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The IAJE-WI Distinguished Service Award has been established to honor those individuals who have made significant contributions to jazz education in Wisconsin. As jazz education in Wisconsin has reached "middle age", many of our pioneer educators are reaching retirement age.  It is with this in mind that the executive board has established this award, with the intent of honoring outstanding jazz educators of our state.

This year's recipient is  educator/author/performer Kurt Dietrich. His award was presented on June 15th in Appleton at a big band concert in conjunction with the annual Lawrence University alumni weekend. 

Click on the recipient's name to learn more about them:

2001: Lovell Ives

     2000 Distinguished Service Award Recipient: Dave Kiepert

Teaching Career

Professional Organization Memberships

First coordinator, former president of IAJE-WISCONSIN

Family

Children: Lisa, Mary, Alan
Wife: Susan (deceased)

  
Rappin’ with Lifetime Achiever Lovell Ives: An Interview by Tom Pfotenhauer, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

On Jan. 19, Lovell Ives was presented with a lifetime achievement award from the Wisconsin unit of the IAJE. Mr. Ives prolific career as an arranger, trumpet player, and educator spans five decades and is still going strong. He remains in high demand as an arranger and performs throughout the Midwest with his group, River City Six. Earlier in January, I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Ives, who was one of my first influential mentors. The following is an excerpt of our discussion.

2002 Distinguished Service Award Recipient: Darrell Aderman

AP:  What was your inspiration for starting the Indianhead Arts & Education Center? 

DA: I was working on my Master’s Degree at UW-Madison and was a counselor at Madison’ Summer Music Clinic back in the early 60’s.  I was amazed by how the students all tried so hard to get into the Variety Show Stage Band at the end of each session.  This was during a time when jazz was not yet taught in the schools, and highly discouraged in university music schools.  I saw how much kids wanted to play this kind of music – something other than classical or “concert band” repertoire.  The only opportunity they had back then was to play in a stage band, and there was only one chance for this at Music Clinic – and no other experience anywhere else! There were only two other camps for this kind of music at the time – the National Stage Band Camp and the Stan Kenton Stage Band Camp – neither of which are still around.  

I also saw a need for good teachers at all times during a camp.  The Music Clinic’s conductor, a master teacher, would work with the students during the full rehearsal, and then wouldn’t see them again until the next rehearsal.  Sectionals and lessons were given by college students who were not yet “seasoned” teachers.  There was no consistency in teaching, and students didn’t learn as much as they could.  There was a real need for master teachers to work with students at ALL times – especially in small groups and individual lessons. 

So I took these two needs and started talking with people.  I was introduced to some people from UW-Extension who were interested in being a part of the program.  There was also a group of people in the Shell Lake community, the Shell Lake Development Corporation, who worked together to build housing for the students.  I got a group of instructors together with the same ideals that I had.  My family helped me get the initial set of brochures out, and the rest is history!  It took three years of planning, but we finally got everything going with the first set of students arriving in the summer of 1968.

AP: You managed to put together a phenomenal group of faculty for all of your programs – especially the jazz program.  Most of these instructors are still teaching at the Arts Center.  How did you select them initially, and why do they stay?

DA: The faculty I hired for the Arts Center programs needed to be “real” people.  They needed to agree with the philosophy that their primary interest while working at the Arts Center was teaching kids.  Kids are the product, and they need to go home with information they can use the very next day – no matter how much or how little they come to camp knowing.  The core group of faculty that formed over the next several years was very strong.  I found them either by personal acquaintance or through recommendations from other artists.  We all believed in the philosophy and mission of the program, and worked together to make it happen.  Our staff meetings would revolve around what we were doing well, and how can we could make it better.  The faculty became “family,” and looked forward to meeting here again each summer.  As long as the mission and focus of the program stayed the same, they kept coming back.  I ran a tight organization.  The faculty’s job was to teach, and my job was to make that possible. 

AP: The Arts Center has contributed to the education of some amazing artists and music educators.  Who are some of the “success stories” you can think of?

DA:  There are so many, it’s difficult to name names.  Lyle Mays was a student during our first four summers.  There’s a trumpet player out in New York who was a student at the Center and still teaches his own students using the Arts Center’s theory book.  Geoff Keezer was a student here for many summers, and Bill Sears and Greg Keel, two of the Center’s current instructors, were also students here.  Bill Buchholtz, named Wisconsin teacher of the year a while back, started teaching at the jazz camp as Dominic Spera’s college assistant.  As far as faculty go, in addition to the ones already named, Eugene Rousseau, Dominic Spera, Ron Keezer, Bobby Christian, Phil Farkas, Mark McDunn, Dave Pavolka, and many others made the camp what it is today.  Jamey Aebersold taught here during our first summer, and we almost had Doc Severinson lined up to be our guest artist that year!  Every instructor that we had here was a “success story,” so it’s hard to single them out.

AP: In addition to the student programs, the Arts Center also offers continuing education courses for college credit through UW-Eau Claire – music and visual art courses at the current time.  How did these courses get started?

DA: We stared offering courses for music teachers back around 1970.  Kids would come to jazz camp knowing nothing about playing jazz – jazz wasn’t taught in the schools back then.  We would send these kids back to their schools knowing more about jazz than their teachers!  We knew we had to offer something for the teachers as well.  So Dominic Spera put together a course for teachers which utilized each of the jazz faculty members.  This course was offered for credit through UW-Eau Claire.  Music teachers would come to camp during the same week as the students, and our faculty would pull double-duty and take turns teaching the adults how to teach their particular instrument in the jazz idiom.  Dominic pulled it all together and taught that course with much success every year after that.  We also did the same thing with swing choir when we started those camps a few years later. 

From my own experience as a band director I knew that there were things I wished I had been taught before or while I was teaching.  If I felt that way, surely others did, too.  This kind of “grass roots” research was how many of our music courses were started, such as Instrument Repair and MIDI Technology, and I used input from teachers to come up with courses in the visual arts as well.   I also visited other campuses looking for courses that could be offered during the summer on our campus, and I looked for teachers who could inspire others.  The University bought in to just about any idea I felt would work, because it was a low-risk way to try a course to see if it would work on other campuses. 

AP: The Indianhead Arts & Education Center Jazz Camp is still running strong today – we are entering the camp’s 36^th summer!  What do you think keeps it strong?

DA: I can only speak for what I thought made it strong back then – I assume the same holds true today.  The reputation of the camp is what made it work – people knew what to expect with regards to quality, sincerity and mission.  We maintained the philosophy that students are the product.  We kept upgrading the curriculum to meet the changing needs of our students.  Change is inevitable – progress is not.  You need to work at it all the time.

AP: Do you have any final comments with regards to receiving the Distinguished Service Award?

DA: I’m extremely flattered to receive this award.  I’ve spent 28 years at the Arts Center, and three more before that with its development.  I’ve seen many good things happen there, and I’ve seen music education at its finest.  It’s been a pleasure seeing it from the inside looking out.  It’s wonderful to have people recognize these things from the outside as well.  I also want to say that none of this would have ever happened without the support of my wife, Billie, and our family.  I am truly honored to receive this award.

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  HARVEY HALPAUS: DISTINGUISHED JAZZ EDUCATOR: An interview with Karyn Quinn

QUINN:  What was your first introduction to music?

HALPAUS:  I was fortunate to first of all to be accepted as a music major who couldn't read music!  Conrad DeJong, a North Texas graduate, was most patient with teaching me the rudiments of musical notation and trumpet.  I was so fortunate to be surrounded with great teachers and fellow classmates whom shared a passion for jazz.  Among those classmates were David Kiepert, Mike Harrison, and Rick Perkins, who have their own identity in jazz circles. Woodwind instructor Bob Sammarotto taught us about the greatness of Charlie Parker and the bebop era.  Bill Abbott, theory instructor, was a great jazz piano stylist and arranger.  Even with all the jazz connections the bulk of our education was focused on the classical tradition with a strong emphasis on contemporary music.  Most of what I learned was outside of the formal college course structure.  The only jazz courses I took were jazz ensemble.   The UW-RF jazz ensemble, conducted by Charles Dalkert,  was judged the outstanding college ensemble in the very first Eau Claire Jazz Festival.  

QUINN:  Were you in the band then?  Do you remember what music was played?

HALPAUS:  I remember my freshman year not getting in because I couldn't read the charts!  I asked them to play through it once first then I could have done it.  They didn't like that idea!  I did play for the next three years.  Not making jazz ensemble motivated me to learn to read even faster.  We played a lot of Kenton, "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "My Old Flame were my favorites.  We actually met Stan in the Twin Cities at the Prom Ballroom and he let us copy some of his charts.  He was a wonderful man and seemed to care deeply about jazz education.  A lot of high quality charts were hard to buy commercially at the time.  We also had 7 volumes of fake books that had every tune imaginable.  I wonder what happened to those books?  We loved Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Quincy Jones and Gerald Wilson.  Most of their charts were unpublished  at that time so we would find transcriptions or even sometimes transcribe the charts ourselves off the recordings.  We also got a reputation for playing "The New Thing" as it was called then.  Tunes by Gunther Schuller, Donald Erb, Albert Ayler, and others.  The record label ESP had a lot of this "New Thing" experience.  We did quite a bit of experimenting with "free jazz" as it was called.

QUINN:  One of the things I remember my first year in the junior high was that you always were practicing your trumpet in the morning before school started.  If I remember correctly you were practicing for your graduate school program.  What were you working on?

HALPAUS:  I started to pursue my Masters degree at the University of Iowa in 1970, the summer after my first year in Ellsworth.   I attended summer school for 5 summers and received a Masters degree with emphasis in trumpet performance.  My trumpet teacher was the late John Beer.  Again the curriculum was classically based. I performed in the opera orchestra, orchestra, and big band that rehearsed in a Quonset hut.  I had the opportunity to mentor with and hear many great jazz people while at Iowa.   Phil Mattson, Paul Smoker, Bob Levy, Steve Wright, and Tom Davis were among those I worked with.

What led you towards music?

 My father, Ernest Gribble, was an excellent music teacher, and I think I was tempted to follow in his footsteps very early in life. He had a certificate from Lawrence College and, although he spent most of his career teaching in small towns, his work amazed me as a kid. He'd start with a band with 15-20 students and soon the half the school population would be in the band program. I was in the middle of that process for a while when I was in fifth and sixth grade and played trumpet in his budding band at Lena High School.

I think Dad sensed my growing enthusiasm about his work because he began advising me not to be a teacher, especially not a music teacher. My parents thought I was cut out for something better, or at least more lucrative. With the challenge of Sputnik still fresh, my teachers were pushing me to pursue a career in math or science.  I tried to comply but, halfway through my senior year, I decided I HAD to major in music. 

What led you towards education and jazz education?

In terms of education, my father, despite his advice, was certainly my strongest influence.  However, in seeming compliance with his advice, I avoided taking education courses in college and worked, instead, at being a full time composer/arranger - and presumably living in a garet.  I'm sure that was "from the frying [pan into the fire" in terms of my parents' expectations. 

My experiences with jazz education, however, came earlier.  As a freshman, I played in John Reichart's dance band at Sturgeon Bay High School.  Thanks to John we rehearsed regularly and played the Leeds Series charts as well as some John found elsewhere.  Soon I had a lot of big band recordings and my first experience with improvisation.  (About this time, I also found the "Milestones" album in a discount bin in the supermarket and wore it out.)

John left SBHS the next year and the new band director was not a fan of jazz.  He threatened to send me back to study hall if I didn't stop playing jazz in the practice room, but he did allow us to rehearse the dance band on school premises.  I guess I became the band leader by default and I wrote several compositions and arrangements for the group.  I'm afraid they were pretty awful, but it was a great learning experience for me. (Years later, John Reichart introduced me to David Baker after David expressed an interest in my "15/8 for 2" as played  by my Milwaukee Washington high school big band at the Eau Claire Jazz Festival.) 

Bob Smith, at Carroll College, also had a major influence on my eventual work as a jazz educator.  Noting my interest, Bob gave me arranging lessons without credit and even sent assignments to me during the summer.  At the end of my sophomore year, he called Ray Wright and convinced him to let me enroll in the Arranger's Workshop at Eastman school of Music.  Bob had been one of the brightest stars at the Eastman sessions for two years prior.  

At that time, the Arranger's Workshop attracted primarily arrangers who were already in the business.  I was 19 and the next youngest guy was maybe 35 with a lot more experience.  So while the others were having a beer at night after sending their latest chart to a copyist, I was copying parts into the wee hours. It was an exhausting, but incredible experience for me to study with Ray Wright, Manny Album, and Don Hunsberger.  I was absolutely blown away when Ray invited me to enroll in the Arranger's Lab Institute, which was a continuation of the Workshop.   Some offers came out of this, including one from Syracuse University to write charts for their marching band.  I was assured that my charts would get some air play because, "we have this new kid on the football team, O.J. Simpson, who is getting a lot of attention." 

I had Bob Smith to thank for this incredible opportunity and much more. One day, late in my senior year, I tried to thank him profusely as we walked on campus.  Finally, he stopped me, he looked me in the eye, and said, "I'm really glad I could help.  I'll tell you what, if you feel that strongly about it, do the same thing for someone else someday."

What were the conditions under which you began your career? 

I had been living with the threat of the draft and Vietnam for years, and the war was winding down, but time was not on my side.  A student with decent grades could generally get a college deferment for up to five years.  During my four years as an undergrad, I often took more than twenty credits per semester because it seemed like a nor or never situation. I wound up with a ridiculous number of credits and majors in composition and theory, instrumental and vocal music.  In grad school at UW-Madison, I knew I had only one year left so I took the doctoral level courses that sounded the most interesting and managed to get a MM in composition and theory. 

But now time had run out.  UW-Madison had offered me an assistantship to start on my doctorate, but I knew that was out of the question.  There was a tremendous teacher shortage at the time and I landed a job in the Reedsville School District, which got me another year of draft deferment. 

On my first day on the job in 1967 I found myself in charge of music K-12, instrumental and vocal, for the entire system including four grade schools and an intern teacher.  Of course, I still had no education courses other than instrumental techniques.

I survived, and even enjoyed it, but in October of the next year, I was finally drafted.  As it turned out, I was honorably discharged after four months and was back on the streets in January of 1969.

I hoped to go back to graduate school, but, in the mean time, I needed a job.  I had a girlfriend in Milwaukee and, with youthful naivete, I applied to Milwaukee Public Schools.  There was still a teacher shortage and, amazingly,  I got the job at Milwaukee Washington High School the same day.  After one semester, I was so hooked that I finally took education courses during the summer, did my practice teaching on the job, and abandoned my plans for a doctorate forever. 

Two years later, my parents came up from the audience after my Washington HS band finished playing the evening concert at the first UW-Green Bay Jazz Festival.  Dad said," you really do like this, don't you?"  He nodded his approval, smiled and we shook on it. 

How have things improved related to kids learning/playing jazz?

When I started at Washington HS there were few charts available.  At one of the early festivals, our band was the only one that DIDN'T play "Norwegian Wood".  It gave me the opportunity, if not the necessity, to write for the band and I got to air some of my avant-garde leanings.  Students sometimes came to my apartment to help copy parts and a few also became composers. 

When the Basie/Nestico Series came out, it was a godsend.  Now, of course, the task is only to find the best charts and you can even get help on that.  If we'd had those choices in the early 70's, we might not have played "Caroline and her Magic Cello Enter the World of Jazz Rock" (I've forgotten the composer) quite so often. 

Early on, any improvisation instruction I gave my students other than "Listen!" had to be devised by me.  Each year, a different way to present it, or a different group of kids, seemed to necessitate a new set of sheets on the subject

The advent of Jamey Aebersold's play along series made a night and day difference.  Likewise, the abundance of jazz materials has done wonders.  When Jerry Coker's "Elements of the Jazz Language" came out, it was as if  Milwaukee High School of the Arts had added another teacher to the staff.

I am concerned, however, that students, and perhaps some teachers, may get enveloped by methods and texts at the expense of listening to the actual music. 

What has stayed the same?

* The look in a student's eyes when he or she has finally ingrained enough jazz vocabulary to improvise somewhat fluently.

* The kick I get when I hear them do that.

* The difficulty in establishing a high school jazz program that is anything more than a big band rehearsal.

 What are the major challenges facing jazz education from your viewpoint.

 No need to be verbose here (for a change). I think, we need to find the means to teach jazz improvisation and history in all schools, 6-12, if not k-12 - it's our only truly American art form after all!  Then we'll have some real jazz programs.

 What has been a highlight of your career?

 I suppose I should say that being selected to receive Downbeat's Achievement Award in 1998 was the highlight of my career, but I think a lot of us would agree that the real highlights come directly from our students.  Here are a few of my most memorable moments:

 * Being asked by Fred Horn, my future lead alto at WHS, with an eager look on his face, "do you like jazz?'

 * Listening to tenor players Dave Edminster and Rod Woods imitate Trane and Pharoh Sanders under a shower of antiphonal brass on my "15/8 for 2" at WHS.

 * After the second week at Portage High School, a tuba player told me sincerely that he liked "that dynamics stuff".

 * Reading in the Milwaukee Journal that one of my favorite student of all time, Tobias Kaemmerer, had told a reporter that he thought the secret of my success was my "passion for the music".

 * Kim Drake, a Portage trombonist who won a full scholarship to Shell Lake at the Eau Claire Festival that year, asked me not to go to the opposite side of the stage when she soloed with the big band because she couldn't play as well with me that far away.

 * Seeing my MHSA Jazz Lab, with jet lag after landing in Europe four hours earlier, on stage in a Berlin jazz club.

 * After his dazzling sight reading of the the incredibly difficult cadenza which opens "Trane Tracs", a chart I wrote to feature him, Portage alto player, Todd Hill asked me cautiously, "Is that close to what you want?" 

 * Watching my MHSA drummer, Romarcus Jones, manage to get a conversation with, and often a mini lesson from, every drummer within a hundred yards at every major jazz event we attended over three years.

 * Having audience members say that they get a kick out of  watching me as I listen to my combos playing on stage - something about a mother hen image.

 * A Reedsville tuba player who marched slower than the cadence tempo, responded to my frustrated admonition to walk faster by taking bigger steps.

 * Telling my MHSA Jazz Lab one hour after they won 1st place the combo division at the Berklee Jazz Festival that they had also been invited to play in the 2000 North Sea Jazz Festival. 

 * Being invited to come out of retirement and create MYSO Jazz Studies, which offers full scholarships to underprivileged students, for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra,which is housed in the new Milwaukee Youth Arts Center.

 Wow, that was fun, and like many of you, I've got a million of them - memories are a trade off for aging, I guess. 

Thanks again for the honor - it is especially meaningful coming from Wisconsin IAJE!

John Harmon earned the bachelor of music degree with a major in composition from the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in 1957. After graduating from Lawrence, he studied with the legendary pianist Oscar Peterson, worked as a free-lance performer/arranger in New York City, and earned his masters degree in composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studied with the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur. Mr. Harmon returned to Lawrence in 1971, establishing the renowned jazz studies program at the conservatory. In 1974, he was co-founder of the critically acclaimed contemporary nonet known as “Matrix,” with whom he toured extensively and recorded five albums over the next six years. In all, John Harmon’s piano performances can be heard on more than twenty commercially released recordings (Warner Bros., RCA, Sea Breeze, Stellar, Charlie Parker Records, Ultra Nova, etc.), and no fewer than fifteen of these feature his own compositions.