#BecauseOfThom

If you’re familiar at all with the little universe of the Minuteman Marching Band, you know that the word impact is most commonly associated with its late director, George Parks. Usually at high volume levels.

But it’s arguable that it should also be linked to another University of Massachusetts band fixture, albeit in a quieter way – ironic, considering the particularly thunderous section of the band which this gentleman has led.

Thirty years ago this very afternoon, I acquired the memory of a lifetime: the first time I ever got to hear and see the Minuteman Marching Band play an arrangement I’d written – in public, in uniform, in the heat of halftime battle.

“Bandstand Boogie” it was. And not too many brass/woodwind arrangers get to have their first collegiate arrangement bolstered by a drumline written and directed by an eventual DCI Hall-of-Famer. When that happens, it almost doesn’t matter what notes you write, because people will be knocked senseless by all that percussiveness and then they’ll clap, assuming the rest of it must have been decent.

And the major reason why I was presented with the opportunity to write that chart for a 300-plus member college band, my first time out, was the confidence placed in me by its Assistant Director, whom George Parks had doggedly recruited to join the UMMB’s instructional staff a decade earlier.

“This chart would, of course, be the first of many,” said Thomas P. Hannum to this fledgling marching band arranger hopeful, during a pre-season band camp rehearsal, and I had literally no words, apart from a mumbled “…cool!” At that point, “Bandstand’s” first public presentation was still theoretical, and Thom’s assessment was based largely on the pile of thirty-second basketball-band timeout tunes I’d penned since my junior year at UMass. I could hardly speak; but I could think, and what I thought was, “I am one unreasonably lucky feller.” One could do much worse than to be supported by Thom Hannum.

A year later, I got to collaborate with him on a similar “featured-drumline, sideline-jazz-band, marching band running around behind it and occasionally chiming in” production, the frenetic “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?”

And from there, Thom’s drumline features just got crazier and crazier … becoming a genre unto themselves. The UMMB has become known for many things; but undeniably, one of its crown jewels is the ferocious combination of technical brilliance and high entertainment that is the UMass Drumline.

And then 2010 came. And with it, calamity piled on top of what was already destined to be a momentous Minuteman Band road-trip challenge.

As has been chronicled, Thom, assisted by his able staff and student leadership, propped that band up after the unthinkable: its director passing away suddenly en route to the University of Michigan. Propped it up during a September weekend road trip that turned into an experience described by one social media observer as “the balancing act of a professional life”. Then propped the band up during another month into a Homecoming that was by turns epic, joyous, and sad as a thousand alumni descended upon Amherst needing to be organized. Then propped it up during the remainder of that season of a band struggling to mourn and move ahead simultaneously. And then propped it up – through the welcoming of a new director, a new headquarters, and new uniforms – for another decade.

Over that decade, Thom’s drumline continued to establish itself as one of the premier percussion sections in the country. On a chilly Thanksgiving morning in New York City, UMass percussionists effectively re-set the standard for what participating bands were supposed to do in front of the Macy*s building, before the NBC cameras.

Thom’s work has been immortalized in many forms beyond those sixty seconds of “Big Noise from Winnetka” dancelike movement.

The instructional and creative staffs of myriad Drum Corps International ensembles and college marching bands are littered with his former students – and a number of those former students (Nick Angelis, Jim Ancona, Colin McNutt, and more besides) have themselves become household names in the marching percussion activity.

His teaching persona is legendary. To paraphrase a colleague of mine, the Hannum style of percussion instruction can be termed “excellence through brevity”.

Several years ago, one of Thom’s former drumline members created a series of social-media memes that featured Hannum sayings that, indeed, were brief and pithy. One of my most successful Facebook shares was a meme featuring one of Thom’s slightly sardonic corporate-endorsement portrait photos, surrounded by this reportedly authentic assessment of his drumline’s playing: “That Went From Groove to Vietnam In About Two Beats”.

At a drumline-only rehearsal that I attended not long after I graduated from UMass in the late 1980s, the UMass battery was flagging a bit during one maneuver. From his perch at the top of the bleachers, Thom quietly suggested, “Guys. Play faster. Move faster. Do everything you know how to do … Faster.”

During the next run-through, there was marked improvement, discernible even to my untrained percussion eye and ear. (Most of the time, Thom’s standards were so high that if there was a mistake, in no way was I going to spot it anyway.)

No music-education pedagogy instructor of mine ever recommended “guys… figure it out” or “guys… that ain’t it” … or “guys… do better.” as a teaching technique. But it has gotten irrefutable results over the last four decades.

In particular, it has yielded championship results that are quite literally legendary in the drum corps activity. On the technical-proficiency side of the spectrum, Hannum drumlines backstopped UMMB fixture Michael Klesch’s brass arrangements on the way to three consecutive 1980s DCI world championships for the Garfield Cadets – the third of which featured DCI’s only perfect percussion caption score ever.

And in a moment of general-effect success for the ages, the first-place finish of Carolina Crown’s “E=MC²” show (also penned by Thom and Michael) in 2013 caused me to leap onto social media and ask, “Okay, here’s a (not-) trivia question for DCI historians: offhand, can you think of any other team of brass and percussion arrangers who have won world championships together … with two different corps? … in two different decades?”

And the very week of the Crown triumph, in the comments section of an article which ranked UMass at the top of the list of college bands in the MAC Division-I football conference, came a tribute which encapsulated Thom Hannum’s thunderous impact on the halftime-pageantry game, as well as the benefit he has bestowed on us as a UMass Minuteman Band community, as he steps away from his day-to-day role at the head of the pit and battery starting this year:

I can’t argue with UMass at #1. Thom Hannum, music prof at UMass for the past 30 years, is a legend. If drum corps had a Mt. Rushmore he’d be on it. It’s hard to overstate the impact Hannum, and in turn UMass, has had on the marching band genre.

Yes, his achievements are towering; and his on-field personality can seem intimidating to percussionists and non-percussionists alike, as he espouses the merits of “excellence through hard work and focus”, and “how you do anything is how you do everything”. But what I have been fortunate and grateful to also take away from my experience with Thom is how dogged he is, in his efforts to look after his former students.

I wonder, how many former UMass drumline members have gone on to teaching posts of their own, at the high school, college and competitive-drum-corps levels? Probably legions. Those folks carry with them Thom’s training and philosophies (and yes, they’d have to be great players, to get into his drumlines to start with); but also they are carried in part by his encouragement and support. Most likely, if any of them would ask Thom if he’d mind coming to one of their rehearsals and working with their groups, he’d agreed to it in a heartbeat.

Which brings me back to the start of this extended thought. Again, I was fortunate that Thom thought I was worth supporting, as I started arranging for marching bands. No way are my tunes played in Amherst or Allentown, in Newark or Indianapolis or anywhere, without Thom as a character reference.

That Thom took on the job of making a little speech, as the major part of a brief ceremony that inducted me into the Minuteman Band Hall of Fame a few years ago … well, that’s something that I will always keep as an amazing, unequaled moment in my professional life. I suppose that many more people than just me would be willing to launch a revised version of that social-media storytelling hashtag of some years ago that might go something like, #BecauseOfTPH.

Because of Thom … UMass marching percussion is on very solid ground.

I’m pleased to suggest that I am, too.

Thanks, Thom. For everything. And congratulations.

The 31-Day Blog Challenge, Day 3: What’s In a Name? -or- The Best-Laid Plans…

31 DAY BLOG CHALLENGE QUESTION, DAY THREE: “Meaning of Your Business Name”

Well, to the extent that it’s a business … in the formal sense … in the sense that it might cross over the line into being something with “Inc.” on the end of it … in the sense that, in a previous decade, one might advertise by actually finding a physical shingle and hanging it out somewhere …

It’s a little tiny thing. Hardly worth considerin’.

HammertonMusic.

You’d think there wouldn’t be much to tell. Last name … activity … voila.

 

Last fall, I suddenly got all amped up about buildin’ me a website, so as to more properly (and slightly more loudly) give people the idea that I like to write musical arrangements for bands and choirs, etc., etc., and here’s how to get in touch with me if you’d like to chat about that subject.

The process of building that website, with the able assistance of an outfit called Weebly, caused me to consider a few topics a lot more comprehensively … on the logic that whatever website I put together would suddenly become not just a contact point, but something of a position paper. “Here’s where I stand on a few subjects,” and all that. Don’t know me? After perusing the website, to some professional degree you will.

I learned about landing pages. They’re the webpages whose design needs to cause people to wonder what else is on the website, since this page is so attractive and informative. I learned (somewhat) about the concept of brevity – not my strong suit – since who wants to land on the landing page and be hip-deep in thirteen paragraphs?

No self-aggrandizing website worth its salt lacks webpages with names like “Biography” and “About Me” and “But Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About You, What Do YOU Think Of Me?” So, yes, I’ve got one of those, and a page full of “News” – where am I next plying my musical trade? Y’know, just in case anyone anywhere is breathlessly wondering; the likelihood of which is debatable … but fortune favors the prepared, dahling.

And, so as to convince people that this website all about me is in fact not all about me … a page full of links to websites of other musical people and organizations and companies that I admire, do business with, or want to help promote.

What musical services does my website detail? Musical arrangements, which I’ve been doing for approximately -ever. Musical composition, which I’ve only just started to dabble in (and the difference between composition and assembly of sounds is a topic for another post). Musical transcription score preparation – what? – well, I’ve got this trusty piece of music notation software that can make music actually look attractive; perhaps that can help somebody somewhere.

The Weebly people offered me the opportunity to include a blog section on my website, and so of course I took them up on it. –Wait. Don’t I already have a blog that I have seemed to ignore quite a lot in this past half a year? Y’know … this one? Well, yes; but the HammertonMusic blog would be strictly about musical arranging and composition and my musical projects and strictly musical topics.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

Finally … partly out of self-protection, but partly because it’s important … a page went up regarding intellectual property issues – copyright clearances and permissions and all those legal issues that can send your burgeoning musical-arranging career spiraling down into the canyon if you’re not careful.

And in putting that page together, I started to do lots more research even than I had done previously. Which was at least some … although not as much as you’d think would be necessary. Fortunately for me, most of the people who historically have hired me to write field shows for their bands have taken care of acquiring the proper legal okay to have this or that tune arranged for their ensembles. Thus I have not had to delve into the nasty but necessary world of (as I titled that legal-issues webpage) “How Not To Be Sued.”

At that point, I discovered that the website wasn’t just to advertise, to hawk my wares, to hang out my shingle. A lot of it became the online representation of things that I actually believed about musical expression, and creativity, and other issues that were not at the forefront of my mind when I’d started the project.

 

As it has turned out, since the early fall, when the website went live, life has careened on. A couple of new projects have arisen … and I do not in any way downplay the importance of those projects … but they have caused me to focus in other directions than the “edit your website” button on Weebly.com.

So the website has gotten only sporadic updates. This, in a world where constant updates are highly recommended (so that returning visitors feel like the site is worth returning to).

Well, to paraphrase the founder of the particular denomination wherein I do my church-giggin’ … the website is continually “moving on toward perfection”.

But I was struck by how much the process of building the site made me reconsider a few musical things … come at them from slightly different approach vectors … and probably forced me to get better at a few of those musical things. We’ll see. But for now … I have to get back to work on that really cool marching show concept for the fall.

More on that here, in a bit.

Or more properly, more on that over at HammertonMusic.com, in the upcoming weeks and months.

(Focus, Rob. Focus.)

Grand Pause

So, here’s the thing about the new Star Wars movie that comes out tomorrow …

For various reasons, I won’t end up seeing the thing until it’s been in theaters for about ten days.

Weep not for me.  I have a roof over my head, and food in the ol’ icebox.

But aside from my desperate attempts to avoid spoilers for a week and a half (and still somehow remain connected to my friends on social media) … and aside from my insane curiosity about things like, “who is this Daisy Ridley running-toward-exploding-spaceships character?  And who is this John Boyega heavily-perspiring-stormtrooper character?  And is there truth to the rumor that Han Solo and Princess Leia didn’t actually stay together, in this new Abrams-verse?  And does Luke Skywalker ever take off that hoodie?  And how in the world did they build that insanely fast rolling droid thingy?” … and all of those questions undoubtedly will transform into the dumbest questions imaginable, come January …

Aside from those mere trifles, the real suspense for me is … what it was when the last batch of prequel things came out, sixteen years ago:

What’s the score going to be like?

Even now, nearly forty years since Star Wars became A Thing, the same John Williams is at the helm of the Star Wars film music juggernaut as was in charge .  Give or take an animated series (i.e. “Star Wars: Clone Wars” spent its first three seasons unsure about whether to avoid the classic sound or embrace it; and the more recent “Star Wars Rebels” has done a very nice job of honoring the good ol’ movie scores, and in some cases gleefully ripping them right off) … the Williams sound has been the sound of the Star Wars franchise.

He and the other handful of composers who have tackled Star Wars projects over the last four decades … have largely been creating new arrangements of that great old material.

The prequel scores, I thought, had the great potential to “reverse-engineer” the original scores (just as the stories were reverse-engineering Darth Vader’s life story) – in addition to being opportunities for more fun treatments of the music that has become, for some of us, like the artistic version of family.

Let’s find out where all those leitmotifs and themes got their start!, I thought. … Ah well.

With the exception of a really clever melodic turn at the end of what was essentially a “kindergarten with ominous foreshadowing” theme for Episode I’s young Anakin Skywalker, the occasional “Force motif” quote, and a marvelous re-setting of the Imperial March as the clone troops inexorably head off to war at the end of Episode II … the music was mostly fresh and new and struck me as the end result of a head-on collision between Harry Potter and Hook, or at least those films’ incidental music.

Well, can you forgive a composer for having a compositional style that has evolved somewhat over forty years of work?

To my eye and ear, the musical scores sold Episodes I, II and III as nearly nothing else did.  And yes, there were blasts of identifiably “Star Wars-y” music.  But that Star Wars Main Title theme only appeared a handful of times in the prequel trilogy, and … I don’t know about anyone else, but (as chronicled in a previous post hereabouts) I thought the Episode IV music had a certain bombastic charm, and I kinda missed it.

It was as if the extended family had come to visit after being away for a long time, and they were sorta recognizable, but there were more than enough things different about them that we had to get reacquainted again.  And it didn’t feel quite the same.

Conceivably, Williams may just have been reacting compositionally to what he was seeing, in the final cuts of the prequels: [1] a story that inevitably will end badly, and darkly; and [2] an editing pace to these films that mirrors the accelerating pace of American entertainment in the years since Episode IV – i.e. there’s barely any time to linger on a visual, or bask in a great extended musical moment.  The goal of a film composer is to reflect and amplify what’s on the screen; and so Williams did.

So, since “The Force Awakens” has threatened to reference the Episode IV-V-VI story and characters so much more directly than the prequel trilogy …

… the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance in Episode VII has the potential to be the world’s most Wagnerian-scale cover band in recorded history.

Whatever it is, I’ll listen to, enjoy, and in all likelihood lay out bucks for, Johnny Williams’ latest hits.  He is arguably at least the greatest living American film composer.  Guy knows a little somethin’ about cinematic sound.

But I’m really hoping he goes back to his Star Wars roots, if you will, on this one.  I hope the family looks more like it used to.

We’ll see.

Can’t wait.