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My mother made me do it.
“Patrick, if you are going to college to get a degree in music, at least get an Ed. degree. You can use it when you start teaching. You are going to be a teacher.” – Mother June
My aim was never to be a teacher, only to perform music in any way I could. With my mother, one night when I was 5 or 6, while watching our 21″ black & white Motorola, TV trays with small foods at the ready, I saw a teenaged girl playing “Flight of the BumbleBee” on a marimba. She was appearing on “The Ted Mack Amateur Hour”. I said out loud, “I want to do THAT!”, apparently with enough enthusiasm to prompt my mom to find me a marimba teacher that happened to have a four octave Ludwig/Musser instrument for sale. My mother bought it for me for $60, then built a box I could stand on to reach the keyboard, and I was off to the races.
Two years later I started my first band in 4th grade, the Stanley Steamers, named after my teacher Mr. Eugene Stanley. My bandmates were also in Mr. Stanleys’ class. Flute, piano, accordion, marimba (me), drum. We specialized in a few holiday songs, happy birthday, and a half dozen Tijuana Brass covers. My mother, an accomplished pianist, created our arrangements, easily fitting the music to our entry level skills, an ability I inherited and put to good use years later.
Washington Elementary school in Auburn, Washington would not admit me into their beginning music program, stating that I was too advanced, would get bored, act out and cause them problems. They were judging my mom’s arrangements, not me. However, the behavior element was pretty close to correct. I had a little “temperament issue”. In spite of that first rejection, I did make my performance debut in fourth grade playing Flight of the BumbleBee on the marimba, for a back to school night type event. They finally gave in and let me join the band when I hit the 7th grade, West Coast junior high school. My temperament has since improved.
I began playing semi-professionally at age 13 with the Bellevue Philaharmonic under the baton of Maestro R. Joseph Scott. My principal mentor, junior high school orchestra teacher and father figure, Mr. Frederick B. Strom got me into the orchestra’s percussion section and transported me to and from rehearsals. He himself was in the violin section. The one-way trip was 30+ miles due north from Auburn so I would always sleep over at his place in Seattle on rehearsal nights and then drive back to school in Auburn, 30 more miles to the south the next morning. Often, Ms. Visha Ingvarson – foreign language department, another teacher from my school would join us on the return leg of these trips in their academic carpool. All that, Back-in-the-Day, when teachers could actually educate their students without fear of societal damnation and prosecution. Were it not for Mr. Strom, I’d probably be a plumber. My mother thought it was all great.
Three years of Junior High School passed and my mother sold the house and moved back to Seattle again. Our little family transplant number 16 or so out of her 21 moves before I turned 18. She was always trying to get away from something that followed her throughout her life. She never figured out that she was escaping from herself. Karma I suppose.
A story for another day …
High School and its related “sturm und drang” came and went and I landed at Western Washington State College, now University, to study music performance and education.
My mother made me do it.
Very soon after my arrival at WWSC I was offered a teaching job, yeah really, as a 17 year old adjunct. My class was part of the education majors curriculum, the required pedigogical class on percussion techniques, performance, repairs, and basic teaching techniques. Percussion class met at 8:00am, three days a weeks. I was never late. I ran that class for a couple of years and was then replaced by the new dean of the school who wanted to teach it and was a percussionist himself. Yes, my boss wanted MY job, HA! It helped pay for my weekly drum lessons in Seattle, a 92 mile Greyhound to the south.
As time progressed, I upgraded in the local orchestra world to tympanist/percussionist in the Seattle Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Jerome Glass, also a professor at WWSC, now WWU. Around that time I began playing as an extra in the Seattle Symphony. Principal Percussionist Randy Baunton brought me in, as I was a student of the Assistant Principal Ron Johnsonm, then my teacher at the end of that Greyhound ride. I enjoyed and learned from that experience for 3 years, occupying my summer months practicing and performance with my best friend and mentor back then, Seattle percussion notable – Kathy Joan Ramm, KJR, her initials but also the call sign for the best Rock radio station in Seattle at that time. We were both in the Peter Britt Music Festival in Jacksonville, Oregon with Maestro John Trudeau. I was also studing Hindustani music with Lucy Dunsmore at the University of Washington Ethnomusicology school and was well into the martial arts by then. As I neared college graduation, after 5 years and a double major, I had started to freelance in the greater Seattle area and more broadly into Eastern Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho and Montana. My first pick-up sideman gig was for the opening concert of the Rolling Stones at the Seattle Coliseum, part of their 1976 tour. Conga’s and cowbells mostly, plus lots of driving, a lousy diet, and not much sleep was my take away.
At last having completed my student teaching in the Northshore District near Seattle under the excellent and watchful eye of my cooperating teacher and teacher training mentor Mr. Ted Corey, I was offered 3 choices: 1. Go East and carry on the local percussion tradition of study with Mr. Frederick D. Hinger of the Metropolitan Opera, the former teacher of both Mr’s. Baunton and Johnson, as well as KJR. 2. Travel to India to immerse myself in the music of that culture, or 3. Accept a one year starting appointment at Wahiawa High School in Hawaii under my martial arts and music education professor Mr. James Uyeda – an incredible instructor for my parallel paths of music and martial arts.
I opened Door Number One and headed East. I wanted to study with Mr. Hinger and was applying to the Manhattan School of Music, where he had been teaching for years, when he resigned his position there and was focusing only on the Opera, his stick and drum business, and teaching at Yale. I had no choice but to apply to Yale, unless I wanted to live in New York and simply take lessons at Mr. Hingers house in Leonia, NJ. A path that more than a few Seattle percussionists had taken. My father had passed on in 1980 leaving me a small nest egg which I was able to use for schooling. In 1980 I entered graduate school at the Yale School of Music … back when most of us had to pay our own way. Hindsight taught me it was the right choice.
Due to the fact that, historically, so many percussionists who studied with Mr. Hinger have come from Seattle, combined with the long lived animosity between Mr. Hinger and NY Philharmonic tympanist Saul Goodman – who often referred to Mr. Hinger as “a plumber”, my Juilliard trained drummer friends would often refer to Seattle using the rather pejorative nickname of “Hinger-land”. I don’t have a Hinger-land tattoo anywhere, but I embrace the moniker, even though I have not returned very often to the place of my musical birth for many, many years.
After my first year at Yale, I won an audition and became Principal Percussionist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. A year in that posting was amazing but when offered a 5 year extension in Hong Kong, I elected instead to return to Yale for further study. That too was the correct choice.
After another year with Mr. Hinger, followed by my ghost-writing of his Snare Drum book, Time & Motion, The Musical Snare Drum, I was freelancing throughout the northeast, and over the ensuing 3 decades I have performed with many of the top performers of that period in show business, including: Aretha, Tony Randall, Tony Curtis, Marie Osmond, Mary Lou Reton, Robert Goulet, Liza Minelli and dozens more. I became the house percussionist at the Shubert Theater in New Haven and played most of the Broadway tours that have come through New Haven for over 30 years.
Now over 40 years since my arrival in New Haven, I have managed to accomplish a number of things and have been blessed to attain some recognitions along the way. I have been a touring soloist and clinician with the New Sousa Band under Keith Brion. I have made dozens of recordings, large and small for television, records, CD’s and movies. I have composed, performed and recorded two compositions for Pilobolus Dance Theater that toured the United States and then the world for two years. I have held and performed in scores of other clinics, presentations, and solos throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. I’ve received six nominations for the National Grammy Music Education Award and was ranked in 2023 as a semi-finalist placing me in the top 25 nominated music educators in the United States. I received a Grammy Signature Schools Community Award in 2017 and at what I hope will be a third performace nomination for recordings I’ve been part of during my career. After all that, I have accepted my mothers prediction for the course of my life … I really am a teacher … and my mother made me do it.
The following videos are representative of the work I did during the pandemic to support the relevancy of live music in our Remote Learning Environment. My work prior to the pandemic brought me recognition from the Ellington Fellowship at Yale University, the New Haven Symphony as their 2001 Teacher of the Year, A Nationally televised segment on “Why music is important in Education” on VH-1/Save the Music Graduation Day annual telecast, live from Lincoln Center.
These were followed by The Mary Hunter Wolff Award for Excellence in Arts Education, The Community Award from the Grammy’s and now a 2022 “Baby I’m a Star” award from the New Haven Arts Council for my work to keep music “Live and A-live” in the New Haven schools and community at large during the pandemic. These projects served the mental health of the community as much or more than did the music itself. They inspired other teachers in schools around greater New Haven to make their own videos to promote and Keep Alive music in their schools and communities.
Oye Como Va – Music Department Collective
Pure Imagination – Music Department Collective
Fiddles on Fire – Intermediate String Orchestra
A French Folk Song – Beginning String Orchestra
Brandenburg Concert 5 – 1st movement
The ELEVEN
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