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Honoring the Past, Building the Future: A Conversation with Don Stinson

John Thomson | October November 2021

 
 
  Few school music programs have such a storied history as Joliet Central High School. Among countless honors over 110 years, the Joliet band was the first high school group to perform at the Midwest Clinic in 1947 and will open the 75th Anniversary convention in Chicago this December. Current director Don Stinson recently traced the development of the Joliet tradition and his work as only the fifth director in the history of the program.


What were the origins of the Joliet program?
    In about 1911, J. Stanley Brown, Joliet’s school superintendent, saw a band play at a football game and wanted one in his district. There was considerable discussion about how to justify the cost of the program, and band supporters influenced the decision by declaring the band’s purpose to be playing for athletic events. The answer was an emphatic yes. It is ironic that even then, athletics drove the creation of one of the greatest band programs in existence. The school plunged ahead and ordered fifteen secondhand instruments and spent about three hundred dollars on the band, a considerable sum at the time.
    Next, they needed someone to lead the band. They looked through resumes and discovered a woodworking teacher in the manual training shop who also played cornet, Archie Raymond McAllister. They asked if he could start up a band in addition to his manual training classes. He agreed, using his lunch period for band and receiving no additional pay in the early years.
 
The band must have developed quickly because it won significant awards even in the early years.
    My band director at Joliet, Ted Lega, told me that his mentor, Harry Begian, often said that a band is a direct reflection of its conductor. Those early years at Joliet were a reflection of A.R. McAllister. He was a farm boy who grew up in Jackson Township near Joliet, and his father died while he was a teenager. Before that, A.R. developed an interest in music. He was making instruments out of materials he found on the farm, and eventually he decided that he wanted a cornet.
    His parents could not afford the cornet but instead gave him a suckling pig to raise. He raised the pig, entered it in a contest, and ended up winning. He used the prize money to purchase a cornet. There are so many stories about McAllister that all illustrate his tremendous drive. If he wanted something, he made a huge effort to get it done. In the early days of the Joliet band, they did not even have music, so he took a cornet book and transposed the exercises, so all of the students could play. There was no space for the band to meet, so they rehearsed in the woodworking shop. Their first lesson was making their own music stands. Within ten or fifteen years they were national champions six times over.
    I have always heard that McAllister was a good musician and an even better organizer. He worked on things that we take for granted today, pushing to improve the legitimacy of marching bands and simplifying the standard instrumentation for band contests. Many people do not realize that back in those early band contest you could not even participate in certain classes without six Sousaphones or a harp. He was not an expert on every instrument and stressed the importance of private lessons for his students. Over time, many of his students started taking trains to study with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
    Even as the band grew in popularity with sold-out concerts, McAllister always viewed it as a service organization. I do not believe that he ever served in the military, but he definitely took a military approach to the band. In some of the years he taught, students were being drafted or enlisting in the military during wartime. When anyone was scheduled to leave for military service, bandmembers were notified the day before. The band would meet at the train station at 6:00 am to play patriotic tunes to send off the draftees. I always took that story to mean that even though he was a strict bandmaster, he also cared about his students.


A.R. McAllister and John Philip Sousa

How did McAllister meet Sousa, who praised the Joliet band as one of the best in the country?

    The national band contests in the early 20th-century were very interesting. Bands from all over the country went through a gauntlet of prepared pieces, sightreading, and a marching band portion with parade formations and things like that. These contests allowed McAllister to meet some of the leading figures of the era. We have one photo with Captain Charles O’Neill, Edwin Franko Goldman, and John Philip Sousa getting haircuts in Joliet when the contest was held here. There is also video of Sousa stepping on the podium in Joliet which was a huge point of pride for the program.


The 1935 Joliet Band


A few of the band’s many honors and awards.

One of the most amazing milestones for the band was a nine-day stretch of performances, essentially as the house band, at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. What is the history of that engagement?

    The Joliet band was in high demand and could pick and choose what engagements to accept. The Radio City Music Hall event was a big deal and required fundraising to make the trip.
    If you look at the photo from that week, you can see every band member playing up in the balcony without music stands. During rehearsals for the show, the producer said they were having trouble seeing the band members and asked if they could memorize the music and play without stands. You just can’t do that to young musicians on the spot. McAllister looked at the band members, however, and they all nodded at him. They memorized the show and played it flawlessly for nine days. They received such acclaim that they were asked to stay for another nine days, but the school board said no.
    During the run, there was a guy in the audience named Charles Belsterling who was the vice president of U.S. Steel. Belsterling hunted down McAllister afterwards and told him that he wrote music on the side. Joliet is known as City of Stone and Steel, and Belsterling offered to adapt one of his pieces for the band. He adapted a piano piece called The Ambassador and expanded it into March of the Steelmen, which was premiered in Joliet and became our school march.

After McAllister’s passing in 1944, how did the program change?
    When McAllister died, they kept the job open for about a year before hiring a young guy from Pennsylvania named Bruce Houseknecht, who led the program until 1969. Houseknecht was an accomplished arranger and transcriber best known for his arrangement of Salvation Is Created. We have the manuscript for that here at the school from when he was working on it.
    Houseknecht arrived with the unenviable task of following A.R. McAllister, the father of the high school band. I understand it was nerve-racking for him at first, but he grew into the role and continued to build Joliet’s tradition. He raised the level of playing so high that the Illinois state and local contests had to limit to number of Joliet members in the honor bands. If you look back at the old score sheets, Joliet players in that period frequently earned perfect scores.
    Houseknecht’s group received the first high school invitation to the Midwest Clinic in 1947, but he got sick right before the performance. The grade school conductor, Charles S. Peters, had to conduct in his absence. Peters was also an outstanding conductor and took Joliet Grade School bands to the Midwest six or seven times.
    At this point there were two bands at the school with about 85 to 100 students each and some swing bands. One of the most famous students was 1948 graduate and composer Ron Nelson, who played string bass in the band and graduated in only three years. We have some of his handwritten student compositions in the files.
    In 1964, facing rising student enrollment in the district, the school board voted to open up two additional campuses, and the original school became Joliet Central High School. This change cut the size of the band program in half, and Houseknecht struggled with it. He left Joliet to teach at the Eastman School of Music in 1969.
 

This led to your future mentor, Ted Lega, taking over the program.
    Ted Lega was a Joliet graduate. His dad, Henry T. Lega, also played in the band and later formed a professional big band called the Teddy Lee Orchestra that still performs today.
    During his high school years, Ted loved the band so much he did not want to leave after graduation. Joliet Junior College, the oldest community college in the country, was housed in the high school for many years, so Lega took about ninety credit hours there and continued to help with the band
    At some point, Houseknecht told Lega that he had to leave and get his degree if he ever wanted to come back and take over the band. Lega attended Roosevelt University in Chicago and came back to take over the program when Houseknecht left for Eastman in 1969.
    Lega was in his early 20s at the time, and all of the students knew him from his previous work with the band. He also faced the daunting job of following a very successful director, particularly after the opening of two additional high schools. The program turned around quickly, and Lega’s groups were selected as the Illinois Superstate honor band 14 out of 16 times.
    During Lega’s time at the school, there were still two bands: a larger, auditioned symphonic band with 75-80 players and a second band with about 50 players. Ted always loved the romantic, old symphonic band literature, and that amount of players lent itself to that sound. It could be a powerful sound but also reserved as needed.
    Lega was the only director, so he also led the marching, jazz, and pep bands. He also faced an economic downturn that began during the 1980s in Joliet that made the job significantly harder. Fewer students could afford private lessons, and attendance sometimes was a problem. One benefit of the larger size symphonic band was that a concert could still take place even with missing players. I have worked in programs with a strict wind ensemble of 42 or 44 players; if five kids were missing, it was a much larger percentage of the group.
    After Mr. Lega retired, the baton passed to one of his former students, Mike Fiske, who led the program to great success from 2002 to 2016. Prior to taking the baton at Joliet Central, he directed high school bands in Illinois and Indiana. Mike did a great job of establishing a spirit and camaraderie in the band. The band earned many honors under Fiske’s direction and was named Grand Champions at Illinois State University in 2003.


Bruce Houseknecht (2nd director)


Ted Lega (3rd director)

How are you preparing for the band’s performance at this year’s Midwest Clinic?
    As the first high school band to perform at the Midwest in 1947, we received a nice invitation to appear at the 75th Anniversary convention this December. Unlike a typical performance at Midwest, we will be kicking off the show by playing at the entrance to the exhibit hall. We have some exciting surprises planned. While there is some pressure to get a performance ready for December, we are making the extra effort because it is the 110th anniversary of the band, and we want to honor the incredible support of our alumni. Because our concert is not a typical Midwest appearance, we have fewer rules and plan to include some of our alums who attended the convention as students.

How has the Joliet community changed over the years?
    When I grew up here, it sometimes felt like my family was middle class, and other times we faced significant issues with poverty. We have an increasing number of families facing difficult times today. I am 37, and this job has been my dream since I was fourteen. When I was lucky enough to land this position in 2016, I knew how much work it would be to maintain the program’s traditions and serve this community. I really wanted to give back and take care of it.
    We have a wonderful group of students, but sometimes the family resources are not there, whether it is money or time. Going back to Ted Lega’s time, we have had no instrument fees and have tried to eliminate barriers to participating in music. We bring in teachers to provide private and group lessons for students who may never have experienced them. We also have more students moving into the district who did not start on an instrument in grade school. Although I am the only band director, our older students also do what they can to help these less experienced high school players thrive in the program.

How has the band alumni association supported the program over the years?
    If you imagine a Texas town that is really into football and has huge numbers return for homecoming, that is how band is here. After students graduate, they come back and always want to play. Our alumni keep playing their instruments and attending our concerts. When we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the band, we had enough players for two alumni bands. The alumni association makes sure that our students get what they need, whether it is pizza at a game or help with equipment scholarships. While some graduates are music teachers, others are software engineers, lawyers, and nurses. They show current students that you can stay involved with music regardless of your future path. (The alumni association has a great website of current activities and band history at jthsbaa.org.)

Speaking of history, how would you describe the space where you rehearse every day?
    It is a bit funny to enter a building made of stone and marble that dates to the late 1800s. The band room is at the heart of the building, and as you approach the room, there are three hallways of trophies going back to the earliest national championship. We have McAllister’s hat, baton, and gloves under lock and key. To enter the band room, you go through double doors and down a ramp. It always feels like entering a cathedral. The band room now is located in our old auditorium, so there are plaster walls, marble on the bottom and a wood stage to play on. As you sit on the stage, it feels like you are performing and that always kind of heightens the focus of our students The materials used in  the room gives us a little bit of a ring that helps us think about the sound that we want when we are on stage somewhere. It is about four stories tall with a very high ceiling. Behind us there is a balcony that holds the band library. It may be the largest high school band library in the country with 5,000 unique band pieces dating back to the early 1900s. There are also practice rooms on the side.
    On the back of the wall is a line of portraits of the four previous directors. In 110 years, we have only had five directors, including me. For a time I thought the portraits were a little self-serving, but then it hit me. These picture reflect various periods in band history. Whenever students return years later, they immediately go to their director’s portrait and think about their time in the program. When the students or I look up during rehearsal and see those photos, it keeps you in check a little bit. My mentor, Mr. Lega passed away in May 2021, so his picture has even more significance for me and the students in the program who knew him.
    We also have the original cast iron and wood podium that probably dates back to the start of the program. I also have the same desk used by A.R. McAllister when he was starting off here. I get a little nervous sometimes on the ancient podium, but since it has lasted since 1912, it should have a few more years left in it.   

 
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Changing Practices


    We love our traditions and history but also are not afraid to change things. One significant adjustment was eliminating the home practice requirement. Many students live in rented homes and apartments, and some worked more than full-time hours during the pandemic. That limited the amount of time available for practicing and rehearsals after school. This led to a divide in the band, as some students began to advance more quickly than others. We started addressing this several years ago.
    Even though the Joliet band had this great tradition of private lessons, I talked to the students about not requiring home practice anymore. The band period bumps up to a study hall, and the school has always been great about letting us rehearse during that period.
    We have also changed our rehearsal structure to include 75% on technique and fundamentals and 25% on literature. In my student days, Ted Lega did not do any warm-ups, noting that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra plays a tuning note and then starts playing. That worked for him, but I needed a different approach. We have seen some great results, and students have been happier. Instead of being required practice, many have found intrinsic motivation to do it on their own.
    We try to make rehearsals a bit like an athletic practice. I tell them that on the basketball team, you are not just playing a scrimmage game the whole time. You work on specific drills and techniques. We also use the analogy of weight lifting, where certain compound movements can exercise more than one muscle group at once. We do the same thing with various musical exercises to work on tone, tuning, and articulation at the same time. It allows us to get more done in less time.  



 
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    Don Stinson was a 2002 graduate of Joliet Central High School and went on to earn a Master of Music Education degree from Northern Illinois University, a Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at VanderCook College of Music, and an Associate’s Degree from Joliet Junior College. GIA Publications recently published his book High Needs, Monumental Successes: Teaching Music to Low-Income and Underserved Students.