Music Is My Life

This was a great Christmas. My parents bought a large console stereo system. Grandma Liza had the same one, just a different style. Our system was brown, and grandma's was a cherry wood, its reddish color blending in with her piano she had in the same room.

Grandma had her stereo at least a year before we had one, and I would start missing some of the sounds of my best record albums. Abby Road by the Beatles was one, and Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel was the other. My sisters would go with me, and we would sit in grandma's front room and listen to the incredible sounds. At that point our old Webcor was a destroyer of vinyl. One spin did the trick, making scratches or damaging the entire LP.

I also spent a lot of time performing in the music program in high school. I began playing in the high school band as a ninth grader. My parents bought my Selmer saxophone, which sold for over $800 in 1968. It is worth $6000 today; however, I really am not interested in selling it at any price.

During the senior assembly my senior year, I had a pleasant surprise. The Marine Corps honored me with the Outstanding Musician Award, the first one given at our high school.

I had always been bad about submitting paperwork for anything that required filling out a form or keeping track of points, so I never really won any high school band honors given at my high school, so this was fun.

During high school, my parents let me participate in summer music programs: the first one at Utah State in 1968 and the second one at BYU the next year in 1969.

Vaclav Nelhybel was a Czech composer who was at the program at BYU. I was a member of the Instructor's Band, and we took part in performing his Sine Nomine. It was a composition dedicated to those Allied soldiers who fell during the invasion at Normandy.

At the height of his symphony, a full orchestra, band and choir perform. Instrumentalists play any note, beginning as a half note played quietly before increasing volume and tempo to a sixteenth note. The choir, at the same time, said their name in a whisper before repeating their name at shouts at the end. When they performed this at the dedication of the Allied cemetery in Normandy, choir members each had a name of a fallen soldier. Even while typing this, I feel goosebumps on my arm forty years later. It was incredible.

The Czech musician was a genius, but he concentrated on music education rather than composition and spent time at workshops like this. I contacted his widow in 2005 to see if I could find a copy of the performance of that number, but all that remains are a few recordings of badly taped concerts.

Our high school band played one of his compositions at contest our senior year, and we received the highest ratings. I also played another one while performing with BYU's Wind Ensemble during my first semester there, my freshman year of college in the fall of 1971.

During my junior year I also qualified and participated in All-State Band in Boise. It was incredible, once we arrived. Our high school didn't provide us a bus or hotel, so we relied on Mr. Castleton getting us there. He drove one car, and Ann's Aunt Edith Thomas drove the other. Ann's Uncle Boyd and Aunt Edith were our neighbors on Bannock Street, and Ann's cousin Lucille was another musician chosen to participate.

The night before we left, I was finishing my research paper for Joe Davis. Lucille was also finishing her paper for her U.S. Government class. My mom said the lights in their house did not go off all night.

I rode with Mr. Castleton and slept until Twin Falls when suddenly I heard Mr. Castleton shout. Edith fell asleep at the wheel and drove off the road. When we stopped and looked, dust still concealed the accident site. The car balanced precariously atop a small lava crest. At the time lava rocks and large outcroppings were all along that section of the road. Everyone exited the car, and other than small scrapes and scratches, no one had any injuries.

We went back to the hospital in Twin, where doctors examined students in the car. The delay meant that we missed tryouts. I would have been first chair, the other baritone saxophone player not able to play many of the complex parts of the things we played, but it didn't matter. The most important thing was that no one was seriously hurt or killed. It really was a miracle nothing happened that morning.

Lucille did not participate. She was in shock, and as I remember, she had a gash in her forehead, so she returned to Malad.

This picture is from my junior year. I was in a saxophone quartet my freshman year that received the highest ratings at every level in the state. As a soloist, I had excellent ratings my freshman and sophomore years, but the last two years saw the highest ratings there too.

After performing my senior year for Dr. Ralph Laycock from BYU, he talked to me about a music scholarship. He was the conductor of the Wind Ensemble, a rude Canadian from Alberta--enough said.

When I performed my solo at the end of my senior year in the high school auditorium, it was an incredible experience. I played something written for an alto sax, and it had complicated trills and 32nd notes throughout the piece.

At one point in the middle, the piano accompaniment stopped during a cadenza, where I played alone. I played one series of 32nd notes, and then I waited for a short time before beginning the last one. You could not hear a pin drop in the large hall, filled to capacity with people. Mr. Castleton taught me to do that hesitation, in order to create tension and anticipation. That like the Nelhybel piece give me the "goosebump" reaction after all these years still.

Our high school pep band was one of the best. I began playing with them my sophomore year of high school. I liked it, because it gave me a great seat during crowded basketball games. During football season, I only played one year in the band, because I started as an offensive lineman my junior and senior years.

Mr. Castleton was disappointed, and he often told me so. He kept telling me that I would have to make a choice. But I loved football. I loved pep band too, but football was important to me. To "letter" as an athlete like I did was something very important to anyone going to school.

My friend Randy Wille had a new drumset his senior year. He played as a drummer in our local rock band that played for most of the school dances and all of the weekend dances in the top floor of the American Legion Building.

I still remember this picture. Having forgotton to wear my black shirt like a couple of other players, Mr. Castleton went into a rage and cussed us for at least 10 minutes. You can tell I was angry in the picture by the look on my face. In the previous picture, we were all trying to look cool. Here we were "hot under the collar."

The picture at the left is of the "M" mountain. At easter every kid in Malad hiked to the top and roasted hot dogs and marshmellows. We climbed on Blue Rock, and no one was ever hurt.

The "M" is the symbol for our high school. It was fun when Jack first noticed it, after visiting Grandma Ward and picking up a bucket of chocolate chip cookies.

"Pop pop. Why is there an "M" on that mountain?"

The mountain reminds me of those simple, fun times where life was so uncomplicated, although I never believed it was like that at the time.