(1936-2025)
Composer and educator Jared Spears passed away on September 18, 2025. He published more than 300 works and was a frequent guest conductor. He taught at Arkansas State University from 1967 until retirement in 1999. The interview below was conducted by Andrew Balent and first published in the September 1987 issue of The Instrumentalist. We reprint it in tribute and remembrance of Jared Spears’ distinguished musical legacy.
September 1987
An Interview with Jared Spears
By Andrew Balent
Jared Spears is a composer with the unique ability to write music for bands on all levels, from elementary to college. He is professor of music at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, teaching composition, orchestration, theory, and history. As resident composer at the university, Spears received its Outstanding Faculty Member Award in 1980.
Spears’s best-known works include Momentations, Wind River Portrait, Alleluias, The Kimberly Overture, Meditation and Festiva, and Canticles. In addition to a busy composing schedule, he appears at other universities as a guest lecturer and conducts band festivals, camps, and clinics in the United States, Canada, and Norway. At the 1986 Midwest Clinic, I talked with Spears about his background, his career, and his musical philosophy.
Did you come from a musical family?
My mother’s people were hardworking German immigrant farmers, not necessarily musically inclined. On the other hand, my father’s family was very involved in music and other areas of show business. My father was in radio years before I was born; he was involved in writing for The Shadow and other programs. His sister was a light opera singer who appeared in shows with Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby, and Jack Benny. Another sister was an opera singer in New York, and my grandfather was one of the best tenors in Boston. My father told me that Caruso used to come to my grandfather’s home and sing duets with him.
How did you get started in music?
When I was in the eighth grade, a man from Lyon and Healy came to our school in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and asked for volunteers to study music and form a band. Everyone paid 25 cents for a weekly lesson. I started playing drums, and by the end of the year, I had formed a little jazz group. All I had was a snare drum and a cymbal, but slowly I acquired more instruments until I eventually wound up with a complete set. I joined the concert band in high school and was just what we called a Bb drummer until one day, when I was playing cymbals, the director, Fred Schmoyer, suggested that I raise and flip them around at the audience. Being gutsy, I let the cymbals fly on a solo and twirled them a little. Afterwards, some people in the audience told me it was really great.
My whole personality changed as a result of that: I became outgoing – aggressive you might say. I liked the idea of being a writer, perhaps a novelist or a songwriter. My young mind figured that it would take a year to write a novel but only a week to write a song, so I decided to become a composer. I started writing some simple dance band arrangements. I didn’t know that you had to transpose for certain instruments; it wasn’t necessary for snare drums! The arrangements sounded horrendous.
Did you have any lessons in composing, or did you learn it on your own?
I took theory in high school, with the goal of writing music for dance and concert bands. After studying four-part harmony, I attempted a piece, but I made the mistake of attaching a different chord to every note of the melody – even the eighth and sixteenth notes. We played it, and it was really horrible. After that episode, I was frustrated, but eventually I started studying on my own what other composers had done. There were no full scores available then for most dance band music, so I took the parts and wrote out scores. If there was a recorded tune I liked, I would take it off the record, producing a score and parts. In this way, I learned a lot about orchestration, voicing, and form.
I continued writing for dance band and eventually decided to become a band director. As a senior, I wrote a simple march for the concert band. Fortunately, it no longer exists, but it did sound much better than my earlier attempts, and it gave me the confidence to continue writing.
Were there any teachers or other musicians who were particularly important in your own musical development?
Fred Schmoyer, the band director at Arlington Heights High School actually got me to write my first piece for band. Later, at Northern Illinois University, Maurice Weed got me interested in the music of Debussy, Roy Harris, Stravinsky, and other 20th-century composers. Blythe Owen, my composition teacher at the Cosmopolitan School of Music in Chicago, grounded me in basic forms and developed my perspective of the craft. When I arrived at Northwestern University to work on a doctorate, I had just scratched the surface of the possibilities of sound and form.
I was fortunate to have two different composition teachers there. Anthony Donato made me write in the style of the time – twelve-tone, free atonality, and so on, but he always kept me thinking within practical, not outlandish limits, for which I am grateful. My other teacher was Alan Stout, who introduced me to the music of Penderecki, Ligeti, and Lutoslawski. From Stout, I learned to explore the unknown and search for sounds and shapes I had never known before.
Who among your colleagues has influenced you as a composer?
Several years ago, Alfred Reed and I spent two weeks together working at a band camp in Saskatchewan. Being still somewhat green in the profession, I was awed by this fine composer and his astounding storehouse of experiences, concepts, information, and solutions.
During the evenings and weekends we would wander through the hills surrounding the camp, and I would ask him questions about music and for advice on my career. He unselfishly shared his knowledge, and I soaked up every word. He greatly influenced my attitudes about composition, orchestration, and music in general.
How did you begin writing music for the young band?
In my first few years of teaching at Maine Township High School in suburban Chicago, I found very little concert music available for the young band, except for the excellent works of Frank Erickson and John Kinyon. If there was a Hall of Fame for composers of elementary band music, Kinyon would probably be on top. I’ve studied his works and recommended them to my students.
Though I was happy writing more difficult music, I started composing for my beginning band: some short overtures, little marches, things like that for musical variety. I continued to learn by looking at scores, studying how the textures were formed, noting how other composers voiced their ideas, and so on. Eventually, I wrote a march of medium difficulty called March for Moderns. I sent it to several publishers, and they all said it was too modern. Finally, C.L. Barnhouse had some faith in it and published it. I was in seventh heaven. My career as a band composer had begun.
Several years ago I was in Atlanta with Bill Strohm, then the band director at Babb Junior High School. They were going to play my Momentations, a work of medium difficulty at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago, so I flew down to work with the band. During lunch one day, Bill recommended that I start writing for even younger bands. He suggested that I compose more varied and interesting music than was then available for the beginning and intermediate players. I went home and played around with some ideas and sketches and came up with a piece for Barnhouse called Adventures. That was followed about a year later by Sansketch. Now I’m writing as many pieces on this level as I am music of greater difficulty.
Do you enjoy working with younger players?
I’ve conducted some elementary honor bands, and the students at that age are super. I walk into the band room and say, That is a beautiful purple sky today! They say, “Yeah!” They all want to go outside and see it. They’re excited about playing, and they’re open to suggestions and new ideas. It’s an exciting age to work with.
What do you think makes a successful piece for a young band?
A piece that is musical, interesting, and somewhat unpredictable, but still within the limits of the performers’ technique, will usually succeed. When I compose music for the elementary band, or for any band, I think about the group I’m writing for and what they can do. I like to write something that will bring out the students’ musicianship as well as provide technical challenges. If there is an alto clarinet player, there should be something interesting to play, rather than just doubling the bass line.
I like to write a singable melody because it is easier for the kids to play. They can hear it more naturally than a jagged melody that jumps around like the fourth tenor sax part of an old jazz band arrangement. I like varying the sounds and colors in an unpredictable way. If you can write a piece that the musicians can get involved with and enjoy, and that the conductor can also enjoy (lots of dynamic, tempo, and expression changes), then you’re automatically going to excite the audience. If you can raise one goosebump in the rehearsal with the musicians, or in the audience at the concert, you have done your job as a composer. You have communicated the beauty, the joy, and the excitement of music.
Has the high school band movement changed much in your experience?
Yes, quite a bit, and I think a lot of it has been healthy. The most far-reaching recent change is perhaps in the marching band. The corps style has become quite popular among band directors and students. Some schools do a great job with corps style and still have great jazz and concert bands, too.
That’s what I like to see – a well-balanced menu for the kids. Some schools are going into the marching too heavily, however, and I think it is harmful. I know that many of the woodwind players around the country are in trouble. A lot of these students are spending too much time twirling flags instead of playing music on their instruments. Still, I have nothing against marching band, because it’s a valid medium of expression in music just like other media. There are more people at one football game than will probably be in your concert hall in a whole year. So it’s good for PR, and it exposes kids to a large, enthusiastic audience.
Do you think jazz has a place in the band curriculum?
The jazz band movement has grown from a seed to a full-blooming bush during my career, and I’m glad for this growth because that type of music is vital. It is one of the major styles of the 20th century. It offers the youth in our schools a tremendous informal outlet for individual expression. I have a feeling that the concert band is going to be getting back into the proper focus again, though, because it is still the center of all instrumental activity. All of these organizations within a well-balanced program constitute the ideal for which we should strive. I think the band program should include wind ensemble, concert band, jazz band, and marching band so students experience all of them.
I’m excited because I think that something new is going to happen in bands. It may be in connection with computers and synthesizers. I’m ready. That’s what composers are all about: supplying people with good music times during both stable and changing.
