It was a very good year

By Gary Robertson

If years had a vintage like wine, then last year would have been a very good year for the VCU Department of Music.

The jazz band performed in Chicago, the wind ensemble performed at Carnegie Hall, the brass ensemble performed at a festival in London, and a select choral ensemble performed in China, at concerts in Beijing and Shanghai.

This year continued the good news with the long-awaited opening of the James W. Black Music Center on Grove Avenue. It provides an additional 14,000 square feet of space, plus extensive renovations to existing performing and practice areas, at a total cost of $5.8 million.

John Guthmiller, director of choral activities and chairman of the music department, said the quality of students is higher than he has ever seen it, with only about one out of every three applicants winning admission.

“Our reputation is on the rise, and beginning to reflect our true role in the musical life of our city and region,” Guthmiller said.

The department, which is operating near capacity with 325 students, is still pushing to raise its profile. Over the past three years, Guthmiller said there has been a demonstrable increase in attendance at performances, as the department has reached out to the community.

Susanna Klein, a 1993 VCU graduate who has won raves as a violinist at the Richmond Symphony and elsewhere, oversees the department’s string section. What impresses her most about the department since her undergraduate days is that the quality is deeply dispersed.

“When I was here, some programs seemed like they were stepchildren – now I feel as though there’s energy across all areas. We’ve also got lots of new faculty and lots of great old faculty. I think that really helps the workplace. You need new energy, but you also need that experience.”

Klein especially likes the fact that faculty offices, classrooms and practice space are interspersed throughout the new music center. For example, her string students tend to practice near her office, and they’ll often ask a question related to their playing outside of the formal practice sessions they have with her.

“It makes learning more natural and integrated … and less tied to a specific time or a specific day,” Klein said. 

Heather Capps of Surry County, one of Klein’s students, said she couldn’t be happier about the new music center, named for jazz pianist James W. Black.

“There is much more space, and it’s so comfortable and new,” Capps said.

Capps, like most students enrolled in the Music Department, had to spend about two years practicing at other points on campus before the new music center opened in August.

Her least favorite practice venue was in the basement of the Franklin Street Gym, but it wasn’t as though students had to practice in a closet. They were in professional mobile practice rooms.

Guthmiller said one of the big success stories related to the opening of the Black Music Center was that university officials agreed to purchase more than a dozen, high-quality, mobile practice rooms while construction was under way.

Meanwhile, architects redesigned the center so that the mobile practice rooms could be moved into the permanent building, saving both money and construction time.

“They are soundproof and have full-view glass doors, so everything is open. It has the feeling that everybody can see what’s going on, and it’s improved the contact between students and the faculty,” Guthmiller said.

Senior Justin Brown, a music education major from Mathews, Va., agrees that the interaction between faculty and students is greater in the new building where many faculty members have relocated their offices.

“Because most of the professors are over here, it’s easier to meet them,” Brown said.

Benjamin Heemstra, a freshman jazz studies major from Mitchell, S.D., says teachers are the critical element in a musical education, even more than the facilities.

He was lured across country to study at VCU because of the reputation of Rex Richardson, an associate professor who teaches trumpet and is recognized internationally  for his performance skills in both modern jazz and classical music.

Brown and Heemstra noted that the Music Department’s new building is an asset for attracting both highly qualified students as well as professors.

Antonio Garcia, director of jazz studies, has been counting his blessings for the past several years, and not just because of the new music center. 

In 2002, W.E.Singleton, a Richmond-area philanthropist and jazz enthusiast, pledged $2 million to the Jazz Studies program, the largest gift ever made in the United States to support university-level jazz education. Then in 2005, Singleton pledged an additional $1 million.

Garcia, a jazz trombonist who has performed across the United States and internationally, said he is impressed by the music center’s improved creature comforts, such as uniform heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

That might not sound like so much, until you realize that the music department’s old practice facilities struggled with the devils of a perplexing system that would often turn one part of the building too cold and the other too hot.

“The choir would be rehearsing in full overcoats, hats and scarves in the recital hall. Meanwhile, down in the basement we would be burning up,” Garcia said.

At such times, students and faculty had to summon all their patience and perseverance to finish their lessons. Now, those are just bad memories.

Garcia, who came to VCU from Northwestern University, says the community gives vocalists and musicians multiple venues in which to perform and be appreciated for work well done, which can be critical to a music program’s success.

“Richmond has more art per square inch than any city I know,” Garcia said. “My students can go out of this building and take their own products of jazz or classical music where people will come to hear them, and where people will write about them. Here you have a laboratory to do on the street what you learn in school. Richmond is a huge part of why our university is successful, why our Music Department is successful and certainly why our jazz program is successful,” Garcia said.