Canadian Brass co-founder Chuck Daellenbach
addresses 2005 graduates at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester,
NY. (May 15, 2005)
I usually stand on this stage in the Eastman Theater in quite
a different capacity with my four Brass colleagues to back me up.
I am privileged to be here as the recipient of the Alumni Achievement
Award and wish to accept this honour, both as an individual honoree
and also as a symbolic honoree. Symbolic of the integrity of the
Eastman path making it possible for someone like me to get a pedigree
in education and become a professional performer.
My days at Eastman really started one afternoon at the annual Chicago
Mid-West Band Clinic. My mom and band-director dad were attending
a well-known tuba player’s afternoon clinic when they were
joined in the audience by Professor Everett Gates. At some point
during the session my mom, a proud mother to be sure, leaned over
to Mr. Gates and declared, “My son plays better than that!”
Well, I didn’t, but never mind. Mr. Gates was very intrigued.
From that day, and for the next eight years I had Everett’s
guiding hand on my shoulder. Every age has its legendary teachers
whose influence is felt for generations -- surely Everett is one
of these. As one fortunate enough to have studied under him, I can
tell you that his unseen influence will always flow to audience
members for whom I have been lucky enough to play.
My intention was to become a band director like my dad, so my degree
program was music education. And when I did get to Eastman what
I really wanted was a spot in the Eastman Wind Ensemble. Those were
the days when every high school band in America played whatever
was on Frederick Fennell’s newest wind ensemble LP release.
My first summer at Eastman was his last, but that exposure and musical
highpoint was enough to last me a lifetime—and who can ever
forget the banner on his rehearsal hall wall, just one word, LISTEN!
The list of great teachers and great experiences while I was a student
at the school will take an eventual book, but suffice it to say
that in the last thirty-five years I have never regretted the thoroughness
of my training here. By both course content and by personal example,
the guiding Eastman School principle that came through loud and
clear to me was always “music first,” everything else
second.
And that’s what I want to discuss with you today:
Almost everyone begins his or her musical journey through performance.
When we make our first notes on an instrument we are thrilled. Our
next impulse is to share the experience—friends or parents
get to hear our first efforts. Then as we get better at it we like
to play songs and melodies for our friends, and then of course we
get to play in front of people that we don’t know. It gets
even more exciting. Somewhere along the line we decide we want to
do this music thing more than anything else.
These are exactly the feelings and experiences you will want to
remember and keep with you as you move forward in your career. Remember
that it was the joy of performing that brought you this far. As
your proficiency grows so should your appetite for performing. And
you cannot stand around waiting for someone else to make this happen
for you.
Those of us here in the 60’s had an excellent performance role
model in our friend Chuck Mangione. He didn’t wait around for
commissions and prizes. At his own expense, and most likely mostly
loss, over and over he would organize and play concerts of his own
music. He must have learned so much that would have been hidden
to him had he been simply hanging around for his big break! Chuck
showed us all that personal commitment, passion and determination
pay off . . . for him with a number 1 hit in the elusive “instrumental”
category, “Feels So Good.”
What we learned from Chuck was really simple, and I urge you all
to consider it: don’t wait to put your talents, your proven
successes at college and your passions to make music, to work. Take
every opportunity; make every opportunity you can to dream up ways
to share your music with others. Every performance event yields
some new insights, some new ideas, and some different approaches.
I know that I have played concerts with my group where we outnumbered
the audience by one, and on the other hand I have played concerts
in front of a hundred thousand people, and in all honesty I can
tell you, a hundred thousand is a lot better . . . . no, seriously,
there is no true difference in the power of the music. There is
no true difference in the communication skill required. And if you
are sensitive to your audiences, there is no qualitative difference
in the energy feeding back to you the performer.
When the Brass was starting out, we played everywhere: schools,
libraries, schools, shopping centers, schools, Lion’s Club
meetings . . . . schools mostly. What was the big difference between
us and all the other musicians playing school shows at that time?
We actually believed playing for school children could help us reach
Carnegie Hall. We would play two school concerts in the morning,
spend lunch talking about what went right and what went wrong, and
then make changes in an afternoon performance to see if we could
improve the show. What a laboratory these kids were providing us!
Translating these skills to adult audiences was logical, and in
the process we created a new presentation style.
We realized early on that opportunity does not only knock once.
Opportunity is a constant companion, waiting for us to be alert
enough to make contact with it—it’s rather like radio
waves that are always around us, but we only hear them when we have
the right receiver.
In a sense, we had created our own ad hoc “Music Institute
for Music Leadership.” No brass quintet had ever made a fulltime
career playing brass quintets. We had no roadmap to follow. The
advantage of starting from scratch was that everything came in small
steps and grew at our pace of understanding.
What a time to be contemplating all this. Record companies are chasing
the latest 14-year old singing sensation, symphonies all over North
America are striking over, guess what, wage issues, school children
are growing up believing LimeWire is a perfectly legitimate source
of free video and audio tracks, debut concerts have gone the way
of music critics, and public schools are under increasingly intense
pressure to cut back or eliminate their music programmes.
But here is the good news for you as you start out your careers:
the future looks really bright in this Internet era. Where in the
past an artist had to have a major record label, a major artist
management and an instrument deal, now it is possible to get directly
to the receiving audience. It used to be said that if you weren’t
playing New York, you weren’t playing anywhere. Well, now audiences
everywhere in the world can follow your tours, download your music
(legally I hope), and see your videos. Oh, by the way, we have a
new first: our video “State Street Stomp,” music by composer/conductor
Bramwell Tovey, just broke the top ten in Canada on Bravo (Canadian
VH1). And the stronger the electronic age pulls humans to their
computers, the more important your job as a live human teacher and
live human performer becomes.
In closing I want to share with you the most important useable advice
I have run across over the years:
1. In my last year of undergraduate I had to practice teach. My
mentor, Ray Shahin, was an extremely successful educator who told
me:
Never be jealous of genius, rub shoulders with it.
2. In amongst various musicians I have read about, this statement
from one summarized my own feeling about our experiences in the
music/entertainment world:
Music is spiritual, the music business isn’t
(Van Morrison)
3. One year the Brass was playing the Edinburgh International Festival.
In the audience, unbeknownst to us, was Dizzy Gillespie. (This also
reminds me of the old warning, “always play your best, you
never know who is in your audience!”). We met after the concert
and talked for hours. He was speaking about passion and dedication
when he said:
If you’re tired don’t sign no mo’
contracts
4. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the advice from my colleagues
I think about every night before going on stage:
