Appreciating a Performance Heritage 100 years of the Ithaca College Band

Embedded in our lived culture of classical musical performance thrums a wellspring of motivation located within our unique pedagogical lineages of private study. A heritage — valued, varied, and genre crossing — which can project meaningful stylistic prospects for a player while having no actual value, currency, or consequence beyond one’s latest performance.

Indeed, this is something that we all know but rarely experience in actual practice. What does the legacy of an esteemed music teacher or matriculation from a respected school of music actually mean or offer to us? Opportunities to actually engage with ones’ instrumental heritage are fleeting and rare. Mostly we can only reminisce with associates about past influences and performance experiences. However, such recollections can on occasion be put to the test. The 100-year celebration of the Ithaca College Concert Band held in the beautiful Finger Lakes district of Upstate New York at the Ithaca College School of Music in June 2022 offered me just such an opportunity.

Regardless of having recently written about instrumental music performance traditions in Arnold Jacobs Deconstructed (quoted above) this was not my actual motivation for travelling half-way around the world to attend this event. It was intuitive, instinctive and irrational. It was about relationship. About my having fortunately attended Ithaca College (1970-71) — as solo tuba in Walter Beeler’s final concert band — while earning a Master of Music in brass instruments; plus, having the privilege of performing under Mr Beeler in the 50th year alumni reunion of this famous concert band in 1971. A culminating musical experience with a musical mentor in what (I understand) became Walter Beeler’s final concert performance. I still have the analogue LP phonograph recording and referenced its recorded performance of Holst First Suite in Eb for Military Band for the Australian Band and Orchestra Conductors Conference in Western Australia 2021 (presented on-line due to Covid-19 lockdown).

Learning of planned Centenary celebrations to be taking place now fifty years later there was an immediate personal knowing, a recognition, that I should be there. Accepting this illusive “call” to attend — without knowing why — the means and method of making such a journey surprisingly fell into place. The details of international travel, intentions of having a horn to play in Ithaca (I wasn’t taking my instrument over 30,000 Kms in several airplanes) were easily sorted out and I was on my way. An eight-day (8 flight) whimsical quest to America —to my homeland which I had not visited in 24 years —becoming an international post-Covid (sic.) travel odyssey encompassing an insightful adventure.

Nevertheless, in going to play in this spontaneous alumni band assemblage I had dialed down any musical expectations. I was not indulging in musically projecting or expecting that the concert would be an amazing experience. However, the actual playing and wind band musicianship was exceptional and inspiring. A self-selecting symphonic band of 112 alumni musicians performing a wide-ranging concert — led by eight esteemed past Ithaca College Band conductors — with only 8 hours of rehearsal time over a 24-hour period June 17/18, 2022.

Meanwhile, I was reminded — both in the long travel time going and then later in rehearsals — of an infamous 1977 KPFA radio interview quote of Frank Zappa: “These kinds of things don’t happen very often; I’ve got my nerve.” We all did. Performing together in an amazingly well balanced large symphonic ensemble spontaneously made up from over seven decades (1960-2021) of Ithaca College band alumni. The obvious musical heritage “proof of concept” came in our first rehearsal with the downbeat to Bernstein’s Candide Overture (Beeler). Our collectively shared Ithaca College band ensemble performance practice immediately locked into place: articulation, phrasing, intonation and clarity of sound. No one playing in the band had anything to prove as we were all there to simply make symphonic wind music once again as a centennial celebration of our past association.

In the back we had six tubas sounding as one. A rare maxi-band experience that I had not been a part of since undergraduate school in the sixties. A deep and broad sonic experience of ‘bass materiality’ supporting a large ensemble without weighing it down. A certain type of sonic ideal that can become just a big wall of dense sound but in this experience remained clear and transparent such that every instrument and section in the band had its own voice and place in the overall ensemble. As the man said: These kinds of things don’t happen very often...

The hour-long concert program is archived by Ithaca College and is available here to enjoy. Following introductions the music begins at 5:25 with Stephen Peterson conducting the Overture to Candide.  Each of the eight pieces performed has a lot to offer musically and the program as a whole is highly enjoyable and representative of the band traditions at Ithaca College over the past many decades. I will however direct your attention to one work in particular: Fiesta (Symphonic Dance #3) by Clifton Williams (1977) conducted by Mark Fonder which begins in this recording at 29:30.

This is an 8-minute symphonic poem — in a Spanish style — that showcases every section of the band and is grounded in a profound wind orchestral sound. In this performance there is a collective in-breath — in preparation to the down beat — that is truly remarkable as a live performative example of Arnold Jacobs maxim: Wind & Song. This is where and when all wind music actually begins. This audible ensemble in-breath winding-flowing directly into the works massive opening tutti. Other highlights to appreciate are the traditional Spanish trumpet solo calls performed by Dr Cyril Bodnar (2010) and of course (from a tubist point of view) the powerful bass lines at 33:40 – 34:06 – 36:15 and 36:50 supporting this majestic performance of Clifton Williams Fiesta.

I was not the oldest musician in this alumni reunion band as remarkably we had a baritone horn player from 1960 along with three trumpet players who had graduated in 1963/1964 — but I was the senior fellow in our tuba section where we had players representing each decade from 1970 – 2020 — however, I had definitely traveled the furthest to be in Ithaca. In the end it remains an empowering experience to know where one has come from in the musical world. Rehearsing and performing with my peers from across a half-century of collective participation in an important and influential wind musical tradition. Reconnecting with a part of ones’ origin story by musically walking, talking and playing as the one you wish to be in professing a lifelong musical performance vocation. There were over 110 of us performing in a vital yet elusive cultural-social musical phenomena. An event where, as it happens, our youngest player in the tuba section graduated in 2021 — fifty years following me in 1971 —so there is possibly now a new tradition to establish: the opportunity of playing in fifty years with an Ithaca College 150-year Alumni Band in 2072. Good luck and play well Jonathan; live long and prosper mate.