Story and photography by Glenn Junkert, MISSOULA JOURNAL
Less than a minute before 1 p.m. on Thursday in the basement band practice room #11 of the UM School of Music -- amid the cacophony of laughter, clatter and honking and squawking instruments -- a relaxed, animated, chatting assembly of the student members of the Jazz Band I is already seated and in place.
And so, when director-professor Lance Boyd appears on-the-dot at the center of the loosely aligned circle of student musicians, a stack of charts under his arm, the transition to an in-unison, and oddly musical flapping of thumbed pages of assorted music charts of Tonawanda Fats, by famed big band jazz composer-arranger Don Menza, is a punctuated, almost musical shuffling... and certainly a signal that this young group of student musicians is ready for some serious ensemble work.
Though Boyd addresses the students conversationally, almost paternally, without raising his voice, the tone has been set. And so, when he raises his arms for the first cue, the room is expectantly silent.
The charts are a challenge and Boyd interrupts repeatedly, correcting, questioning, explaining and sometimes verbally demonstrating the song’s rhythmic complexities with a half-spoken, half-sung, “Ba DAH, Ba-DAH, dum, te dum” demonstration before asking, “Got it? Okay, once again.”
This is the band’s first time through the challenging big band chart. But with less than a month remaining before its presentation at the 29th Annual Buddy DeFranco UM Jazz Festival, (NOTE: DeFranco’s name was officially added in 2000) the atmosphere is workmanlike. And the students -- though sometimes puzzled, sometimes chagrined -- gradually breathe brightness, articulation and rhythm into the song.
With each intensified repetition, Boyd -- who had started the hour with a series of frowns and expressions of determination -- starts smiling... then , with each repetition becomes increasingly animated, bouncing on his toes to the rhythm, smiling, gesturing, nodding and then physically lunging toward each section as their brassy unison horn shouts punctuate the rhythmic and harmonic changes of the song.
In a mere 30 minutes the band had transformed a clanking chain of linked notes into a dancing, soaring brassy big band celebration, surely good enough to elicit an appreciative smile of approval from Boyd... perhaps even the composer himself (who was also a festival guest), were he there to hear it.
The eventual result of this session -- and the thousands of similar practices Boyd has directed his Montana music students through in 39 years as a professor -- will be another sparkling UM Jazz Band performance at this year’s gala festival concert.
Not visible to the thousands of Missoula and Montana audience fans who have enjoyed these concerts is the day-by-day teaching mastery of Boyd, a master who has touched the musical and personal lives of a myriad of music students in the hallways of UM’s music building since he conducted his first practice sometime during the mid-winter of 1970, two short years after Boyd -- a University of Minnesota masters graduate -- had migrated west to Missoula after teaching a year of at NW Missouri College.
“I sort of fell into it when I got here,” said Boyd with a quiet laugh. “There was a band that was in existence when I got here, called the Jazz Workshop.
“It was run by Frank Diliberto, who was a graduate of Northwestern and was a teaching assistant here in the music department,” Boyd added. “When Frank left, they brought another T. A. to take his place... to run the jazz workshop at that point... and it just fell apart.”
“Well, then the chairman called me into his office and I had already been doing some trombone ensemble stuff with rhythm. So, the chairman got wind of that and said, ‘Well, if you want, to you can take the jazz band.’ ”
“So I did. That was in January of 1970....
“Destiny.”
And history.
And that history is well-chronicled.
That’s because the yearly “final-exam” proof of Boyd’s -- and his students’-- efforts is the Buddy DeFranco UM Jazz Festival. Not only is it a school-year performance final for Boyd and his students, it has become a gala community event.
The festival has featured scores of famed guest artists, who not only performed as marquee concert headliners, but who also conducted master-session workshops for UM students and thousands of high school musicians from around the region who attended the festival.
Originally developed as a UM music-education program, the fest has added a powerful boost to western Montana’s music culture. Since 1981, Missoula jazz fans have been exposed to a steady lineup of jazz artists of renown, including the famed Stan Kenton big band, harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans and just last year the legendary saxophonist, Phil Woods.
All 28 festivals are chronicled on the walls of Boyd’s neatly ordered and comfortable faculty office, where posters are attractively mounted. “This is my gallery to document where I was when,” said Boyd fondly. He sweeps his open palm toward several posters, almost as if he’s conducting, and reminisces with vivid detail several colorful stories, often pausing to laugh.
Stories about guest artists whose magnetic personalities and entertaining “jazz culture tales” captivated students.
Artists who used unconventional teaching methods or lively humor to engage participants.
Enigmatic or “difficult” artists whose petulant, impatient, irascible or otherwise challenging behavior made them difficult to work with.
Or even those occasional artists whose behavior required extra supervision from Boyd himself.
Boyd’s memories are overwhelmingly positive. But one stands out. “The year with Toots Thielemans. That was one of my favorite festivals,” said Boyd. “I loved that one. He is the most natural, intuitive musician I’ve ever met. He didn’t bring any charts. He didn’t even tell us what he was going to do. He just said, ‘Play some stuff out of your book,’ and he would just fly. His harmonica playing, to this day, is state of the art.”
Boyd’s stories illustrate the extra challenge he faces to bring in artists not only known for their music, but also known as capable workshop educators.
“It’s important to find artists... somebody the kids can relate to,” said Boyd. “I have to consider, first of all my kids. I don’t want them to be abused by anybody. And, secondly, I have to consider the audience. I don’t want the audience to feel like they’re being assaulted. It’s something I always look out for.
“These kids are still too tender about what they’re doing. It’s the bottom line. Many of them have capabilities to do great things in the future, but they’re still figuring it out and they don’t need to be stomped on,” said Boyd.
Which reveals the teacher in Boyd: that his 39 years at UM have been about teaching first, with the festival as a fortunate sound stage for his students’ work.
Several times during the interview Boyd returns to a core theme: his career-long objectives to build a stable educational program for his students at UM. “I can’t really identify what you would call highlights, or best years, or whatever,” Boyd confessed. “It seems like every year, some good things happen, and it sort of gets you to the next level.
“You know, we went from one band to two bands... and from two bands to three bands. And then gradually you get a critical mass at the top that starts to be a little bit more talented collectively. So then things start getting better. The energy is in trying to keep everybody going in the same direction and all of us focusing on the same goals. When kids come and go in a school situation there’s a lot of turnover, so you’re constantly trying to cling to goals that you can keep developing on a year-to-year basis, regardless of who is involved. Trying to convince everybody that they need to buy into those goals takes a lot of energy.”
All those years, all that combined energy, said Boyd, just seem to charge him up for another round.
“I don’t think I’ve ever burned out,” said Boyd. “I can honestly say that pretty much I’ve enjoyed every single year I’ve done this, and have not lost any enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, I think I’ve gotten more enthusiastic because things have gotten better in terms of the talent levels I’m dealing with and the stuff that we’re doing... it just gets better and better.
“It’s been a great source of satisfaction, I have to say,” said Boyd, with a smile and another sweep of his arm. “I’m getting paid to do what I love. Which is probably why I haven’t retired before now. And I actually don’t know when I’m going to get to that point... as long as I can stay one step ahead of the kids. But they’re close on my tail, I can tell you that!”
Boyd has no plans to slow down, he said. There are, in fact, big plans on the horizon that further enthuse him. “We could end up with a bachelor of arts degree with an emphasis in jazz. That’s my next goal,” said Boyd.
“We’ve already designed a degree here. It’s ready to go. Once we get an instructor in place to teach it. He would be someone to help get that degree program started.” The first stage may be set as early as next fall.
“I’m going to get a jazz (teacher) colleague in the near future,” said Boyd. “We will be interviewing a candidate this spring. Then, with him, and perhaps another instructor eventually, we could end up with a bachelor of arts degree with an emphasis in jazz.”
Boyd is aware that he’s planning growth at a time when schools and programs are struggling nationwide.
That’s not the case at Montana, said Boyd.
“We’re actually doing better. We’re actually almost at an all-time high with regard to financial support,” said Boyd. “It seems like, in these tough times, people -- our supporters and graduates -- are trying to preserve the things that are important to them.
And it’s school wide in the arts. It looks like the arts are really important to folks in this community. The audiences have been way up. They’ve been showing up for just about all of our performances this year. “It seems to me that, maybe when times are tough and people have to make decisions about what they have to get behind, they’re responding.”
Boyd emphasizes that local and statewide support is more than a mere validation of his program, but also a continuation of a program that has reached thousands of high school students from the region who have attended festival workshops.
Many of those students, said Boyd, eventually end up occupying the classrooms and hallways of UM’s music building. The talent levels of those high school students, said Boyd, increases every year.
And that’s because UM music grads are making their way back into the schools.... as teachers.
“The bulk of the former students are in high school programs,” said Boyd. “And they’re all over the country. I wish they were all in the state, but a few more are settling closer to home now, so we’re getting a lot of our graduates who are closer.”
Still other grads have migrated to similar university programs. “There are three or four of my students who are now doing what I do in other schools,” said Boyd. “Eric Schneller is now the director of Jazz Studies at the University of Houston. Andrew Goodrich, who will be here as a clinician this year, is now director of the music education and jazz at Boston University. And Todd Kelly, trumpet player, is at Bradley University as the director of Jazz Studies there.”
Many are professional performing artists.
“A lot of these students have gone on to do things like play on cruise ships,” said Boyd. “One fellow in particular, Eric Sande a trumpet player from Kalispell, did that and then moved up the ranks and became the director of the program that administers the programs that go on the cruise ships.”
Boyd is careful to make the distinction that -- as the talent level of UM music graduates increases -- the talent level of his incoming students also increases... often the result of the influence of past graduates on younger students.
And so, said Boyd, it seems that his task is a little easier each year. It’s a steady development he embraces. “There are times in rehearsals when these talented kids, who have had some experience, and they know what they want, so they will jump up and say, ‘Well, we’ll do this.’ ”
“That’s the way we work. It’s wonderful that they know they can do that. It’s a great source of pride for me, because I don’t have to prescribe everything for them. They have something to offer and they’re willing to offer it.”
It is, said Boyd, not a slight but instead a tribute to past students that his current crop of student musicians is his best. “The advanced band is probably the best band I’ve ever had overall,” said Boyd. “There’s a lot of talent all-around. An outstanding group of kids. They do pick things up fast and they’re very professional about getting it right.”
And it’s no slight to Boyd, he says, that his current students often speak up during class or practice. “They’re at a level of experience and maturity where they feel comfortable contributing, and I’m perfectly comfortable letting them do that.
“Because that means you’ve reached a point where they’re really starting to take charge of what they want to do. It isn’t just doing what they’re told.”
For that reason Boyd anticipates the addition of new colleagues as teachers into the UM music program. He admits he’s unsure what the program expansions will bring.
“I don’t know how much more future I have in this business,” said Boyd. “I don’t know exactly what (staff changes) mean. It may not include me either.”
“Hopefully we’ll come up with something that’s bigger and better.”
And so, as he readies for another gradual expansion of the jazz education program built steadily by Boyd over 39 years, it seems both timely and fitting that his induction into the Jazzoula Hall of Fame officially records his impact on Missoula and Montana’s education and arts communities over the past 39 years.
