in one of the bands that we went to, there was, the band director's

there was, name was Neil Humfeldt, Dr. Humfeldt. And it was just a wonderful experience on that honor band day.

And we came, my brother and I came home from that saying, Hey, why don't we go and go to that school? You know, we were juniors in high school and kind of looking around for places to go and thought, well, let's go up to

that school, East Texas State University was the name. And we started to think about, OK, what are we going to major in?

Right. Well, coming from an agricultural background, I didn't think I wanted to do agriculture at that point in my life.

You know, the beef cattle was a lot of fun to work with, but I thought, well, let's try something else. And so we both decided to pursue a music education degree, but mostly because we just wanted to play.

So we got up there and doctor Humfeldt happened to be the trombone teacher, and was a, just became just a very influential figure in my life as a mentor, ultimately as a friend and a

colleague, but just a just a wonderful person. And so for the first two years I was just doing the music stuff and playing and being a college freshman. This was in 1970.

You know that the Vietnam War was starting to wind down. I've been in high school far away in a little tiny town, so I wasn't too much engaged in some of the social

upheaval and unrest of of the late '60s and early '70s, a little bit protected from that. The draft had just... I was the last year that they even had draft numbers and my draft number was so low that I

didn't have to worry about that. You know, I often wonder what it had been like had I've been a few years earlier or that kind of a thing. But it was an interesting time to grow up and

come of age there in the late '60s and the early '70s. Dana, this must have been a big switch in terms of student body from high school where you had a graduating class of about 30 and then you go to East Texas and how many students did that...

There were only 9,000. And that was the very first time that I, that we had lived in a place that was that large. And we lived in a dorm and that kind of thing.

And, but we thrived. It was a great little town, college town with great faculty, good students, lots of stuff to do. We were engaged and busy and all of the activities of being

a college freshman and didn't have to worry. You know, many of our students today have to try to maintain a job and all this kind of thing. And we were able to not do that.

We'd been able to save enough and a few scholarships here and there and a little campus job helped us out. So, but about my sophomore year, junior year, I guess, I kind of woke up and one morning and said, you know what?

I'm preparing to be a teacher. I guess I better start really paying attention. And so we finished out the two years and graduated. Do you remember anything about those education courses?

I do, I do. You do? I remember we had a general music class that we had to take, and how to teach children not how to play the instruments, but

to deal with them in the non- music classes, teaching kids in a non-music class about music and learned how to do some of the songs and some of the games that that now we know is Dalcroze or Kodaly things.

But we had one professor and he was just a dear man and he was ancient but he was there teaching us how to sing, picking up paw paws, put them in your pocket, and learning how to interact with the children that were in the,

you know, seven or six or seven or eight years old. And I remember, I told my students this the other day. I said, you know, some of the best naps I ever had in college was in my educational psychology class and I'm so sad that I

didn't take it, pay attention, because that's probably one of the most important classes that I needed whenever I started to get out. But you know, we all make mistakes and sometimes

regret them. Well, maybe they should have presented it in a musical format. Who knows, who knows, who knows. And that kind... But we had it.

And then what... After I had had graduated, and I graduated in the summertime, and I decided that I wanted to pursue a little dream of mine, which was to not go teaching immediately because I knew what

that was going to be. But I wanted to see if I was good enough on my trombone to get a master in performance, a master's degree in performance. I see.

So I stayed and continued studying with Doctor Humfeldt and I was practicing eight hours a day. It was a wonderful time. I'd get up in the morning and start practicing about 6:30

and practice an hour or two and then play three or four hours in ensembles during the day and end up with an hour or so at night. And that was a great two years. Plus I was a graduate assistant that taught students how to play

trombone. The music education majors at the University of East Texas, each one of us had to take half an hour a week lesson each semester on a different instrument.

So I'd have half an hour lesson on oboe for a semester, half an hour lesson on trumpet for a semester, half an hour lesson on clarinet for a semester. And that's how we've learned how to play and teach the other

instruments. And the graduate assistants were the ones who taught those lessons. So I was teaching trombone to college undergraduates for the

first year and then the second year of my graduate studies I was the graduate assistant for the brand new band director. His name was James Keen and he came in and there are times where people are really influential in your life.

Mr. Tolman when I started band, Neil Humfeldt when I got to school and then Jim Keene at the end, because I worked with him and learned a great deal from him about the art of band

directing and musicianship. And he took me under his wing and showed me and introduced me to his colleagues and professional meetings and that kind of a thing.

And so when I finished my master's degree, then I was ready to go and teach. And I'm glad that I had done that. It helped me a great deal.

If I could drop back to your undergraduate, did you actually student teach in any kind of sense? Did you go into schools? One of the things that, as is the case in most of

education programs, we had a student... We called it student teaching. Now we call it an internship, but there was a... I lived in Commerce, Texas which was a small town with not very many schools.

The next biggest town was Greenville and so I student taught at Greenville High School with a seasoned director there who had a highly successful program. So I did seven weeks at the high school with Mr.

Cartwright and also did seven weeks at the middle school with Jay Phillips and Jay had been a graduate of Towson University. I had known him at Towson University, when I was a

freshman he was a senior. And this was atEast Texas? At East Texas. And then he had been teaching at Greenville Middle for a couple of years and took me as a student intern.

And I still remember some of the lessons that he taught me about time management and motivation and focus on the students and that kind of a thing. So what do you, how do you student teach in music?

What is that? Because you have bands, you probably have a chorus, you probably have some instrumental stuff that's going on with students.

I mean, it's just such a a huge, broad field. How can you student teach in all of those things? Or are you more selective about where your interest lies? In some states, musicians are certified to teach

K-12 vocal and instrumental. I see. But in Texas and also in Maryland, there are two tracks, One is the vocal general track and the other one is into

instrumental. So for me in Texas, I was only doing instrumental music. I see. And back in those days there was enough beginning band

classes or classes at the high school where that's all the full time teacher did was teach band. So we'd have small, they're not really small, but they'd be 15 or 20 students in a class of woodwinds, 15 to 20 students of

brass that would be beginning. And then there'd be an intermediate class and we'd combine them together into a band.

And then at the seventh grade, that was back in the sixth, seventh and eighth or seventh, eighth and ninth. So we started them in the seventh grade in Texas instead of the fourth or fifth grade as we do around in Maryland.

And so it was all instrumental. And it's how you teach almost anybody how to do anything. Well, that's my other question is truly, first of all, to think

that somebody could teach instrumental music, woodwinds, and do brass as well, to be knowledgeable enough to help students, I mean, that's a whole lot of different instruments.

It is, it is. That's an amazing task. Well, let's think about it this way. A math teacher isn't specialized in just addition. Well, that's true. The math teacher has to do math, has to do

addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So now as we get into a little bit more higher level things besides arithmetic, then, you know, maybe somebody's going to focus on geometry and somebody else will maybe going into

calculus or trigonometry, that kind of thing. So at the beginning level, it's the basics and most music education folks have had a pretty good founding in the basics.

They can help the students put the instruments together, how to hold it, how to form the things that are going to cause the sound to be created. And then simple kinds of things to begin to learn.

And after a year or two of that, then they're starting to be able to, you know, know how to apply the things that they've learned. We don't teach them by rote exclusively.

Pretty soon they're able to make inferences and make connections on how they're going to solve their own problems if they have it. Plus then as they get better, there may be an encouragement to

take private lessons outside with an expert and then in the top groups at the high school level, the students really most of the time are going to participate in band only if they've come from a middle school or a junior

high school already with skills. I see. There isn't too much of an option or opportunity for folks to begin at the high school, sometimes, but not often. So by then we're dealing not with specific instrument kinds

of issues, although we address those, but we're talking in a larger framework, the notion of how are we going to create this musical phrase? What are we going to do?

How do we play this? What's the... How loud does this instrument need to be to balance with the other instruments? What are the rhythmic issues?

What are the interpretive kinds of things that that will create this wonderful, beautiful sound? And that's in addition just to teaching the instrument is now you're part of a group of people and you have a specific role,

I guess, that you play. And as you mentioned, what would be the emphasis for you as opposed to somebody playing another instrument? I mean, that seems to me like a whole different kind of

instruction. There is a lot of trust involved in a large ensemble. Well, even in a small ensemble, if there's three or four of you,

even if there's just two, that if I'm playing my instrument and you're playing your instrument, we have to trust each other that we're going to be working together. And I have to be listening to you and you have to be listening

to me. And as we do that, we are able to blend these things together. And that's the director's role is to help with that and

then to build those kinds of skills and help the students understand how to do that. And it magnifies whenever we go into a large 30 to 50 to 80 to a marching band of 100 or 200 people.

This notion that everyone has their individual responsibility, but everybody else is really relying on the individual to fulfill their part of the, their component here in the... One of the things

that's interesting to think about. Let me use the math analogy again. If I'm a math teacher and I really want my students to succeed and I want them to know this stuff really well,

and so I teach them and they learn and they are able to do it. But rarely, if ever, does the math teacher get to put all 25 of the students on the stage in front of a board and hand them a

problem and say, all right, everybody, let's all solve this problem at the same time, in the same way and together. And that's what we as musicians do all the time. We put ourselves onto this, onto the stage and say,

all right, everybody, let's all do this together. And we're going to have an audience and maybe adjudicators and that and let's let's all do this together.

So maybe a little ed psych would have helped in terms of interpersonal. That's right. So we have you, you went on directly got the master's

degree, did have an opportunity to do some teaching as a graduate assistant. So what are you thinking that you're looking for now in terms of employment?

I wanted to be a high school band director. You did? When I, at the end of my undergraduate degree, one of the things that I didn't look forward to too much was to teach at the elementary and the

junior high school. I just didn't, I wanted to, I think it was maybe a little bit of hubris on my part. I thought I was pretty good.

And so I thought, well, let me go and start working with them. Probably. Well, the guidance that I give to a lot of students is

learn your craft and how to teach at the elementary and the middle school level and then come up to the high school level. And that's really valuable advice.

And that's what I probably should have done, but I didn't. I said, well, I'm just going to jump right to the high school. I've been working as the graduate assistant director, band director at East Texas.

And I thought I'd done pretty good job. So I, this was in Texas and I thought, well, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

And I thought, well, I was single at the time. I thought, well, let me maybe move to Utah. I had an opportunity to meet some young women and that kind of thing.

So I had set up a couple of interviews to get to Utah and Idaho and at every place that I stopped, first stop was in Monticello, Utah. They offered me the job right there on the spot and I said,

well, I've got a couple more interviews. Let me, I'll let you know. So I went to Price, Utah. They said the same thing.

And then the guy said, well, you know, frankly, you're a wonderful candidate, but I don't know why you're not applying for the Davis High School job. And I said, well, that's my next interview.

So I went up to Davis High School, which was in right north of Salt Lake City and interviewed for the job and it was a wonderful position that... I was offered the job and, and I took the job right then cancelled my

interviews in Idaho and then started. Well, and what was special about this particular job that people were saying, well, you should apply here? Was it just a larger school system or

what was the particular appeal? The Davis High School band was one of the best bands in the state of Utah. Their director

had just moved to the University of Utah and they were searching for somebody to come in. And so it was a high-profile position and in my youth and in my ignorance, I thought I could probably do the job.

And so I did and there was a wonderful support group that 25 years later went back and, and talked to some of the students and we reminisced about that first year and being, you know, that was part of my problem,

being a brand new teacher, not having the eyes in the back of my head yet that I would, that you would get as you have some experience. And there were some things that I kind of knew was going on, but

I didn't really know what's going on. And they, we began laughing about some of those things that, the non-music stuff that was going on. But we had some wonderful musical success.

We, at the end of that first year, we took the band down to a a major competition festival at the University of, at Arizona State University and we played in the same category as some high-power schools from Texas.

They selected the best of the day to perform at a concert that night and we were one of the bands that were selected. And so that was really a wonderful thing for, you know, a first-year teacher to, with those students, and I credit

the students that they stayed with it. I didn't lose very many students. They were committed to the program and they were willing to let me kind of learn the ropes and followed what

I asked. And we had a wonderful concert at the end of the year that first year. What a wonderful first year.

What a wonderful first year. Yeah, yeah. So how long did you stay there? I was there for four years, and during that, my position

there was we had a marching band. We had two concert bands. And then I also taught at the junior high school. I taught with the brass at the junior high school.

Every every other week they would have band and then the off week they would have PE. So a band, PE, band, PE. I had to make sure that I was, you know,

I did enough of the teaching that they would want to come to band, you know, and because they love PE, but we had some good, some fun times with the kids as well. So I was there for four years doing that.

And what took you away? Well, I thought, well, we're having success here. What, is there... Is there something at the next level that I might investigate?

And so I thought, well, maybe I'll go on and look at a doctorate. I was beginning... I was married and had one child at that time.

And I thought, OK, well, this would be, if we're going to do this, this is probably going to be the time to do it. And so I was starting to investigate that.

About that time, Jim Keene, who I had worked with his first year at East Texas State University, had just moved to the University of Arizona and he invited me to apply to be the assistant band director at the University of Arizona.

And so I did that and was successful in getting that position. And so we moved to the University of Arizona in 1980 and worked with the marching band, worked with the... I taught

some music ed classes and then assisted with the other concert ensembles. Very nice. And that, I assume, is a big band.

It was, you know, at that time, it was... Sometimes you look at programs and you associate them with their athletic league and sometimes that's not the best thing to do, but often that's the way that the world does it.

And they were playing big time football. It was a big time marching band. And so we had, and there was a brand new football coach that came in at the same time.

So there's a lot of excitement about the university. We were able to recruit a large number of kids, young men and young women at that time. The football team started to win and so there was a

great deal of excitement. Beautiful stadium, wonderful grass turf. It was just a wonderful place to be there in Arizona at that time.

And it was a thriving university when it came to music. And the band area needed to be revitalized. And Jim Keene was able to do that.

And I was glad to be there kind of helping him along. Right. But you're the assistant. I am the assistant.

That's right. And is there some point at which you think, oh, maybe I'd like to be the director? My life has been filled with experiences that I had little

control over. My brother was the motivating force to go to East Texas to go to that honor band. So I followed him along.

When Jim Keene came to East Texas, I was asked to be his assistant as a graduate assistant. Well, we'd... In my third year at Arizona, there's a major conference called the Midwest Band and

Orchestra Clinic. It's in December and it's in Chicago and it is one of the major places for all of the band and orchestra directors across the country to come.

So, we went to that. And when I got back from that, on my desk was a notice of a job opening at Towson State University. And I saw that letter.

And I looked at it, I read it and I said, that's the place I'm going to be. Did you have any clue where that place was? I had no idea.

And I think I may have even said Toe-son, you know. Yeah, of course. But I looked at the job notice and began to put my materials together, submitted my application, was invited.

There were a hundred and, I learned later, about 120 applicants for the job. And I was one of three invited to the campus and and ultimately I was asked to be....

Now what was that job for? Was that in relationship to a band here or specifically director of the band? There were a couple of things that were happening. The athletic program was starting to build.

And so about three or four years before I got here, they had a band director and he was charged with starting a marching band. I see. And for whatever reason, he was denied tenure.

And so he was invited, he had to leave. And so that's why the position was open. I see. And so they wanted to have a designated director of bands

come in that would be the person responsible for the athletic bands as well as the concert bands, teach music education classes and that kind of a thing. So it was, it's an ideal position at that time.

It was just really wonderful because it allowed me to work with the bands, work with the marching band and then also teach the teachers how to teach at the secondary level.

And I was looking forward to that. And so I came in, I taught a class, rehearsed the band, had the interview and then they invited me to take the job.

I said yes. So, and that was in 1980... That was in 1983. 1983. Seems like yesterday in some ways.

I'm sure. So, and what was this size of this... You were actually just starting this marching band then. It had been in place for a couple of years.

I see. But it needed, we needed to grow and to get a little bit better. There wasn't a lot of money available, but there was a little bit.

And so we started to do some things that would attract students. Being visible in the high schools is a really important component.

So I made sure that I would go out and work as much as I could to offer my services to clinic bands, et cetera. We had an event that we hosted on campus that we called the all senior honor band. Seniors in high school

were nominated and they would come to our campus for a one-day event. And those early years, we had 180, 200 students that would be here.

That's indicative of the size of the programs at that time. There were a lot of kids in the high school band program. And so they would come and we'd rehearse them all day

and then have a concert that night and the Towson University Band would play for them. We'd have the faculty woodwind or brass group play, we'd have the percussion group play.

We'd have the the jazz ensemble play. So they really got a good idea of what Towson was like. Got to meet our students, got to know the band directors, and then the next years, for the next several

years, when fall came, we'd see a lot of these students that we had met at honor band that would be coming in and participating in the

bands. Some of them would be music majors, but it was, seemed to be a real successful activity for us. We're still doing it.

This year will be our 31st honor band and it will be... And now my first year, the funny story about this is my first year, I wanted to do it in February.

I'd been in Arizona for several years. The weather in February is great. So I said I'd like to do this event. They said great, when do you want to do it?

I said February, like the middle of February. And they said, what about a snow day? I said, snow day? What's a snow day?

So a little did I know what two flakes of snow within six inches of each other can do in Maryland. But we had it in February and thank goodness the weather cooperating.

Well, that is nice. And then for the remaining years, we've always had it the second Saturday of December. And in all those years we've only had one year that was

snowed out. Isn't that amazing? It was the 13th year that was snowed out. There you go.

So that was funny. Now, you had suggested earlier that teaching music, there are things about teaching music that really are sort of comprehensive in terms of teaching and learning.

And now after three decades of doing that, has your perspective changed at all on what works and best way to approach learners? I think that I'm a better teacher now than I than I was when I started.

I can look through my career and see that I'm a better teacher. And so one of the things that that we try to do, and it's very easy in music, well, easier, because

there's so much one-on-one instruction, small instruction that some of the other content areas don't have. So we can model a lot and work with our students. That's going to be a big benefit.

It can.... The downside of that is that you only have one model possibly that you're using. Right. But there's enough experiences in the music program that they

allow them to do that. In thinking of large group dynamics in the late '40s and '50s and up into the '60s, there was a very strong presence that was expected from the person on the podium.

I see. And the demand, well, a benevolent dictator, sometimes not so benevolent and the students that were in the ensemble or the professionals that were in the ensemble.

That's kind of the way it was. And so you were, you really had to toe the line and there was sometimes a little bit of fear or unfortunately some belittlement or reprisals on

folks who couldn't come up to the standard. And we saw that dictatorial model and it wasn't good then, it's not good now. But that's often what the model was that a lot of folks worked.

And a lot of times that was because people would support the guy in who was doing the teaching and, win, lose or draw good, bad or ugly, the teacher was always right. And that's not... That wasn't true then and it's not true now.

And so that model didn't work very well. But a lot of folks were in that, came up with that model. Sure. And oftentimes what I've seen is that teachers do what was done

to them. Absolutely. And we may, I may try to teach the practice that I want them to employ.

But when when the stress is on, they revert back to something that happened to them in their formative years. And so that's a difficult thing to deal with. And so what I've tried to do is model

the right kind of behavior that a teacher should give. I'm convinced that students only have so much energy available for anything. And the the teacher needs to be able to read the students

and know what they're able to give and what they're ready for. If the student is dealing with significant issues in his life, and as we've come through these last several

years, we see more and more issues that these kids have to deal with, you know, and how tragic it is whenever, you know, the family pet dies, how much more tragic it is if there's a breakup in the family or there's a death in

the family or something like that. And so we need to be sensitive to the students and not to reduce the standards that we have for what we want them to learn, but to be able to know when to ask

for those things that they are going to have the energy to give us and be able to divert the energy that they may be wasting in some other areas into what they're doing. So the thing that I've tried to do is help the students, my

students, and then also model. This is... It's not about me, it's not about the teacher, it's about what the student needs. And as I supervise student teachers, and that's one of the

things I love about my position is being able to go and observe them and coach them and work with them, is that whenever they make that switch from people are looking at me to what am I seeing in the students that I'm working with, all of a

sudden they start to become much better teachers and those students begin to learn more because, you know, we can't learn it for them, but we can facilitate how they learn.

And that's an important component of education. So that's a change in your sort of pedagogy over time. And is that sort of taking hold across campuses in terms of music faculty and band directors?

Well, I think that yes, we don't see that, Revelli, Toscanini, those are the two of them, the major models that used that and to great success. I mean, I'm glad to have had a chance to to work with

Doctor Revelli and and we see the work that Toscanini did, but that's in the olden days and we see that that isn't effective anymore. People who try to use that their programs diminished to the point

of withering up and dying. Part of that's because the the nature of the student as well. Students aren't going to take that. And in most cases in music, this is an elective.

They get a Fine Arts credit for it, but it's not something that they have to take. They have to take English, they have to take math. And we hope that when they get in there, that they're

glad that they're there and they want to take it. But in over the course of time, if somebody doesn't like what's happening, they can just choose to take some other elective.

There was one, there was some suggestion earlier that maybe the interest in being part of a band has diminished somewhat. Is that true at the high school level and or college level? Whatever the foundation is, the base of the pyramid, however big

of the base of the pyramid is, it's gonna impact how high the pyramid's gonna be. Right. If there's a lot of students that are taking elementary band, then there's gonna... Then the numbers is gonna be a little bit

better in the middle schools, in the high schools and in the college, we've seen that base shrink. Why? Well, I think that there's... Technology is part of that, that

if you know, I can do things on a computer and play games and have music real easily. I think that that's part of it. I think that in our society at times we want something real

fast right now and... Think of the student who starts beginning at beginning trumpet or beginning piano, the next step tomorrow is not Carnegie Hall. It's a long way to get to there.

The old joke, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. And that's sometimes very, that's a challenge. And if students aren't nurtured along the way, or if

there's something in the program that they're not enjoying. And enjoyment is not the most important, it is important, but it can't be the driving factor.

Learning, I think, and being able to experience music and know what music does for me as an individual is very important. And so I think that we've lost some of that.

I think we went through some economic hard times, and for many families, I mean, when we look at Baltimore, Baltimore City and the surrounding counties used to have some thriving bands.

But then about the time I came was about the time in 1983, shortly after that the steel mills started to close and all of a sudden all of these working class families were losing jobs and some of those huge programs,

because they wanted their children to have all of these experiences. They wanted them to be in band and orchestra and choir. They wanted them to do that.

But now they don't have the money to pay for an instrument or even rent an instrument. So it becomes difficult just because of some of those challenges.

And we find that once they leave, they've rarely ever come back. If a student who's a freshman says, I don't want to do band or orchestra or I don't want to sing in choir,

but I'll come back. They usually don't come back. So we've seen the pool, the numbers diminish a little bit and that's impacted us at the

university level. We still have wonderful students. I think from the standpoint of Towson University music education, right this year, this is the largest class of

student interns that we have ever had. Interesting. We have 34 students, that's like, that's 15 instrumentalists and the rest are vocalists.

That's the largest we've had. For the last 10 years we've seen an increase each year in the numbers of interns and part of that's the way that we structured it about eight years ago, we structured to have all of our interns do

their internship in the spring semester instead of choose fall or spring. I see. So we've been able to see that, track that.

And so each year we've had more and this year we have 34 of these young men and women. I think we're going to see a decline over the next couple of years.

I don't know how significant it is. We seem to, our base seems to be shrinking a little bit. It's not too bad, but the numbers of kids, and I say kids, they're not kids.

Right. The numbers of young students that we have is not as high. Our honor band numbers, which is kind of an indication, we've been averaging around 100 for the last ten years or so.

And the first ten years we had between 150 and 200. So we've seen a decline and that's a result of the high school population. Well, how many folks are in that band I hear from our apartment every morning?

Is that the marching band? That's the marching band, and that's been one of the success stories that we have and... Tell us about that.

It's a Towson point of pride, I believe. Wonderful. Ten years ago, about thirteen years ago, I transitioned away from the marching band because of the direction that the

university was going. And we, for three years, we had some adjuncts working with the marching band. And then the president and the provost and the folks who

were in control said, we're going to move to a new athletic conference and we need to be a little bit more aligned with some of those institutions. So we need to infuse whatever we need to

infuse, and that usually means money, into this program. And so they decided to make that financial commitment and to hire a full-time marching band director and provide

the financial support that would be necessary for that larger band. There were scholarship support, financial support and that kind of thing.

So we hired... I consider John Miliauskas a genius when it comes to marching band. He writes the drill and it is as good as any drill

that you see. And it's new every year. Everything is always new based on the numbers that we have and we have students that we learned,

he reported yesterday that there's 240 students in the band. There are? 93 different majors are represented in the band. Only fifty of those 240 are music majors.

The rest are majors from across the campus. And this band has grown and it's because of the things that Mr. Milauskas has done. The music that they played, the show design that they have and the

recruiting that they've done in performing for high school groups has been paying great dividends. And so... It is loud, though, I can tell you that, you know, but it's wonderful.

Yeah, he's done well. No, you just, I know that that just means that the school year is beginning because they start early. And yeah, that's actually a nice sound.

It says, you know, the whole enterprise is getting ready to start all over. Amping up one more time. And that's encouraging. There's something about drummers, though.

They, you put something in their hands and they have to hit and they continue to do that from the time they're up to the time they finally shut down. Probably so. So what are you doing currently in terms of your

directing and teaching? Right. Well, one of the things over the last couple of years that has been just really rewarding is the opportunity that we've had

to perform with our symphonic band at some of these regional conventions, the Eastern division of the College Band Directors' National Association. We played there a couple of years ago with our band.

And that's an invitation. We submit an audition tape and then a group of people listen to them without knowing who they are and then they select.

And so we were selected to play. Very nice. And the high point of that was we occasionally, as much as I can, like to join with a consortium of other folks to commission new works to be written for the symphonic band

medium. And we had been a member of that, one of those, and what had resulted was a clarinet solo with band. And so we were able to premiere that work.

And our clarinet professor at the time, Marguerite Levin, was the soloist and it was a wonderful experience. It was hard music. It was hard for us.

It was hard for me as a conductor and it was hard for her. But we really rose to the challenge and it was a great performance at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

That was just great. Very nice. And let me give you two more quickly. Please. We performed at the Eastern Division of the Music Educators National Conference and, again, a consortium work.

And this was a piece for our faculty brass quintet. So we had our five artist faculty playing in a quintet with a band accompaniment. And the name of it was Dodecafecta, meaning that there were

twelve groups and Jim Stevenson was the composer and he wrote just a... It was a, once again, a challenging piece, but a charming piece.

We had things from circus polkas to lovely ballads and it was a great piece and our faculty brass did just a wonderful job. And then one of the high points that I've had with the

students was last year we had a a composer who we invited to be in residence for a couple of days and his name was Eric Ewazen. And he had written a piece for brass quintet and band and it

was called Shadowcatcher. Now part of this residency, he came, many groups played some of his other music. We had an opportunity for him to listen to our

composers and give some master classes and then the final concert was this performance with Shadowcatcher. It has become a signature piece of his and there were four pictures that he had used as inspiration.

They were taken by a man named Edward Curtis, who at the turn of the century had gone out among the Native Americans and had taken many of these pictures in, well, throughout the Southwest and had developed the trust of the Native Americans.

And they gave him the name Shadowcatcher because of the idea of, they saw these images on the photographs and that was their shadow that was caught. And this, you know, some of them decided they didn't want to have

their picture taken because if they captured the image, that was not good. But he was able to build trust and was able to make thousands of these photographs.

And he'd picked four, Ewazen picked four and had wroten a piece about it. And so we played it and our students just came up to the challenge.

It was just a marvelous concert. The faculty quintet played beautifully and when we ended the concert, there were smiles a mile wide on everybody's face, everybody.

Well, sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes we wish that we, you know, but in this case, everybody was so, so elevated, lifted up by this musical experience and a chance to work with the composer, to

work with their teachers and these faculty members. And that was a high point, I think, in the department. And we just really relive that, remember that and enjoy that experience a great deal.

Wow, that is special. And it's sort of, I guess if you're a teacher, it really doesn't get any better than that to be playing with your students, new piece, sort of debuting new music together.

It is. Must be very special. The thing that's also special is whenever, years later, they contact you and say how much that meant to them. That's the long term payoff that takes a while to get

there. But, you know, and they don't come very often, but when they do, they are just one of those pinnacle moments where you can relive that, remember that experience and enjoy

that time. And feel humbled that you had a chance to work with marvelous people. Yeah.

What have we... What have we forgotten that you wanted to share with us? Well, I think that I've had a chance to work with... Towson University has been a great place.

The outside landscaping has always been well taken care of. The architecture, the building of the campus has been foremost in the minds of the administrators.

And so that's made a wonderful place to come to work, even those days when my office was flooded because there was some broken pipe or that kind of a thing. But so the facilities have been really nice.

But, you know, the more important than that is the chance to work with some wonderful colleagues. They have influenced me, shaped me, helped me learn, stretched me as well.

And then hopefully that I've been able to then become a better teacher for my students and the folks who I've had an opportunity to work with so that they're able to learn and to rise to their potential and be able to take what we give

them and turn theory into practice when they go out and begin their careers, and understand, not that they know the answers when they leave here, but they've just started to at least understand

what the questions are and they can begin to work within their careers. And so that's been a significant opportunity. I've worked with a lot of people from, we had Cal Ripken

that was a narrator of the Night before Christmas with the band. We had Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was the sitting Lieutenant Governor at the time, to narrate a piece, an Aaron Copland piece about Lincoln and using the words of Lincoln

in a piece. And so that was a a wonderful opportunity for us. So we've had lots of great experiences, good students who taught well.

And we always have one last question. And that question is, given your long career in education, what would you say to individuals, sometimes young, some not, sometimes not quite so young, who are considering a career as

a teacher? It is a noble profession. Some would even say that it's a calling. And the research suggests that in many ways, because we

must acknowledge that the five year mark is a mark where we see many of those who enter the profession have left the profession. That doesn't mean that folks shouldn't start it out, but

the idea for somebody who wants to be a teacher is to have a passion for working with children, working with young adults and working with people. It's not enough in music to be able to be a good player.

You have to love to work with people and in helping, wanting them to have success. A solo artist is a solitary pursuit and hurray for those who do that.

But there needs to be a little bit more in being a teacher, understanding the content of what we do. And when you come to be a music teacher, it is really an eye-opening experience because there's so

much more to it than than what folks, at least college freshmen, sometimes have thought about. And so that's an important consideration. We have an opportunity to talk with students and give

them good advice about this so that, you know, it is an intense music education. It's an intense major, high, a lot of credits and very prescriptive, but it can be done and it worked

and people can make a wonderful life out of that. One of the things that I was listening to something the other day and it reminded me of using water as an analogy that being a teacher is not where you put your finger

in a pool of water and draw it out and see the hole that you made. That's not what being a teacher is all about. Being a teacher, a good teacher and sometimes a bad teacher, but a good teacher

where that pebble drops into the water and the ripples then continue and go. And you, who knows what ripple is going to be touched at what place.

And so those ripples as they go are the things, the legacies that we leave that we may not have any idea the influence that we have sometimes on people that we may not really ever know.

But somehow a teacher has touched that person and will forever have changed that person's life in a good way. And in music that can be very significant because of the

way the music can elevate us, make us understand ourselves better, the humanness that we have and the opportunities that we have for these emotions and that are very important in our lives.

Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's been enjoyable. Learned a lot.

Thanks. (music)