This is the second of three essays about musician and composer Chris Brubeck‘s teaching in Wilbur Cross High School’s music classes from Feb. 27 to Mar. 5 as part of his artist in residency program with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. The first essay, written by Brubeck, ran yesterday. The third essay, written by Lewis Nelken, a junior at Wilbur Cross, will run tomorrow. Stephanie Persiani is a sophomore at Wilbur Cross and plays trumpet in the band and jazz ensemble. She is on the band leadership team and is trumpet section leader.
I was able to spend a lot of time with jazz musician Chris Brubeck. His father, Dave Brubeck, was a famous jazz musician, and he followed in his footsteps.
In the time I spent with him I learned so much about his life and what it’s like to be a professional jazz musician. It was really impressive because almost every person that we would name, he has played with. When our jazz band told him about a song we are working on, “Heat of the Day,” composed by Pat Metheny, Mr. Brubeck told us the story of how, when he lost all his musicians to a musical, he gave a 15-year-old Mr. Metheny his first professional gig. Hearing about all of his adventures and experiences, like playing with famous singers and musicians, and composing his own music, relit the fire inside me to continue playing music.
Usually in schools, they tell you the bad parts of trying to be a professional musician, but instead we were shown a professional who helped us to want to become what he was.
I was lucky enough to be in three different types of classes with him — jazz, band, and music theory. During music theory we were able to hear his stories of all of the experiences he had throughout his childhood life at music school, to all of his experiences as a musician. He taught us about how he begins his compositions, giving us little tricks he used to get us started. During jazz band we were able to not only show him the songs we’ve been working on, but we also were able to play with him. He taught us a lot about improvisation, and he would take turns with each of us improvising, which was super amazing. He helped everyone in the band with remembering the blues scale and basing all of our improvisation on that, making it easier. In band, we were able to play with him each time he came in.
The last time he came in we were lucky enough to play “Ghost Walk,” a song composed by him, with him there. This was probably the highlight of the week for me because he was so normal about it, and was able to give us some really nice feedback on it, like paying attention to certain dynamics that he heard differently in his head. He also was really funny about it, warning us to be careful of a key change that happened in the song, saying that he missed that too.
When he came to our school, I was excited to meet a famous jazz musician, but I was worried that he would be stoic and patronizing, due to his immense talent. I was definitely wrong though, because he was just a cool guy who came to our classes to share his knowledge with us. He was the guy who stayed after to talk to me about my experiences and made me feel as if I were a famous musician. He was very down-to-earth and just a fun guy to be around. I’m very thankful for the time I was able to spend with him, and it will be upsetting to not have him in our classes anymore. He really did help all of the classes, but our band especially. Usually we don’t have much cause to try to be as impressive as possible but when he was there we did and we sounded way better than our regular rehearsal. Due to this, our practices even without Mr. Brubeck are better because he has relit the fire in the class, too, and now everyone wants to sound as good as they did.
He helped all of the classes he was in, and really helped me. I am so thankful that Wilbur Cross was able to have someone like him come in and take the time to teach us and to sit down with us and talk to us about his life and try to better us as musicians. It was a really fun week that I will remember, and have really benefited from.
