E. Daniel Long

 

 

 

Daniel Long is the former founding Director of the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts' Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has also worked extensively within the Ann Arbor public school system for thirty-five years.  Long has degrees from Chadron State College (Nebraska) and the University of Colorado, and he received Chadron State College's Distinguished Service Award in 1994.  Long has been president of the Michigan American String Teachers' Association and has been a guest lecturer at The University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.  A few of the awards that Daniel Long has received throughout the years include the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association's Teacher of the Year (1980), Michigan ASTA Teacher of the Year (1989), and the prestigious Elizabeth A. H. Green School Educator Award (1997) presented by the American String Teachers' Association with National School Orchestra Association. 

 

 

I was fortunate enough to conduct an interview with Daniel Long on July 26, 2005. This is the transcription of our conversation:

 

EJ:            What part did you play in the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts?

DL:            I am now retired…but I was the founding director of the orchestra there.

 

EJ:            How and to what extent has the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts’ orchestra grown?

DL:            It started with one orchestra with a small group of maybe 35 young string players, and when I left, there were four orchestras and three conductors…and that was over about a ten-year period of growth.  It started out as a string orchestra, and then, at the end, we had a full orchestra, a symphonic orchestra, and three string orchestras.

 

EJ:            So, you were able to personally witness that growth?

DL:            I was right there all along, promoting and supporting the program as it expanded.  I did not conduct all of the orchestras; I only conducted one.  I conducted, what you would probably consider, the top-level orchestra.  We, of course, would take this pool of young musicians and audition them and then place them according to their abilities in what orchestra we thought was most appropriate for them to be playing in.  It was at that point, then, that were brought in other conductors to work with the young people.

 

EJ:            Do you know why there was such a rapid increase in the number of students interested in being a part of your orchestra?

DL:            There were a couple of things that I think could be attributed to some of that interest and that growth.  A number of the young people that we had in the orchestra came from communities that surround Ann Arbor that did not have an orchestra program in their schools.  They would have a choir or a band or, in most cases, both, but they didn’t have an orchestra.  Because there were a number of private teachers and Suzuki studios in our area of Michigan, there were a number of student players whose families would move into a community, and there would not be a string program for their students to play in.  They were looking for that kind of experience.  So, we had that student in our group.

            Another students that we had was the student who was in the public school or private school and he or she was in the school program and was at a higher level than the general membership of the orchestra, so he or she was not being stimulated and was not being challenged…so [that student] would come and audition for our group.  You’ve got to remember…we did not set up these programs to become substitutes or replacements for the existing school orchestras, they were just to be extensions and experiences that would help them (the students) continue to be good members of their orchestra but at the same time allow them to maybe get a little higher in playing in the repertoire that they were playing, so we had that kind of student.

            I have a belief that music education is sort of like water.  You have to let it seek its own level.  So, if you’ve got some students in the orchestra who are sitting there biting their time while the teacher is teaching various remedial, fundamental things, those students who are far beyond that are wondering what to do next because it’s not a challenging environment for them.  They were looking for a way to do this, and we provided that outlet for those kinds of students.

 

EJ:            How would you describe the curriculum that was taught to the students?

DL:            Once we got the orchestra going, I was very adamant that the music that we played was of the highest quality.  We did not play arrangements. We played only original music, and we went out and performed in other communities in and around Ann Arbor, so that other students and teachers could hear the orchestra and hear what the orchestra sounded like because I was a firm believer that quality begets quality, and if…the students liked what they were hearing then there became a real interest in how one gets to belong to the group. You can only attract good quality musicians by good quality performances…you have to perform good music. The repertoire is of utmost importance. I was always very careful in the music that I selected. It was music that stretched the students but was within their grasp, and at the same time was music that allowed them to play at their highest technical and musical abilities.

It’s one of those things where I felt very strongly about wanting the students to be exposed to the greatest composers there are, so that’s the way I selected the repertoire that we played in the orchestra. I tried to make sure that it was a very broad spectrum of styles and periods of music. So, we would play Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Contemporary music…One of the things that I was very proud of was that we played music that was written, actually, by local composers. There were a number of pieces that we played that were written by members of the composition department at the University of Michigan, for example. And we would bring the composers in, they would work with the young people, talk to them about the music, share their own experiences and the young people immediately recognized how important it was, and how wonderful it was, to be able to sit down and visit with the composer of the piece that they were actually playing. That created a great deal of enthusiasm and sparked a lot of interest in the orchestra when we were able to do that.

 

EJ:             When, initially, did you discover classical music and what triggered your interest in classical music?

DL:            When I was in high school, we had no orchestra. We just had choirs and bands. But I was always very interested in classical music, and I took a music appreciation course.  I’d always played in the band and sung in the choir, and I took this course, and we studied BerliozSymphonieFantastique. And I thought, “Oh wow! Isn’t it wonderful to have a group that has strings?” It was just terrific. So then when I got to college, because I was a bassoon major, I immediately played in every orchestra experience that I could, and that was the very beginning of my own classical music experience.

 

EJ:               When did you decide that a career in music instruction was the right course for you to take?

DL:               I was a junior in high school, and I was having a wonderful experience with my  high school teacher. And I just went to him and I said, “Mr. Thompson, I wanna be just like you.” He said, “Okay, well here’s what you’ve got to do.” So he gave me some tasks and one of them was to learn to play the piano, and I had no experience playing piano.  So, my parents got a piano and I started taking lessons, and off I went. So, I was a junior in high school when I knew that I wanted to be a teacher.

 

EJ:               Would you say that working with and educating young people has been a more rewarding experience than working with older, more experienced performers?

DL:            My opinion on that, is that…everyone who comes into the class who wants to be involved in music is someone who brings with them the most important part of what I think is successful in an education environment, particularly in classical music, and that is that he or she simply loves to play music, no matter what his or her level of ability is, no matter what his or her skills are.

            When a young person comes in and just wants to learn to play an instrument, wants to become better at it, and wants to be in that environment, that is one of the greatest rewards there is, no matter what his or her level is.  Sometimes, quite frankly, one is amazed that the young people who respond to music in such a positive way are sometimes those people whose skills are completely at the bottom level of the rung of development.  Many times, I have been aware that some of the strongest students, in terms of their commitment to the program, have been students who have been very mediocre playing students, but they just loved being in that environment.  One of the reasons that they like that is that there are a number of students who are above them that help bring the playing level of the group up and allow the music to have a wonderful sound.  I feel so strongly that every individual that walks into the room brings with him or her an interest in music and a desire to want to play to such a degree that we, as teachers, must always try to open up another door for each of those young people.

 

 

EJ:            Do you personally believe that the majority of young people today appreciate and enjoy classical music?  What efforts do you think could be made to increase their knowledge of classical music?

 

DL:            Certainly those that I come in direct contact with do appreciate classical music because they are the musicians. However, when I was teaching in Ann Arbor [public schools], often times we would give school assemblies. So you would have your group of musicians who were in the orchestra, band, and choir who were now going to go out and play for their peers, and most of those students were not involved in music in any way, for whatever reason their interests were someplace else. But I took a cue from someone who I thought was so good about bringing music to the masses, and that was the great Leonard Bernstein.  He had this phenomenal young people’s concert series that he did when he was in New York, and he would tell the students about the music and about what they were going to hear. And because I had watched some of those programs, I decided that was a good way to bring classical music to the untrained musician. So when I was having these assemblies at the school, I would explain to the students what they were going to hear and what to listen for…and you could not believe the reactions of the students that were in the school that really had no classical music experience at all. They were so appreciative of what we did that they just responded in a very positive way, so my feeling is, yes, I think most students will have an appreciation for music, if it’s presented in the right way.  I think there are very few people in the world who would not enjoy classical music if it were presented to them in the right way.  A student is not going to enter into an environment disliking classical music, but if it’s presented in a wrong way, that’s not going to be very effective.

 

EJ:            Because you have worked extensively with both the private Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts and public schools in the area, have you observed how the two types of schools interact? Do they collaborate at all?

DL:            The collaboration is only limited by the resources and the skills of the individual teachers.  I am aware that there are programs in Ann Arbor where there has been a great amount of working together, but that has to do directly with the teachers involved.  Then, there are other schools where that doesn’t happen, but that’s because the teachers are not committed or interested in wanting to work those things out.

 

EJ:            So, are there any advantages to attending a private school devoted primarily to the arts as opposed to a public school?

DL:            It really has to do directly with the teachers themselves.  I think that the success of the young people today, in terms of their attitudes toward music, is directly related to the teacher who’s standing up in front.

 

EJ:            Do you know of any graduates of the School for the Performing Arts who now perform in the Ann Arbor community or elsewhere?

DL:            There are a number of students who play in the Ann Arbor Symphony who were members of my orchestra either in the public schools or in the School for the Performing Arts.