Thank You, Ed

We lost a giant in the local music community this weekend.

I met Ed when I was ten years old, in his first year in the district. He was my first trombone teacher, and he would become probably the most influential person in my life not actually related to me. I will tell you some stories about Ed and me, but I want you to understand this up front-- I tell these stories not to focus on myself, but because there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who can tell similar stories, because that's who Ed was-- the guy who influenced the course of many students' lives.

From the beginning of my trombone days, Ed gave me permission to play. When I came to a lesson to demonstrate that I'd worked out a "jazzy" rendition of something from the book (nothing like a fifth grader's hot "Go Tell Aunt Rosie") or to show that I could peck out some approximation of a tune I knew, he didn't tell me to straighten up. He told me there was a name for what I was doing and that it was something lots of musicians did (and could I now please play the lesson I was supposed to have worked on). That kind of support might seem like a small thing, but it was very much Ed. "Sure, you can do that."

Some band directors can be micromanaging control freaks; Ed was the opposite. What Ed gave us in band was ownership, and with it, responsibility. "I'm not the one who's going to be out there in front of an audience," he would tell us, and we knew that wasn't strictly true, but we also got the point-- the band was our band and we should do our best not for him, but for ourselves. 

We learned leadership in Ed's band. When you became a section leader, you understood that you were there to help the people in your section stay on point and do their best. An awful lot of what I learned about leadership (and which I ultimately carried into my own classroom) I learned from Ed in band. Work with your people. You can have high expectations without being a jerk. 

Ed was a working musician (what a friend of mine and another of his students calls a blue collar musician) who gigged around with combos playing jazz and standards and whatever the gig needed. "Take the gig," he taught us, "Because playing always leads to more playing." And who doesn't want to keep playing?

Ed was never ego-driven. When it came to stage band (what many schools have because "swing" was too controversial), Ed started us, sometimes stopped us, but in between we were expected to play as an ensemble, holding ourselves together. He didn't need to be out there acting like the leader. 

I can't begin to list all the lessons I learned from Ed. When you make a mistake, just keep going because if you stop and make a fuss, then you've made two mistakes. Suck it up and stay on point. Listen to what the rest of the group is doing. Advice for pit orchestra playing: when in doubt, leave it out.

Band was a place where I felt responsible, accomplished, capable, respected. That was thanks to Ed.

When I ended up teaching in the same high school, Ed was not done nudging me forward. After I was dragged into the musical theater program to help teach the music, Ed was the one who said, "You already know how all these songs go. You might as well direct the pit." He enlisted me as a substitute trombonist for a dance band he played in; later, after the regular guy moved away, I became a regular player. Sometimes I drove us to gigs together (he would give me grief about the turkeys riding in the back of my creaky old Open hatchback) and I enjoyed our conversations in the car together, plus moments like the New Year's Eve when he started to argue on my behalf with the cop who stopped me for turning the wrong way on a one-way street. 

Ed was one of those people who never stopped growing. He took a sabbatical to walk the entire Appalachian Trail. He got himself a pilot's license. He worked as a golf course groundskeeper. He was director of the town band for thirty years and was constantly finding ways to stretch us as players. He was a linchpin of local theater pit orchestras. He sang in church choirs. He was founding member of our regional orchestra. He even overcame his less-than-fondness for traditional "dixieland" jazz to play in a band with his family and mine. 

Ed could be curmudgeonly, but he was never unkind and he was always supportive. It is impossible to overstate how wide and deep his influence has been. Many of his students went on to become professional musicians or music teachers, but many of us are like me-- not a professional musician or music teacher, but busy amateurs for whom music is an important part of life (another lesson I took into the classroom-- you're not just teaching the future majors in your field). There isn't a musician in this area who hasn't been touched, directly or indirectly, by his work, which of course means there isn't anybody at all in this area who hasn't been touched by his life and work. 

It is hard to imagine the world without Ed in it, even harder to imagine who I would be if I had not known Ed (and, as I said, I'm not the only one). He lived a full, rich life and achieved the most that a teacher can hope for-- to make the world a better place and help his students become their best selves. He leaves a teacher's legacy-- hundreds of people carrying a light out into the world with a flame he helped ignite and feed. Thank you, Ed. 

That's Ed on clarinet, his son on tuba, and his grandson on drums.