Mentoring

[Ike Harris]

I'd like to ask any of you who have mentored a young player, or was the receiver of a mentoring experience, to relay your story, in whatever amount of detail you care to share.

Thanks, Ike

[Treyzer]

Great idea!

[Chris Fitzgerald]

The greatest musical mentor I've ever had was my piano teacher back in undergrad, Doris Keyes. I had just come from studying guitar up at Berklee and hadn't taken any piano lessons since I was a kid. When i came to UofL, I decided to switch from guitar to composition with piano as the main instrument. I learned the Mozart D minor Fantasia mostly from the record (I had the music, but was a poor reader, and it was easier to hear it than read it). I auditioned with that piece and a couple of original pieces that I had written for piano. I was accepted as a composition major, and *barely* got in on piano. When she interviewed me in her office to let me know that I'd gotten in, she asked me for a list of my repertoire. I replied sheepishly, "you've just heard it". She was taken aback, but only for a moment, then she raised one eyebrow and said, "then we've got a lot of work to do".

She was the one who taught me that, as she put it, "sightreading is playing by ear through your eyes". She also taught me about striving to be of serve to the music at all times, and to this day, I can still hear her ask when I am learning a new piece, "what dies the music want from you?" She taught me that you don't play the piano with your fingers, but rather with your body - the fingers just happen to be on the end of the body that touches the keys. She taught me how to phrase, to take time when the music calls for it and to give it back when it calls for that. I started from so far behind all of the other students, worked my *** off every semester, and always got a "B" in piano - not because I didn't work, but because for my grade I should have been further along. I also always respected her for that, and it kept me hungry. She had a wonderful way of busting my chops and being incredibly encouraging at the same time, and I'll never forget that.

When she retired, she used to have me and another couple of old students over to her house to "keep an old lady company and give her something to do" by reading music for our hands, but we knew she really wanted to give us free lessons in addition to the hang. The music we played together during those times! All of the four hands Mozart symphonies, various classical sonatas, arrangements of Bach, all the Beethoven symphonies, some Beethoven string quartets, even some Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Those evenings spent at her Steinway were some of the best lessons of my life. We still keep in touch even now, although she claims she's too old to play now (and I haven't spent any time with a piano in years). What a classy lady. No one will ever influence my life and music in that way again, I'm sure. Now it's time to pay it forward.

[Paul Warburton]

Being mentored and mentoring are two of the most important and fantastic experiences one can have in this life.
One that moved mountains for my career was being mentored by Carl Fontana. Something about that here.......
From PW to Carl with love.
After that he hooked me up with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Harry Edison. They got me hooked into playing some big jazz parties and the hook ups in those were unbelievable.
Pat Moran, who got me my little Bill Evans gig......well you know.
Eric Gunnison, (the great Denver based pianist) Pat Bianchi (one of the big three B3 jazz organists) and the great jazz flutist Holly Hofmann, all call me a mentor. (Eric and Pat still call me Dad).
Being mentored by people like that is a thrill, but, mentoring players who you really believe in, I'm thinking, is the thing, like DURRL says......"paying it forward". To see and hear that kinda talent use some of your stuff to get to where they are looking to get to, is the best kind of fulfillment.

[Dr_Atomic]

One of the most important teacher/mentor I've had for bass and for life is Homer Mensch. He still stands out as being one of the most important just because he was so supportive and encouraging of me, even though I studied with him really when I first started playing bass and I wasn't that good or confident yet. I can credit him with helping tremendously to make me the student I am today. There were so many things he said and did that helped me so much, he taught me lots of things that are hard to describe in words. There's never going to be any one like Homer! He was the best. I miss him!

[David Potts]

Back in the early sixties I was working as a young industrial chemist for a large corporation in Sydney and had discovered listening to live jazz as well as 7 nights a week jazz on radio. Young Dr. Lynn Christie had come across from New Zealand and knocked our socks off. I began learning bass as a hobby from Chick Denny, my first mentor, who would have been a fabulous classical player if he didn't have a withered right arm. He was first teacher to many of my contemporaries and also traded in basses and acted as fixer, feeding his students gigs free of charge. He also supplied a youth orchestra with its bass section. Only problem was if gigs clashed with concert dates then gigs won. It was hearing Ray Brown playing on an Oscar Peterson Trio recording of Gershwin tunes that decided me to take up bass, to find that Chick had actually met him and was allowed to play a few notes on his old bass. I still have the old LP vinyl.

The BMC National Youth Orchestra never turned anyone away and was my first taste of orchestral playing - the first piece I ever played was Finlandia. Years later I went back as a guest and they were still playing Finlandia!! I still have friends from those days.

At about this time Gary Karr had released possibly his first record that included Eccles Sonata, played on gut strings. We had also just seen a black and white film of Gary playing at Carnegie Hall for Leonard Bernstein's concert series that included the Swan. Years later he came to Sydney and thrilled us with his playing and master classes.

In searching for a better bass I met a great old character, Bob Waddington, who was the first Australian jazz bassist back in the Twenties when the first visiting jazz group, a white American dixie band, picked him up here in Australia. The Foxtrot was all the rage and they played to packed dance halls for ages. Bob was the pre-eminent bass player of his day and had a long career that covered a very broad range of music. Silent movies, dance halls, music theatre, opera, ballet, early recording sessions and symphony. He was one of the first three bassists in the newly formed Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and went on to be Principal in the early Fifties. All this time he was also a stone mason and a blacksmith. He spent hours regaling me with fascinating stories about his life. He also took a keen interest in my progress and gave me a heap of old music to add to my growing library. His parents were both in music theatre and insisted that he learn a trade to see him through hard times in music. At age seventeen they sent him to Europe to hear Koussevitsky. He was in his mid seventies when I first met him and had an old man's head on a huge well-muscled younger looking body. He doubled on tuba and enjoyed brass band music. Altogether, a very inspirational figure who helped convince me that I could be a full-time musician!!

More lately, in 1997, I was able to spend a short time with three inspirational teachers, Tom Martin, Duncan McTier and Knut Guettler, after I had attended an international musicians' health and safety conference at York University, England, on behalf of my orchestra. I asked if each could help me by discussing teaching the Double Bass. Each treated me as a colleague and helped me enormously. I was able to work through Knut's Advanced Techniques book from cover to cover with him.

There have been lots of other musical characters during my career, each of them being inspirational in their own way. My two favorite conductors have been Willem van Otterloo in the Seventies and Stuart Challender in the Eighties. I have been very fortunate to tour in America, Asia and Europe and play in many of the world's great concert halls.

As my career winds down towards ultimate retirement I am enjoying giving back to music, through teaching and examining, some of the deep satisfaction it has given me.

Regards

DP