Narrative Regarding Career Markers
3 - Career Preparation
As I look back on my career, I think that I was meant to be a percussionist. I played the triangle with great joy when I was in kindergarten class and I also liked to conduct – I liked to be the leader. By fourth grade I was totally involved in writing the class play and getting to perform in it. At the fifth grade level we were given the opportunity to choose a musical instrument. I chose flute. By the time my place in the line arrived, there were no more flutes for loan but I could rent one. My parents didn’t think that was a good idea because I was headed for braces on my teeth. My wonderful band director, Mr. Robert Kellogg, suggested that I try drumming – a few $$ for a pair of sticks and a practice pad – and destiny, but I didn’t know it at the time.
I messed around in the band room, my real salvation through those years, listened to a lot of music, but didn’t really practice very much. One day the ultimatum came: “There will be a playing test next week. Whoever doesn’t pass the test is out!” That is when I got the message that belonging to the band was going to require a lot of work on my part. As I went on in my high school years, and wanting to belong at the top of the band, I kept working with a real focus toward my goals. I was going to have a successful career as a musician. I knew it but my parents were not in favor of it, and furthermore, “drumming was no life for a young girl!”
I persisted, my parents gave in, and I made it into Baldwin-Wallace College as a music education percussion major. My teacher was Cloyd Duff, timpanist with Cleveland Symphony. With my eye on the prize and his mentorship, I dedicated myself to preparation for an orchestral career and switched to performance my sophomore year.
Mr. Duff sent me to Aspen Music School for 3 summers to study with his colleague, George Gaber, timpanist for Toscanini and ABC studios in NYC, and soon to be Chair of Percussion Studies at Indiana University.
At Aspen, I met French composer Darius Milhaud. He had an ear for percussion and was using percussion in unique ways. I performed a few of his landmark pieces for and with him in concert, and the idea that maybe I could be an orchestral player but also a percussion soloist started to take hold in my mind.
Meanwhile, back at B-W, I was encouraging Dr. Kenneth Snapp, Director of Bands, to pursue an East Coast tour with a final tour-concert in Carnegie Hall. I like “happenings” and being a part of the organization of such events. The B-W Wind Ensemble played Carnegie Hall in spring of my senior year. Graduation was near and I had to get a job or I didn’t know what.