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Today's Featured Biography
Stephen Wampler
After 9th grade, my family moved to Bellevue and I played horn for Mr. Herman "Red" Eickhoff in 10th grade. Mr. Eickhoff was a fiery German with a temper. I'm pretty sure I saw him throw a music stand at the drummers in the back of the band room one day. Anyway, he "retired" at the end of that year and I continued band with Mr. Garry Walker for 11th and 12th grade. Unfortunately I hadn’t learned to read music very well through all my school transitions (five band teachers in seven years!), so I remember I used to improvise my own part which seemed to fit the concert band music. I can only imagine what that band must have sounded like if I'm making up my part and no one seems to notice. Mr. Walker didn’t allow French horns in marching band so I had to play a tenor drum (like a really small pathetic bass drum) for field shows and parades. Band and German were the only electives I could take throughout high school (on a 7 period schedule), but I loved music so for me there were no other electives.
Playing horn was a real challenge, one of a few instruments, along with oboe and bassoon, which are so difficult to play that an interested student should get (and really needs to get) private instruction from a specialist. I guess I was always pretty competitive even back then, so after sophomore year I always sat first chair. The second horn sitting next to me, Mike Cate, did take private instruction and did practice at home, and consequently had a beautiful sound that I could never seem to emulate. I believe he ended up playing horn in a symphony orchestra for a living.
I was finally rescued from horn by Mr. Walker who offered a course I could take senior year (in addition to concert band) during which I started playing trombone, practicing by myself for 50 minutes every day. Mr. Walker was a low brass player himself (trombone, tuba, and euphonium), so he would come in and give me a private lesson a couple times a week. I got into the Sammammish High School Stage Band sharing the bass trombone chair second semester, and I have never looked back.
After high school I got a job working full-time at the Original House of Pies (OHOP) in Bellevue and tried to concurrently attend University of Washington full-time majoring in Oceanography (my best friend from high school, Al Dupont, and I were avid scuba divers). When I found out that Ocean majors didn’t necessarily just "swim with the dolphins," I decided to drop my studies in pre-med chemistry and calculus, and get back to the arts. I took nude drawing and jazz history at UW Spring quarter instead. I then went to Bellevue Community College for the next two years to get my general requirements out of the way, and continued to explore the arts. I took photography, jazz ensemble, jazz improvisation and theory from Al Gilante, and concert choir from Harley Brumbaugh. Though I enjoyed photography for the full two year program, I ultimately decided I would rather be with people than out alone with my camera or in a dark room alone developing film. While at BCC I worked as a grocery clerk and "night stocker," as a pantry man at a high end restaurant named Benjamin's, then as a fry cook at Lil' Jon's and Shari's restaurants.
BCC choir director Harley Brumbaugh encouraged me to settle on music as a career path, so I headed to Bellingham with a couple of friends to enter Western Washington University as a music major. At this point I was so far behind that I actually couldn't decide on a major instrument, scrambling to take some trombone lessons from Del Hartman and piano lessons from Mrs. Lovejoy before Fall quarter, 1975. I settled on trombone, and was in and out of school, also working full- and part-time as a restaurant fry cook, prep cook, waiter and Super 24 convenience store "grave yard" clerk. Eventually I took composition classes, jazz improvisation, arranging classes, and music education classes (something to "fall back on"). I studied trombone with Cathy Cole, Bill Cole, Dennis Smith, Phil Brink, and jazz trombone with Scott Reeves, eventually performing all required jazz and classical recitals, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Music, majoring in both Jazz Studies and (Classical) Trombone Performance.
I then student taught at Rose Hill Junior High in Redmond with Gary Evans Fall of 1982 finishing the Music Education major as well. Since my goal all along had been to be an artist rather than teacher, I picked up 25 or 30 private brass students, taught part-time in public schools (10 hrs/wk) and played trombone professionally. First I auditioned for and got a gig with the Paramount Performin' Orchestra (under the baton of Seattle R & B legend, Dave Lewis), full-time house band for the now defunct Seattle Music Hall. We did most of Quincy Jones "The Dude" album along with some E W & F and Stevie Wonder. There were 9 horns, 6 singers, 6 dancers, either 4 or 6 string players, keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums with most of all of us doing steps like the Temptations. We're talking a lot of movement on stage. After paying us all full-time for 6 nights a week of dinner shows and dance sets we weren't attracting enough of an audience, so the management decided to bring in Ben Vereen and his two lovely female assistants to revamp the dinner show, especially the choreography. They put together a slick professional show literally overnight (the huge horn section got to stand still...hallelujah!). Ben Vereen told us not to change a thing, that he loved us all, and he and his assistants took off never to be seen again. We carried on like that for several more weeks until it was time to "pull the plug." We were all laid off just before Christmas 1983.
After that I played in a reading big band called Roadside Attraction for 5 years, out of which I got some great gigs backing touring artists Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., Crystal Gayle, Bobby Shew, and Diane Schuur among others, and played lots of pick up (mostly little) big band and seasonal church gigs. I then changed gears and joined the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra as 2nd trombone for the first year, then as principal trombone for the next 5 years. Out of that organization I helped found the Bellevue Brass Quintet which played weddings, parties, and various public performances. I also got to perform most of the great orchestral/choral literature as principal tenor and alto trombone in the Seattle Choral Company for 10 years (1988-98). We played a show at the 5th Avenue Theater every New Year's Eve which always included Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I also got to record a CD of Carmina Burana, again as principal trombone. Concurrently I still taught 10 hours in various public and private school settings and carried 25 to 30 private brass students.
After several years teaching public school part-time, private trumpet and trombone students, and playing trombone professionally, I met my future wife Barbara with her three children Spencer (then 12...actually one of my trombone students), Jason (9) and Tiffany (6) in 1988. Barbara and I married on September 10, 1989 on the gazebo overlooking Snoqualmie Falls. Barbara became pregnant with Molly in Astoria, OR on the second night of our honeymoon on the way to Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast. My new "instant" family was wonderful enough to help me to continue my dream of becoming a musician for several more years. I studied tenor and alto trombone with Stuart Dempster at the UW School of Music from 1989-93. I also played euphonium in the University Wind Ensemble directed by Tim Salzman, played principal trombone in the University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Eros, and got to study Music Editing with George Bozarth, Schenker Analysis with Diane Thome, American Popular Song with Larry Starr, Jazz Structures and Analysis with Michael Brockman, and Advanced Jazz Improvisation and Jazz Combos with Marc Seales, to name just a few of my grad courses. During 1992-93 I played split lead and jazz trombone in the Studio Jazz Ensemble directed by Roy Cummings. I earned a Master of Music degree in Brass Performance in 1991 and finished the residency for, and earned, the ABD toward a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Brass Performance with Jazz Studies as a secondary area in 1993. I finished and successfully defended my dissertation entitled "A Brass Players’ Guide to the Transcription and Performance of J. S. Bach’s Six Suites for Violoncello Solo," earning the DMA degree in 1998.
Molly was born in 1990 and Emily in 1996. Since 1994, I've worked full-time as a public school band director and sometimes choir director and general music teacher. During the past 16 years, I've actually played more trumpet and Fender P bass than trombone, but I continued to enjoy learning to play any musical instrument I could get my hands on, developing varying levels of skill on most of them.
Since the discovery of two increasingly painful tumors in my right humerus (09/10/10), I now spend any practice time I can find working on either trumpet or piano, focusing mostly with my left arm and hand when my right side gets too tired. The malignant tumors have also manifested in the T1, T7-11, and L5 vertebras of my spine. After many courses of radiation, a 9 week course of chemo, and the clinical trial of chemo that I am currently taking part in, I feel great and am starting to get out for short walks when the weather permits. The good news is I'm pretty much retired at age 58, and am now enjoying spending the time which used to be taken up by a 40 to 50 hour a week job on projects of my own choosing.
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