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Remembering Rogie

Dan Blaufuss | November 2015


    In high school, the band room was my refuge, and I spent lunches and study halls down there all four years. When I received the news in August that my band director, Tom Rogiewicz, had passed away, it brought back a flood of memories about what made band so special to me, and all the ways Mr. Rogiewicz, or Rogie, as so many people called him, contributed to that.

Bach’s Concerto for Violin in A Minor. Mr. Rogiewicz was slated to play it on marimba with the Rockford Symphony Orchestra, of which he was a member for 35 years, and every morning one year I would walk in to hear him practicing it. I can still sing the first dozen or so measures. He never stopped playing, and he always found time to practice, even though he was both the band director and the football coach.

Humor through volunteerism. At the beginning of each year, Mr. Rogiewicz would ask for a volunteer from the wind players to march glockenspiel during football season. Although it was always implied that he was hoping for one of the woodwind players to volunteer, it was tradition for the entire low brass section to volunteer for this position. It was also a tradition for the low brass to be graciously declined.
This tradition backfired on me midway through my senior year, when we desperately needed a first trumpet for pep band one night. Trying to be smart, I chimed in that I would do it, assuming that Rogie wouldn’t move his only tuba player to first trumpet. I was wrong; he took me up on it. I think I made it through three songs before my chops gave out, at which point, Rogie asked with a twinkle in his eye whether now would be a good time for Louie, Louie and its trumpet solo. We skipped that tune that evening, and I (mostly) learned not to be so quick to volunteer for things I was unprepared for.

Letting students try. I started learning all the other instruments as a freshman, beginning with bassoon, something I had wanted to play in fifth grade but was too small for at the time. Mr. Rogiewicz let me try, but told me that I was needed in the low brass section, and that wouldn’t change unless I took up the bassoon full time and exclusively. Bassoon proved not to be my forte, but Mr. Rogiewicz gave me the same freedom to learn clarinet, trombone, saxophone, flute, and oboe as I got around to each. He even (admittedly, somewhat reluctantly) let me take a contrabass clarinet solo to contests as a junior. If memory serves, I got the only perfect rating of my high school career on that contra solo.

The alto clarinet. All my school’s bass clarinets were always in use, so when I wasn’t fooling around on contrabass clarinet, I played alto. Mr. Rogiewicz must have liked the instrument as much as I did, because we always had a full-time alto clarinet player. My senior year he commented to me that if we had had another tuba player, he would have considered making me the second-chair alto clarinet player for contests just to boost the sound.

Teaching improvisation. There were two of us in a music theory class my junior year, and when it came time to put basic jazz theory into practice by improvising over 12-bar blues, Rogie sat down at the piano and said, “for your first attempt at improvisation, you can play any note you want, as long as it’s C.” I haven’t advanced too far beyond that point even today, but I never forgot the unspoken lesson that good improvisation is more than just an endless stream of notes.

    High school was difficult for me; the shy, quiet students – as I was – don’t always have the best of times, and as the young sometimes feel a need to do, I cut ties and left town after graduation, only ever returning to visit family. I don’t think I saw Mr. Rogiewicz more than two of three times after graduation, something I sorely regret now that it is too late. Without his influence, dedication, and willingness to give students measured freedom, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Thank you, Rogie.