Answering The Call #11: My Top 10 Musical Influences

[stevene]

Answering the Call #11: My Top 10 Musical Influences

(podcast version available at ATC011pc)

Recently I was “tagged” in Facebook by a church friend to detail “My Top 10 Musical Influences” and, of course, to “tag” 9 others to spread the fun. I enjoyed being able to “tag” the musician listed in #1. Bernie Horn was a year older than me in high school. In fact, I think he’s still a year older. But he was also a year ahead of me. When my family moved to a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., I began 8th grade in a new school which had an extra period in its schedule. So I signed up for Band, and planned to play guitar. But there are no guitar parts in band, so I needed to find another instrument. I had had a year each of clarinet, and violin, and a couple of years of piano, but I did not take to any of them. In 8th grade I was a 13-year-old wrestler, weighing 180 pounds and standing about 5’ 8”. My band director said “you look like a tuba player” and that’s how this musical duck took to his water.

Bernie played string bass. As I was learning to play tuba, I was listening to him play. A well-played string instrument is one of the most beautiful sounds in God’s creation, and Bernie played well. When we reconnected through Facebook, I was disappointed to find out he no longer played. In fact, we had gone in radically different directions. Bernie is now a liberal Jewish lawyer working in politics and I am a conservative Christian mathematician working in accounting.

But it continues to be the sound of Bernie’s string bass that forms the basis for any music I make. He is the first person in my list of 10 Musical Influences, and I was pleased to be able to “tag” him with my list.

Here’s my list:

1. Bernie Horn and Moshe Paranov - Bernie played string bass next to me for 3 out of the 5 years I played tuba in junior and senior high school as I was initially learning to play the tuba, and the sound he produced formed much of the basis for my sense of what the tuba should sound like. “Uncle Moshe” was the patriarch of Hartt College of Music, and his greatest exhortation was simply to look at me and pretend he was playing a string bass, which reminded me to try to sound like Bernie Horn's bass.

2. David Bragunier - The principal tuba player for the National Symphony as I was coming up, he was my teacher as a senior in high school. He helped me learn new, more efficient ways to play the tuba, and influenced my choice of college (Hartt College of Music at University of Hartford) and college major (Tuba Performance and Music Education)

3. Ken Singleton - Ken was my tuba teacher in college, replacing Toby Hanks at Hartt College of Music the summer before I entered. He taught me the concept of "singing into the horn" as a mental picture of how any instrument should be player. I continue to remember pithy sayings Ken would speak in my ear as I played during lessons. He also arranged music for tuba ensemble, a radically new concept in the 70s (when I was actively studying tuba performance).

4. Canadian Brass - This is the best brass quintet group ever, co-founded by Chuck Daellenbach, a consummate tuba player and marvelous musicologist, dedicated to bringing chamber music out of the stuffy parlor into the modern living room and made accessible to any listener, regardless of musical training or "sophistication."

5. The Boston Pops Orchestra - Similar to the Canadian Brass in the ability to make "classical music" accessible to the general population, Arthur Fiedler as the conductor, and Leroy Anderson as its most famous composer.

6. John Philip Sousa - the greatest promoter of the marching band genre, and one of the greatest composers of marches, which is the genre from most people have any concept of the tuba as a musical instrument (although primarily an inaccurate impression of oom-pah).

7 . Peter, Paul and Mary - as a student of the guitar in the early 70s, most of the music I learned to perform came from this group. Their combination of American folk music and protest songs, all sung with beautiful 3-part harmonies, formed the basis of my style as a guitarist.

8. John Denver - Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. was my biggest vocal hero. When I started playing guitar at the age of 10, I sang soprano, moving to bass within 3 years. First I related to John's beautiful light tenor voice, and later came to enjoy his careful treatment of lyrics as both writer and performer.

9. Barry McGuire - in the 60s he became famous as the writer of "Age of Destruction" while a member of The New Christy Minstrels, he later became a well-known Christian musician, combining folk-style Christian music played on a 12-string guitar with fanciful stories illustrating various aspects of Christianity. His musical style was very simple, and he "banged on" the guitar. I was introduced to him by members of a youth group I led, a gig I got into when I stepped in to lead singing with the 12-string Decca-brand guitar I had bought at a garage sale for $25. I have since upgraded to a top-of-the-line Guild 12-string, but my style is still very similar to Barry McGuire, even though I developed it before I knew of him.

10. John Michael Talbot - originally a country-rock pro, John Michael Talbot converted to Catholicism after a difficult divorce, and became a Franciscan monk. His music is primarily for worship use, and he was one of the first to produce music worthy of use in churches with conservative musical tastes. My wife met him at a workshop he was leading - I couldn't go because I was leading a youth retreat. But I have listened to the cassette tape of that workshop at least a dozen times. It has applications, for me, in theology, music, contemplative prayer and ministry. And he mixes some low-key humor into his music.
This eclectic list shows a couple of things: I like music from several genres, and I perform music from several genres. I almost always try to sound like Bernie Horn’s string bass, and I always try to be accessible to people without regard to their musical preferences or sophistication. As a performer, my art is always directed to the Chief Musician, and I focus first and foremost on pleasing an Audience of One. As an entertainer, I believe that if God is pleased with my offering, my human audience will likewise be pleased. In pleasing both a divine and a human audience, I have been obedient to both the First and Second Great Commandments:

.....And He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
.....with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment.
.....The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
.....On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Mat 22:37-40 NASB).

What else do we need to do? ‘Love God,’ and ‘Love your neighbor’ covers it all.

I will pray for you, and will you please pray for me? Pray that each of us will seek to love God with every fiber of our being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In so we doing we can be obedient to the Two Great Commandments, and in so doing we can Answer The Call. In Jesus’ Name!

Thanks for the time you took to read this!

Stevene