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Thread: teachers

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Location
    Netherlands
    Posts
    338

    teachers

    I was curious about what teachers everyone has had!

    I will start with my own story.

    I started with a saxophone teacher because he was in charge of the starters teaching program in our band. Played with him for four years. However, a saxophone player teaching the playing of brass instruments? It didn't work well. So after my first exam I changed to a french horn and baritone playing teacher with whom my brother was following lessons as well. Only to find out i had been breathing wrong so i had to relearn that. After two years and my second exam with her I changed to a cornet playing teacher because she got pregnant so it would be difficult to make time for us. have been with him for my third and fourth exam and beinf done with the dutch music federation's exams i now have none.
    Euphoniums
    2008 Willson 2960TA Celebration
    1979 Boosey & Hawkes Sovereign (Round Stamp)
    Mouthpiece: Denis Wick SM4
    Baritone
    1975 Besson New Standard
    Mouthpiece: Courtois 10

  2. In my mid to late teen HS years I had the pleasure of taking my classical piano studies in a more contemporary direction with the late Charles Danvers in Long Island, NY. Danvers was famous for composing the hit song Till, recorded by many vocal greats in the past.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-AencMVT2Q
    Bob Tampa FL USA
    Euph -- 1984 B&H Round Stamp Sovereign 967 / 1978 Besson NS 767 / Early 90s Sterling MP: 4AL and GW Carbonaria
    Tuba -- 2014 Wisemann 900 CC / 2013 Mack 410 MP: Blokepiece Symphony American Shank and 33.2 #2 Rim

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    West Palm Beach, FL
    Posts
    3,853
    Great idea for a thread.

    When I was just 12 years old I started out on cornet. My first trumpet teacher was Howard Sickler back in 1959. I think lessons cost $5 per session then. Mr. Sickler had a music store in North West Palm Beach area and just passed away a couple of months ago at age 96. He still had one of the best tones I ever heard in S. Florida and played well into his 90s. Mr. Sickler grew up in the Chicago area where he studied with Renold Schilke. One thing I still remember him telling me to do was to imagine that I had a ping-pong-ball in my mouth. In other words really open up to have a great tone. He also kept telling me I needed a bigger mouthpiece... you need a bigger mouthpiece. "Here, try this!", then handed me a Bach 1-1/4C mpc. I could hardly get 'G' above the staff when I first started. I finally just got a bigger horn.
    Last edited by RickF; 03-27-2015 at 04:28 PM.
    Rick Floyd
    Miraphone 5050 - Warburton BJ / RF mpc
    YEP-641S (recently sold)
    Doug Elliott - 102 rim; I-cup; I-9 shank


    "Always play with a good tone, never louder than lovely, never softer than supported." - author unknown.
    Symphonic Band of the Palm Beaches
    El Cumbanchero (Raphael Hernandez, arr. Naohiro Iwai)
    Chorale and Shaker Dance
    (John Zdechlik)

  4. #4
    As I mentioned in another thread today, I started out as a brass player on trombone. My primary teacher was Jaroslav Cimera, an old school type trombone teacher who had played in Sousa's band as a young man and taught a number of low brass players who went on to become professionals during his stint as a teacher at Northwestern University-- Cimera was an older man and long retired when I studied with him.

    He had great influence on me in areas such as phrasing, legato tonguing, how to warm up-- I still use his warm up exercises.

    He was a Czech immigrant and also a bit of a character-- he never could accurately remember my name. He also had very strong opinions on how music should be interpreted. He had written a number of solos that were used in solo and ensemble contest and he taught me how to interpret one of tham that I performed in the local contest. I was marked down, of all things, in the area of musical interpretation, and he was not happy at all. I heard words that were not in the normal vocabulary of a junior high boy when I showed him the written comments of the judge.

  5. " My primary teacher was Jaroslav Cimera,"

    That is FREAKING AWESOME!

  6. #6
    Martin, it was indeed awesome to study with J. Cimera. I didn't really learn until later just how privileged I was to study with a fine teacher such as he was. I'm glad that you recognized that he was one of the great low brass teachers of an earlier generation. I've been told that Tommy Dorsey regularly stopped in for lessons every time he was in Chicago

    As I said in the post above he was somewhat of a character and had very strong opinions on nearly everything. For example, one of the reasons I didn't buy a trombone with an F attachment until just very recently, was because he was emphatic that they were not only unnecessary, but a good player could play all of the notes that an F attachment could help you play. However, I never was able to learn to play the "false tones" that he made sound so easy on he recordings-- he didn't actually play for me because he rode the bus quite a long distance to the junior high I attended with a couple of transfers. However, he gave me a number of his solo recordings on old 78 rpm records and I could clearly hear his talent even on those older type recordings.

    He also would periodically wax eloquent on the physical advantages of playing a brass instrument as opposed to other forms of exercise. One of his favorite diatribes was how men played football in college and then got fat and out of shape as soon as they graduated. He told me dozens of times, I'm sure, how they should have played an instrument as he did, using himself as a physically fit older man-- he was in his 70s when I studied with him-- attributing his health to his trombone practicing
    Last edited by John the Theologian; 03-29-2015 at 07:10 PM. Reason: wrong word used

  7. I too started out on saxophone, yuck. I switched to euphonium in the end of my freshman year of high school. I then took lessons with Bernard Flythe, a wonderful tubist and teacher at two universities. Right now, I study with the always wonderful Adam Frey.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    NYC metro area
    Posts
    523
    My first teacher was the elementary school band director, a sax player. He was a nice guy, but really gave no guidance. I wanted to learn theory, and he tried to teach me from Walter Piston's book, but while he may have been quite a good musician, he wasn't able to teach theory. I next studied with a theory teacher at a local music school (this was around 6th grade). He thought I should learn piano, and got me started on a few years of bad piano technique. When I considered how theory was taught in college, I realized that he, too, was not able to teach the subject.

    In 7th grade, junior high school, I took weekly lessons with the band director at school, who was a very good trumpet player. Although I was playing baritone horn in the school band, I took trumpet lessons with him. He eventually told me I'd never be a good trumpet player, because my lips were just better suited to a larger mouthpiece (have I mentioned that I have big lips? the rest of my face eventually grew in, but when I was young I was all nose and mouth). I started piano lessons around then with a teacher who came to the house once a week. The best thing that ever happened to me was when he decided to take some time off from teacher to concentrate on trying to market his newly-developed transistorized metronome.

    I called up a friend whose piano playing I greatly admired, and got his younger sister on the phone. She recommended a man named Joseph Maurer, who to this day is one of the most remarkable musicians I ever met. Joe studied piano at the University of Chicago and later studied privately with Isabelle Vengerova, the great pedagogue at Curtis School of Music. Joe has perfect pitch, an eidetic memory for music, and the ability to analyze a student's technical problems and gauge the solution to the student's particular physical gifts.

    I studied with Joe for the rest of high school, in college during summer vacations, and after I got my Steinway in 1988, I studied with him for another seven years.

    During college, I took a handful of lessons on euphonium one summer, but I'm afraid I don't recall the man's name. He did teach me how to produce vibrato, but in those years, the euphonium was really secondary to my piano playing.

    When I resumed playing euphonium this past year, I did a lot of research until I found a local teacher who actually played the instrument, rather than a trumpet teacher or a tuba teacher. His name is Robert Stattel, and he studied with Brian Bowman. Rob is incredibly patient and gently pushes me to a higher level of performance.
    Dean L. Surkin
    Mack Brass MACK-EU1150S, BB1 mouthpiece
    Bach 36B trombone; Bach 6.5AL and Faxx 7C mouthpieces (pBone on loan to granddaughter)
    Steinway 1902 Model A, restored by AC Pianocraft in 1988; Kawai MP8, Yamaha KX-76
    See my avatar: Jazz (the black cockapoo; RIP) and Delilah (the cavapoo) keep me company while practicing

  9. Thanks for sharing those stories, John. It reminds me a little of my first teacher in college, Larry Campbell at LSU. Larry was definitely from the "old school". He had studied with Emory Remington and was a world class trombonist, but also a great euphonium player. In fact, the first Hirsbrunner euphonium prototype was made for him and he used to play it in lessons. He's been retired for several years now and still starts each morning with a high Bb just to "prove to himself that he can still do it." Larry also possessed freakish strength for an older man. I fondly remember being punched in the stomach (not in a violent way) numerous times in lessons, often accompanied by the words "you need to BREATHE DAMMIT!"
    Martin Cochran
    Adams Performing Artist
    mceuph75@gmail.com

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