PG:  Barbara Myrick, oral history interview, April 16th, 2003, tape one. 

I was wondering, Barbara, when did you begin at LCC and actually what were you involved with before you came to LCC? Can you speak about that?

BM:  Sure. I came to Eugene from Montana.  And I came to the University of Oregon to do my graduate work in 1970 and I worked on my masters and doctorate at the same time.  Finished my Masters in 1973, my Doctorate in ‘75.

1973 is when I got my job here, and it was a part-time job. And I taught – I was still at the university working there and working here, so it was perfect.  And I taught basic piano, I can’t remember how many sections, let’s say a couple.  That was my main job, and teaching private piano.  And then fairly soon after I started I ended up teaching some sight reading and training as well, and then theory.  So it expanded fairly quickly and it became a full-time job when I finished my doctorate, as I recall. 

But my first year here was pretty momentous, because we were in the basement [thanks  - background voices]  We were in the basement of the Center Building.  And it was pretty funny because we had the Band just in this open space and when they rehearsed you couldn’t do anything else, that was it.  And we had our offices were in the middle of kind of a big donut, like we were the hole of the donut, and all around it we had all the classrooms which were open. 

And we shared our offices, and I remember my first week or so.  I was in my office and I heard a man and a woman kind of arguing outside the door, and all of a sudden she yelled, “Rape.”  And I went, I put my hand on the phone, I was ready to call Security, and then I realized that they were actors.  They were rehearsing a scene.  That was my introduction to being in a department with a theater, with theater people.  And so I had to learn how to differentiate.  That, that was funny.

I taught piano out in what was called the Shack. The Shack is now our [background voices]  it’s our prop building now.  And it was over in the parking lot.  And that’s the one we had to slog through the mud to get to.  We had two by fours to walk over the mud to get in there.  And I spent a good share of my day teaching private piano and it was wonderful ‘cause there was no phone there.  I was just by myself, if the student didn’t show up I practiced ‘cause I was working on recitals at the time anyway. 

Um, now let’s see what else….   I was teaching group piano at night as well as during the day. And that was really spooky because there weren’t any lights in the parking lot.  There were attacks.  There were … people were … women were getting attacked at that time.  So it was very spooky.  We got so our class would  just all walk out together to the parking lot because we weren’t done til ten at night, it was a late class.

Let’s see.  The people that were here.  I remember my interview with Ed Ragozzino.  Ed Ragozzino was very well known in the community.  And sort of a ... well, very revered, powerful figure.  And I remember coming out for that interview and I was so excited when I got an interview with Ed Ragozzino and I remember coming over the hill and just looking at the beautiful trees and thinking, now I’m going to be interviewing with this guy.  And it just felt so good, the drive over the hill, and, boy, this might be my job, who knows.  And, here I am thirty years later.  Umm. And it was a really a nice interview. And David Sherman was there.  And I’ll never forget him.  He was the theater tech person at the time.  He was dressed so casually.  Shorts, ratty t-shirt.  And Ed was there at the interview, and I can’t remember, I think Nathan Cammack was there.  Umm. And I don’t really remember any details about the interview except it felt fine.  And then I got the job.

The end of the first year was pretty fun.  Umm.  I remember two things.  One was I was in an office with Gene Aitken who was the band person at the time.  And I was getting really pretty rummy from a long day and we were just joking around and the phone rang.  So I picked it up and said “Imperial Pickle Works.” And Ragozzino was on the other end and he said, “Ahh, excuse me.”  And I felt about knee high to a grasshopper.  And then I went in for my first year interview with him, an evaluation, and that went well.  And then he kind of settled back and he said, “Well, how’s it going for you?  Do you get along with everyone pretty well?  Is it all right?”  And I said, “Well, ya, everybody but you” in my naiveté. And he was so taken aback.  He just kind of went “Oh, um, well, oh, gee.  And then he went on to actually tell me that he was a pretty shy person and that anytime I had problems I was to come in.  And that set the basis for our relationship for the rest of the time he was here.  I knew I could go in and just vent if I needed to, and that it was OK.  So we had a good relationship from then on.  My naiveté paid off.  I might have gotten fired by someone else.  But he was very cool.

Umm.  In those days the main focus was the theater.  The music program really was peripheral to musical theater.  Musical theater was Ed’s baby.  But he was very wise in getting the music program built up, because he knew that to have good musical theater you needed to have good musicians playing.  And so I came in ’73 and then Dan, Jim came within a couple of years of me.  And so we were starting to get a nice core. Nathan Cammack was still here; he was a good musician.  So we had a pretty good music program right then, just getting things really rolling.

Umm. Let’s see.  I guess that’s basically…  Oh. That year, my first year is the year this building was being built.  I was not in on the planning ‘cause that had all happened before I came here.  So, we were, I was only in the basement that one year. But spring term of that year was bizarre because we had to move out of the basement so it could be reconstructed. And we had no home basically for spring term.  So all of the faculty moved into Forum and we were all in one office, which was hysterical. We called it the “Bull Pen.”  Like six of us in this one place.  Often we weren’t all in there at one time, but it was noisy.  Our.. umm… It wasn’t a problem for me ‘cause I still taught in the Shack.  The group piano I still had in that one room.  That room is now storage room in the basement of Center.  But everything else had to move. 

And I don’t even remember where the choir rehearsed. I don’t have any memory of it. But the Band, we put up a circus tent in the parking lot for them.  And that was quite a scene.  And wouldn’t you know it was the coldest spring on record.  It was awful.  It not only was rainy, it was just plain cold.  We had students with constant colds; they were constantly sick.  We had space heaters in the tent, but that wasn’t enough.  It was just horrible.  But picturesque – a circus tent in the parking lot.  That was bizarre.  But we got through it.  And we moved in, and I can’t even remember when, I think it was in the summer as I recall. 

And nothing was done to this building until this past year. This new addition.  Nothing.  When we moved in, it had had cuts to it already.  We were, had been cut, I believe, as I remember, one room.  The choir even had been cut, but we got it back. Umm.  Dressing rooms were cut, so the rooms that are currently our dressing rooms were supposed to be storage, and the dressing rooms were supposed to be in the back of the stage.  So when we moved in it was too small, and we lived with that for thirty years.  It was too small when we moved in the door, isn’t that amazing.  It was a nice building, but it was too small. 

So, OK.

PG:  I’m just wondering, umm, you teach one-on-one, individual lessons.  And I know you were doing that years ago.  Can you describe how that’s different for you than teaching a group or even a lecture class?

BM:  Oh, it’s really different. 

PG:  How so?

BM:  One-on-one is very exciting because you get to start where a student is and some people just shine in one-on-one, and I enjoy it.  And I would not be able to do forty students a week like some people I know. And some people like Larry Klabe just thrive on that.  Umm. It’s very intense, because you just have to get into that person’s mind set immediately.   So you’re going from one person to the next every forty-five minutes or whatever it is.  Umm. But it’s definitely  fabulous for the student.  That’s …you get to just focus in on them.  And one thing that always struck me about one-on-one is especially with children and even with adults.  How often do you get one-on-one in life with somebody that you want to emulate or learn from.  It’s really rare.  And for children especially it’s just the most valuable time in their life. Especially if there’s lots of siblings. So one-on-one is very special. The dynamics are really different in a classroom.  In the classroom as a teacher you need to, I need to teach somewhere in the middle and try to keep the people who are struggling in the class and learning without feeling completely frustrated, which is very hard, and the people who are way ahead of the class from getting bored.  So there’s a big challenge in the classroom for that.  But myself, I feel like it’s my strength, because I really enjoy trying to get into people’s minds as a class and do that challenge and try to make it work for as many people as possible.  And I’ve had to long ago accept that I can’t do it for everyone, there are a few who just can’t relate to my style.  Umm.  My style is not learning.  It’s very …Umm… I go wherever … what needs to happen right now.  I call it improvisation.  I mean it’s improvisation.  I mean I have a plan, but the plan is completely optional.  If it doesn’t work, it’s going to get thrown out the window if it doesn’t work.  Umm, and somehow through all that we keep moving forward.  I really enjoy trying to be where the students are today.  Umm.  So that’s a real different dynamic and for some people it’s daunting, it’s scary.  I think especially for a linear mind it’s daunting because you don’t… a class is not linear.  You can be pretty linear with one student, one-on-one.  If they’re a linear student you go linear with them, and if they’re not you go in another mode.  And that’s great.  But for me in some ways that’s too intense.  So it’s interesting how we all have our ways to do that.

Umm.  A lecture class is … I have that with my history class.  Umm.  It’s basically lecture, but I prefer getting discussions going because a lecture isn’t really the most efficient – you put people to sleep.  So I prefer... I call it guided lecture because I prefer having students involved in trying to talk and do the teaching rather than if I just stand up there and read my notes.  I think that’s boring.  Why would I want to do that to anybody else?  So it’s much more fun to not let it just be a lecture. 

So those are three really pretty different styles actually of teaching.  And they’re all fun. 

PG:  And you do all three of them.

BM:  I do. I don’t actually teach privately here now, except for maybe one or two students.  Because once you go full time at Lane that’s not part of our life, to do private.

PG:  So can you describe how your teaching evolved in what ways from 1973 till now?  You have three decades of history.

BM:  Oh, let’s see.  I think it has evolved in a variety of ways.  One is definitely from …I think every new teacher has to start out basically well-planned.  And the hardest thing is, like I said, having a plan, but be willing to let it go.  And that’s really hard for a new teacher.  A new teacher – ‘I gotta get done with this, if I don’t get done with that how am I going to get over there.’ 

Umm. So I started out with always planning, and usually with a new teacher it’s about three hours of planning for every class. It’s a lot.  Yah, it’s a lot.  To really get a class planned, especially a history class where you just got to have all the pieces, all your ducks in a row.  Theory, too, though, because, I tell you, I mean, over thirty years, I’ve learned theory right along with all my students.  And that’s one reason I like teaching it, every year I get better, and I not only get better at it for myself, I find better ways of teaching it. 

So I was staying ahead of the students, a day or two. And that’s normal for a new teacher, you’re staying ahead of your students a little bit, because you’re working with a textbook, you’re working with …  everything’s new.  You have no idea how to do it.   So, what has evolved is, for example, in music history, is I have this incredible files of notes and I keep refining it single year.  I never do it the same, and I can build on everything I’ve ever done. And I’m at the point right now where it’s really quite fun.  I go in there with a huge amount of material knowing that I’m going to get through the concepts, that I’m gonna pull in what I need at the moment.  It’s kind of a joke.  I walk in with a stack three feet high – videos, CDs, all my notes, and I’ll never use it all ever, it’s just what happens in the moment.  And it’s a performance, it’s an improv event, is what it is.  Ant that because it’s an interaction with everybody.  And I think as a beginner the interaction didn’t happen as much as it does now.

hadwould last o term we would have this mentorship going onams where a fellow teacher would come it

The other thing that happened along the way, is ... several things.  But first, a really important part was Ed Ragozzino.  He did some fabulous inservice things on how you can use acting and theater to help you teach better.  And I learned a lot from him on how to keep students awake.  And how to have fun in there, and not just deliver. 

And then I also took a bunch of neuro-linguistic programming courses that they used to have here.  And I was fascinated with that, because that’s how you … I learned how we learn, and how different people learn.  And I learned the different modalities, how some students learn better, some oraally, orally, some kinesthetically. And how to make that work better.  And how to use stories.  So all that I use now.  And .. so over the years I’ve done lots of professional development, and not just of materials at all,  but of how to teach better, and to really learn how students learn, and to use that in the classroom.  And that’s been fun. 

And a lot of it, I realize, just recently I was thinking about this.  And thinking, wow, so much of what I do naturally.  In fact when I was in the neuro-linguistic, I would teach – yah, I do that.  For example, umm.   In the neuro-linguistic program, they say, when you deliver something, if you have something really important – an important point you want – you anchor it in a certain spot in the room.  And when you go to that spot, the students automatically, subconsciously will know this in an important moment and they have to…and they will pay attention.  And then to break that, you tell an anecdote or something to let the conscious mind rest, you move elsewhere.  And I realize, oh yah, I do that.  When I stand right behind the desk, that’s listen up; and when I go in front, it’s story time.  And I didn’t even realize I was doing it – it was natural.  Umm.  But that was fun to learn it and then take it to a new level in my own teaching.  So I have spots in the room, and I don’t consciously use them too much now.  Once in a while I do.  But it’s one of those things somewhere along the line I learned to do.

And we used to have these wonderful teacher training programs, too, where fellow teachers would come in, and they would video tape, and they would take notes, and we would do evaluations.  It was called the “Tips” program.  It would last over a whole term, we had this mentorship going on. I did this a couple of times as a young teacher.  And I learned a lot from that.  And I really learned a lot by watching myself.  I was mortified by some of the things I did.  It was really funny.  But all those things are important for trying to be a better teacher.  And it goes on.   I still try to do things better every term.  And I’m chagrined when I do something really badly, but it’s part of the process.  I think if we stop looking at how we teach and listening to students about what we can do better, then it gets better for everybody.  That was fun.

PG:  So in what ways did the Music Department at Lane change since you’ve been here, in respect to curriculum, the students, community involvement, and response of the community to the program.

BM:  That’s great – that relationship.  Umm.  Early on the theater program was so powerful. It really felt kinda like low person on the totem pole.  And we actually went through three major metamorphosis in the music program.  At one point we realized that we needed to improve ourselves – like children, we have a bad self-image, we need to change this. Umm.  And so we actively ... the best thing we ever did for ourselves, and I can’t even tell you when this happened exactly … is when all our current people got together finally.  We started meeting weekly, because we had a whole lot of baggage left over, and this is not to say at all that things weren’t good, it’s just that we had to make the next step in our evolution.  We needed to change how we felt of ourselves.  We had to change from feeling like we were there to serve the musical theater to let’s be our own viable program.  And we felt like we didn’t have as good a reputation in the community as we should.  And we felt we could do better.  So really we actively started working on it as a group.  And we started bringing out all the crud that we’d just not been paying attention to and we started dealing with it.  Umm.   Partly, our whole department did that, ‘cause when you go through a switch of the leadership you have to become a new group basically.  So when Ed retired, that was a biggy.  It was hard because we all had a certain way of how this evolved. Umm.  That when we got this final group of people together, we really …  We started having our own retreats and working on this.  And one of the things we really worked on was improving our transfer program.  We wanted our students to be able to go to the university and hold their head up high and that wasn’t happening yet.  So we cultivated … we realized there was no reason for this not to be a good transfer program because we all were graduates of UO, for crying out loud.  I mean, what was missing?  Well, what was missing was partly we needed to talk to UO about and find out what wasn’t happening from their perspective.  So we did that and we started a really good conversation that is ongoing now – of what do our students need to know to make them transfer more easily.  And now that’s going on now as we speak.  So we had a good liaison with them.  And we started really upping our curriculum and getting it to be in line with UO and in the process of getting in line with UO we are in line with all the other four-year schools, because they are the leaders in the music curriculum in Oregon. 

So, umm, along the same lines I started advising more heavily and that has just burgeoned, huge, big time, where I’m really advising everybody and we just make a two-year or three-year plan for every student that walks in the door that will sit down and listen and work with me on. That has helped immensely because they get all their generals, they get all their music out of the way.  So we’re constantly improving that relationship. And right now we’re actively improving our sight reading training program which still isn’t quite up to par. 

Umm.  So that’s a biggy.  The other thing is all of us became, were, and became even more actively involved in the community.  Everybody does something – Symphony, Mozart Players, Chamber Singers, Arts Umbrella – we’re all involved in the community, which is real important to be visible. Umm.  So those … and keeping up our musicianship performing is really important.  So we are doing all those things.  Our mantra is whatever we do, do it for the students.  And that is such a fabulous focus because we are six incredibly different people who could fight all the time if we let ourselves.  And if we ...  we just always remind each other, it doesn’t matter what we think, it matters what works for the students.  And that just keeps it really _____.  So that’s been pretty exciting, and we feel like now the kind of things we hear in the community is that it’s a good place to go for music for the first two years. And in fact the UO sends us students that aren’t really ready for them.  And we had to educate them to the fact that we can take care of the students who are not mentally, emotionally, physically ready for _____, or financially ready, too.  Students who aren’t ready for that really hyper-competitive atmosphere, maybe emotionally aren’t ready for it yet, they can try things out here, they can fall, be picked up, get ready, we can strengthen them, get them ready to go.  Or we can help guide them in another direction if it’s not appropriate to go there at all.  And so they’re sending students to us who maybe aren’t quite ready for that atmosphere over there.  It’s a complicated atmosphere over there.  And there’s a lot of competition.  So once we kind of educated them to what we can do and that we are not in competition with them.  That’s when our relationship with them totally clicked.  They got it.  We got it. We’re not a conservatory.  We have no illusions about it.  We just try to prepare them to the best of our ability and their abilities, so they can successfully transfer.  That’s works really well.  And now we’re working on, we’ve worked on our transfer program to OSU as well, and we’re working on to Western Oregon, we’re working closer with NCC, we’re expanding these liaisons so that we really understand what students have … how they might fit into those various schools.  That’s really fun.  ‘cause it’s a mystery, when you walk in the door as a freshman… who… how many, out of ten maybe one really knows exactly what they want to do.  And that’s normal.  So that’s been fun to expand all of that.  And I feel like we went through a major change.  It’s really exciting about who is teaching right now and how they are doing that.

PG:  So in the thirty years that you’ve been here, Barbara, can you recall any difficult situations and how they were resolved?

BM:  Hahaha. Yah.  The one that comes to mind and I have to speak carefully. Umm.  The most difficult thing is if we don’t get along as faculty.  And over the years there’s always sparks and there’s always stuff that goes on.  And we have to deal with it and it really helps if we have a leader who helps us deal with it.  But the most difficult situation of all was one I just didn’t understand.  When I came here I was the only woman.  And that was interesting.  I never thought of myself as just a woman at all.  And I came across a situation where one of my colleagues totally … hmm.  It was harassment.  Let’s put it---, it was sexual harassment.  I didn’t understand it.  I was too naïve to understand it.  … So the way the situation started is we had a new colleague and he wasn’t hired through the normal process.  We had gone through a moratorium on hiring.  And so he hired only with our department head and one other and none of us.  And that’s not the way…  If it happened quickly I don’t really hold him at fault.  It just was one of those situations where you get somebody or you get nobody.  And nobody was around to really help.  So we got this colleague who suddenly was on tenure track.  Who, first of all, was not a good teacher at all and had actually, we found out later, misrepresented his credentials. So the difficulty was that we had a new teacher who we did not know, had not seen operate at all. Students started coming to us telling us horror stories about what was going on in the classroom.  And I was the first one to become privy to it because I was the theory coordinator.  So students were coming to me and I tried to talk to this colleague about it and he immediately went to just the most bizarre place I could think of.  He couldn’t even talk about what was going on in the classroom.  He tried to handle it by trying to take me out.  He wanted to go to lunch.  He wanted to do this and that.  And when I said ‘no’ he got crazy.  And I’m sitting there going, ‘What is this about?  Why are we not able to talk about theory?  ‘I’m happy to help you.  I said, I’ve had a few years, I know how our students work.  Let’s talk about this.’  He wouldn’t talk about it and things just got pretty nutsy.  And I’m sitting around going, ‘What is going on?’ And it never occurred to me at all that I’m a woman and I actually was above him in the pecking order and he couldn’t handle it.  It didn’t occur to me at all.  I’m just wanting to solve the problem.  So all of a sudden he’s going to the department head and telling him things about me, like I’m stealing a bassoon and I’m doing all this stuff.  And fortunately the department head knew me well enough to know this is bizarre.  I don’t think she would do that.  And I talked to the department head and he said “What’s going on?’  And I said, “I don’t understand it.  I don’t know what’s going on but I’m going nuts.’  And he had, this was Ragozzino, he had the wherewithall to say, “How about a different office mate?  Would that help?’  And I said, ‘yes.’  That’s when Jim and I became office mates. 

Well, this is a long story and I don’t blame this guy. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time in his life, it just didn’t work.  But to solve it I literally had to leave for two years.  I left.  I went … I used as an excuse to go to Eastman School of Music, which I always wanted to do anyway.  So I did a professional development.  And I learned while I was gone what it was really about.  It was a power struggle.  And I just couldn’t handle it as a woman.  And, so I came back prepared.  And literally I sat the guy down and I said ‘Here’s how you’re going to treat me.  You’re going to call me Barbara or Ms. Myrick, Dr. Myrick.  You will not call me Barbie, Barbarella, or anything else. You will do this x, y, z.  I just laid it all out, and how he was going to be my colleague.  And I said, if you won’t do this, I have a hungry lawyer who will make my retirement very imminent, and your job dismissal equally imminent.  I just threatened him.  I outright threatened him.  But I had been coached by a guy whom …sexual harassment at Eastman - a very cool guy. So I was ready for him.  And it worked; he stopped bugging me.  However, other problems happened with other people then, and it went around the whole department.  And finally this guy was suspended.  And unfortunately due process didn’t happen, he had to come back, and then finally he quit.  But it was a horribly difficult time.  I hope that he’s in a happier place, I really do.  It, obviously, was difficult for him and this was not where he should have been the whole time.  I felt that everybody dealt with it the best way they knew how.  I learned a tremendous amount from it.  The learning I did was invaluable and I actually thanked the guy when he left.  And I don’t think he understood why I thanked him. But that’s OK. It was for me, that I thanked him for what I learned.  And it definitely has helped me over the years to know what harassment really, truly is about, and to try to help other students who have some problems with it. But that is the most difficult thing I went through.  And it was difficult because I didn’t understand it.  I didn’t understand the irrationality of it.  It just wasn’t anywhere in my consciousness of what was really going on with this guy.  And we’ve had other difficult situations, but nothing like that.  He was directly evil and it just wasn’t right. 

Umm.  Other difficult situations.  We’ve had some difficult students.

PG:  Or challenging situations.

BM:  Yah, challenging situations.  Umm. In many ways students are easier to deal with.  Umm. We’ve had good help on campus. And I think that help for challenging situations has gotten better over the years.  We have fabulous counselors that we can go to for whatever challenging things go on.  Umm.  I think one of the most challenging times for me really was in the early years, especially Vietnam.  We had a lot of vets coming back.  Umm. It was a marvelous gift to me.  I remember I really had to walk up to them carefully in piano class and not touch them.  I had to really warn them.  Fortunately one of my office partners during that time was a vet and he was just wonderful to kinda fill us in on what a lot of the vets were feeling at the time. They were. …  It was really great to be able to help them out.

We also had some ex-convicts coming through who were trying to get rehabilitated.  That was pretty exciting.  They were great.  They were fine, they were just fine.  There were some interesting things that went on in the ‘70s especially.  So those were challenges.  But I think every year we had some challenges and trying to make everything work as well as …..  Generally I think we did pretty well.  We screw up sometimes, but, I don’t know, I feel like we find ways to get through it … keeping the focus more on the students.  We’ll see how it goes.

PG:  So I was wondering, did the performances at Lane in the ‘70s and the ‘80s and the ‘90s reflect the times, like for example you just spoke about the vets coming back from the Vietnam War.  Umm, for example, the women’s movement, and the end of the Vietnam War.  Did this have any influence with classes or anything else?

BM:  A lot. Oh, yah.  Feminism, of course, is big.  And I’m one of them.  I was alive and well.  That was part of the problem with this harassment, I didn’t understand it, because I was definitely of a different consciousness.  Umm.  I had one year especially where I had what I would call my feminist class in theory. And it was a ball.  I had some very powerful women.  They were very outspoken, but in a really healthy way. And the guys were fabulous, they listened.  It was so cool.  It was a huge transition.  It was like a transitional year.  And there was just so much honor and respect that went on that year, it was very cool. Feminism was big, and what I saw happened that was so wonderful was the men who were changing, radically, right along with the women.  And so in my history class, for example, I really had to talk carefully and I still do. ‘Cause we still look back in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and we see what a bum deal women got.  And I just have to say, you know, just want to remind you guys didn’t create that.  You’re creating new times now.  But as we look at that you can be horrified, but you’re not part of that.  You’re part of what’s going on now.  But, it was very exciting to have all those things going on. In that same class, one of my --- was a wonderful woman in a wheelchair who taught us so much about disabilities and what they can do.  And she was highly honored at the end of the year a person in that class wrote a piece that involved her wheelchair, the sound of a wheelchair in the piece which was cool.  It was like a high respect thing for her.  It was very fun.  Those were fun.  It’s always exciting being around students who are thinking outside the box.  And that year wasn’t a challenge, it was exciting. It was like everybody was ready to think outside the box.  I felt it was just stimulating.  It was really fun.

So feminism was fun, for me.  I think it was probably because it was part of my own emancipation, too, definitely.  The vets were poignant.  I mean, it was really wonderful to be a part of their coming back in, ‘cause, I mean, these guys were very, as you know from history, they were shell-shocked.  It was complicated.  My own office partner said at that time that he would be in a restaurant and somebody would drop a tray and he’d be under the table before he realized it.  And his wife would go, “Oh, you can come out now.”  And, you know, just things like that made me realize how careful I needed to be and how respectful I needed to be in the classroom, you don’t just touch people at all without warning them.  And that’s good generally.  So it’s good for everybody to know that.  That was exciting.  It was colorful.

PG:  Oh, can you share how the music department collaborates with the theater and the dance department?  Is there any particular performance that stands out for you, or are there several?

BM:  Hmm, Umm. Collaboration usually starts with a couple of people getting together and talking about it.  One thing we found is that it doesn’t really work to talk about it in a big meeting.  My favorites – there’s a couple – one was “Electronic Artistry” that we did some years ago.  Those pictures…. Ed McManus started having these fabulous concerts of electronic music and the idea was to do them every year.  But unfortunately they just got way too wieldy and he didn’t get enough support from all quarters … it was just driving him insane.  But my fond memory was that we had dancers involved, and music people.  Jim and another teacher and I wrote music for it; we were playing electronic pianos. It was very exciting.  They were good productions.  And then the theater’s technical support – that was fabulous, and the lighting to go with it was awesome, awesome concerts.

Another favorite … another collaboration I enjoyed was Amadeus with Patrick Torrelle where I found all the music for Amadeus. And I was even in it, and I was pregnant.  It was very fun.  I was playing the harpsichord.  I didn’t act; I was the … music and got the music together for it. 

Umm.  I myself acted many years ago, early on.  They needed a pianist for a special play called Stage Door.  Stage Door was a ‘30s play about a bunch of women in New York City that were wannabes, wannabe actresses and stuff and I played the wannabe Russian pianist who during the week, …umm, let’s see what was it I’d do,… during the week practiced all my classical music to get into a classical career.  But on the weekends played bar jobs, which is what I did in college anyway, so I was the perfect choice to play it.  And, oh, just a kinda funny aside, on that one, it was so fun.  I played a lot of music in that play, and I was told by one audience member that somebody next to her had a little child who said, “Is she really playing, Mom?”  And the mom said, “Oh, no, no.  That’s piped-in music.”  I really was playing.

Another ... I really, especially… I think, probably one of the most profound experiences was The Amazing Grace of ----- with Bonnie and Mary because I was in on the very beginning of that and in many ways was part of the inspiration for it.  So that was profound, that one.  Evolving that and watching how Bonnie pulled that vision from this tiny little seedling to this incredible production was just amazing. 

Umm.  I took acting classes over the years.  I’ve taken dance classes over the years.  So I’ve been in various productions, not just performance, I mean not just music.  And kinda by default ended up doing faculty concerts for TADM because no one else wanted to do it.  Umm.  But because of my theatrical background here, and just being in this environment over the years, I’ve made the music ones more theatrical.  And I’ve learned that on a theater stage, which this is, it’s not just a music stage, you can’t just produce music.  You’ve got to have lights; you’ve got to have more than that. ‘Cause it looks and sounds really bad. Beall Hall, which is a music stage at U of O, you don’t have to have all those things.  But here, when we produce, I mean, even just a minimal musical, we really have to go for more than that.  And that comes from my theatrical knowledge.  And I’m kinda the liaison having done enough of that here, to help other musicians understand that.  Because most musicians just want to wear black and stand on stage.  That’s it.  They’re so aural, they don’t think about the visual.  So that’s been part of my undeclared job here, is to educate musicians, how to make concerts look better.  SO that’s been fun.

Umm.  What else. We did musicals years ago with Ed Ragozzino,  When I first came I was involved with those, and they were great fun, because we would go on retreats and they were very good team building things to do which drew us together.  They were good musicals.  We really did good job on those.  We mixed students and faculty in the orchestra, the pit orchestra, which was very exciting and good experience.  And unfortunately those days are gone, because we all did that for free, the students and the faculty.   And students can’t do it anymore, they’re working.  They’ve got to work, they’ve got to get paid for extra stuff, and so it’s very difficult-------.  Times have just changed dramatically.  We can’t ----------.That’s a big difference in the student population now.  I would say that 80% of them now have part-time jobs. And they’re really lock-stepping their way through school.  There’s very little room to have those large experiences, which is sad.  I think it’s sad.  But hopefully they’re getting it in other ways.  I think they do.  I think a lot of students now have their bands.  So they’re getting a lot of that performance experience which they might have gotten in a music [program].  Productions are fun, I enjoy them.

PG:  So I was wondering how have your students evolved through the ‘70s, the ‘80s’ and 

the ‘90s, up until now?

BM:  Well, one big difference obviously is the working aspect.  Umm.  I think we definitely have a larger age span.  We’ve always had a fair age span, but I think it’s even larger now.  I think every student I’ve had ---- fourteen years --- 94 [??]

The type of student hasn’t changed that much in that we’ve always had people who want to become music majors, people who are already professionals who come back and want to fill in the holes, and people who want to ----.  We always think about those three parts, and that’s always been there and I hope always will be.  I think that’s healthy.  And that’s again something we can do that the UO can’t.  They pretty much can’t cater to the  -----, they do it a little bit, but they can’t do it like we can.  We can everybody in the same room, and it’s good for everybody. 

Umm.  I think we have more transitional people than we used to.  We have more people in their forties and fifties truly changing careers. And that’s exciting.  I think there’s more openness to that now.  And that’s really cool.  I have lots more people with degrees coming in and changing careers.  They already have Bachelor’s and they’re switching to music because it’s their passion. And they’re not looking for the money, but for the passion.  And that’s fun.  So that’s a big change.

I think we’re getting more students now than we used to who are good, good musicians.  It used to be they didn’t come here, they would go elsewhere.  But they know we have a good program now, so we’re getting some really good people who simply want to stay in town, or they want the cheaper tuition.  It’s good transition to another bigger school that they may want to go to.  That’s nice now -----to see the potential.  I think those are the main things.  Other than that.  Umm.  We still have curious people coming through, and that’s great.

PG:  Besides the amount of time actually teaching classes, I would think it takes much more time in preparation and, or course, in practicing with an instrument.  And I believe you play more than one instrument, isn’t that true – besides the piano?  Could you speak about that?

BM:  I take flute, and Baroque flute in a specialty on tutor.  I don’t do as much performance in public because I developed a hand problem.  So I teach it privately, but I don’t perform it very much.  Piano is easier because I can use bigger muscles.  But I do have a private studio on Saturdays.  I teach all day Saturdays.  I do a six-day week, really.  And I never advertise - it’s always a full studio.  And I do high school…

Since I can’t really perform on flute, I’ve taken up singing and I’m singing in a chamber choir, a community chamber choir that’s really fun ‘cause it’s got a lot of teachers, big music teachers.  So that’s my current real performing thing besides piano. 

And then I’ve been involved over the years with Arts in ___ which is a youth symphony group that teaches, that has really helped to keep ___ active in public schools.  And I’ve helped develop a theory curriculum for that.  So that’s been my community effort.  So those are things I do on the side.

Oh, what was next – oh, budget cuts. You know, over thirty years of teaching, there was one year when we came in in the fall and our leader said, “We have some extra money.”  Twenty-nine other years we came in in the fall and our director said, “We have some financial problems.”  Twenty-nine years out of thirty.  So I wasn’t real concerned when I first heard of this round of budget problems last year, when it first came out.  I thought, OK, well here we go again, same old, same old.  Every year it’s been, we’ve had to cut something.  It’s literally gone on every single year. Even when we were in the building phase, we had to be prudent.  There was just very seldom any time …

We joked about paper clips and everything over the years.  There were a couple of years, several years ago we went through another budget process. I don’t know if you want this on there. And so we said, you know, we’re really getting sick of this, and we came up with a plan.  Our plan was to cut out all the phones, to get rid of all the computers.  Let’s go back to just being in the classroom; none of this other stuff.  And we were serious about it.  We really were.  And, you know what, the administration said absolutely not, you’ve got to have your computers and your phones.  Go figure. I thought it was a good idea.  I mean, how much money would we save.  We could have one phone.  Our administrator, she would give us messages just like we did in the ‘70s.  No problem. We were fine with it.  We were serious.  Anyway, they didn’t accept it.  They wanted to cut classes instead, we didn’t.  So it’s kind of humorous.  We wanted to throw everything, we would sell everything and just do ... in the classroom that was necessary.

The current budget problems that we started having last year - it was really the first time it was this great.  I just couldn’t believe it.  Generally, where cuts come are in part-time, which is a flexible place to have cuts.  It’s hard on the part-timers, but it’s something you can add back when times are better.  Whereas, if you cut permanent positions, the chances of getting them back are almost nil. So, even though that’s painful, we really try to hang on to the permanent positions just because that’s where there’s a lot more power making sure things get covered.  So, the good news in music we’ve done pretty well in spite of all that stuff.  Partly because our part-time classes that we do have, it was easy to switch them over to tuition-based.  Where if you just get enough students, you can have the class.  What we lost, unfortunately, was group piano which you can’t do.  You can only, really 16 pianos is max for that.  We literally thought about knocking the wall out, adding another 8 pianos so we could keep Betsy Parker.  And then we realized that with her doctorate, she’d have to have 33 students in her piano class.  There’s no way.  It isn’t going to work.  We thought we could get up to 22 pedagogically and make it work, but more than that, the student’s are by themselves.  And that’s were we would go, we’ll go out of the box completely if we can, but we lost that.  But, again, if times get better, it’s easy to add her back.  Unfortunately, that’s not …. 

We lost our performance classes, both vocal and instrumental.  But, again, that’s easy to add in if we can.  And we’re looking at ways to get that integrated into the individual lessons package so it won’t get cut in the future.  So that one’s not gone; we’re not forgetting about it.  We feel lucky that they haven’t cut more than that. But in truth, all of us in the music program are so old and so high in the tenure track that they would literally have to cut the whole program to get rid of us.  And with the new building, that’s really an issue .. so why do that. I think..  Nobody’s safe, but as safe as we could be as long as we keep doing our job to the high quality that we can, hopefully we’ll be here for a long time and that it will just be minor shifts around.  So, who knows, but we’re optimistic. 

And one thing we learned when we did that shift in consciousness.  The consciousness shift that we did that was so critical is we decided not to think in negatives.  To think in positives that we will do whatever it takes to keep this happening. And be positive and be willing to jump out of the box and do something crazy.  And to give our time and to do whatever it takes.  And just to think positive about what is happening.  And if we hadn’t done that there would be no new addition, because, I have to tell you, that was the most laborious process in the world.  And Ed McManus, his positive vision, and our positive vision, holding him up to that and always looking ahead to the light and not looking at the crap that can pull it down, ‘cause it just feels like you get stuff hanging all over you and “Oh, my god, can I go anymore?”  Without that positive vision we wouldn’t have gotten this, that’s for sure.   So we’re going to hang on to that, and I do believe that’s a shift in consciousness.  And I believe that relates to quantum mechanics and quantum physics.  We’re making it happen.  Let’s continue making it happen.  We will.  Anything else?

PG:  Are there still talent grants or scholarships in the music department?  Could you speak about that?

BM:  Oh, yah. The budget cuts…those are different. I don’t know -  tuition grants, I suppose could be cut at some point, because frankly I don’t know where they come from.  We fought hard and long to get those, and there’s been no word about them getting cut.  So the tuition grants are for talented people who contribute ___ and that pays for twelve credits.  So hopefully that means free tuition – if it’s still twelve credits it’s going to cost more.   So maybe we will have the number cut back, I don’t know, I haven’t heard a word about it. But we’ll keep ___ as ___ as we can.

The individual lessons is a different pot. That’s money that comes into our concerts directly, straight into that pot.  So as long as we educate our students to get their friends and family to come to concerts, we’ll keep that pot filled.  And sometimes we can fill it in other ways like the musical that Ron and Jim did last summer.  There was a lot of money that came from that for individual lessons.  And that was the goal.  So whenever we advertised that it benefits our scholarship fund, that’s the one we’re talking about – the individual lessons scholarship fund.  So that’s the one we’ll keep filled – it’s so important.

PG:  What inspires you after all these years?

BM:  The students, definitely.  Watching the lights come on.  Simply helping a student find their own way.  It’s not about even guiding them; it’s about peeling away stuff that’s just makes it easier for them to find their way through.  I get so excited when a student gets excited.  And when they find something, when they find their way it doesn’t have to be music.  I have so many students who’ve change their mind and gone into something else they find joy in.  It is just part of the path for students. I’m just glad, I feel honored to be part of that path and to see them later on, you know, with their families and their success stories, and stuff.  It’s just exciting.  I feel my contribution in any way helps anybody to make like better for them – that’s what I’m here for.

Jim Green - I think it was 1980, we became office mates. So we’d been office mates until this last year and we joked a lot because when we finally got our own offices we talked about it as a benevolent divorce.  And the, it really was.  Because we had to - I still have the files for music theory and he just comes in and gets them, and we share all our CDs.  We’re so used to sharing all our resources, and we still do.  We just leave our doors unlocked, because we need them. And so he was joking about the tape, literally – I got custody of the tapes and he got custody of the piano.  It’s really the good part was sharing our offices, cause that’s part of our communication network.  But the new situation we were a little concerned about, because we’d each have our own office.  But we are right close together which really has helped.  And we still have our once-a-week meetings, and our communication’s doing great.  We were really concerned about that, and Jim and I really lived through withdrawal. It’s very funny.  It’s been great being that close to somebody as a colleague, and yet be two completely different people.  But I also like ________.  As you can tell, we like each other.  So that’s helped.

OK. That’s great.  Can you think of anything else?

We went through a lot of work trying to get a piano tuner technician program going.  And I don’t even remember what happened, it’s the logical one where people can get jobs immediately.  And it just, somehow we never got the support for it.  I’m glad you brought it up because I think we might try it again. Because absolutely, there is the demand out there for that program.  The second,… 

PG:  About electronic music?

BM:  Umm…. The wonderful story we have to tell are problems of getting things done.  How we never get things from the college that we need on time.  That’s why we started fees and things like that.  The really kind of humorous, poignant, sad story is that Nathan Cammack who was with us for years ordered a xylophone. We desperately needed a xylophone. We went through the capital budget process every single year. That was at the height of our list.  We finally got it the year he retired.

PG:  Which was when?

BM:  Which - I don’t remember the year.  But we kept putting that thing in for fifteen years.  That’s unfortunately how bad the capital budget process works.  Right now we have a problem.  We have had a mixer board for the theater for over two years sitting in ___ not being able to get it installed.  It’s going to be obsolete.  It’s $60,000. There’s stuff like that that kinda drives us nuts.  And that’s why again I have to say that Ed McManus’ process of getting his loft and getting it equipped had been phenomenal.  There’s a lot of people to thank for getting that, but we can’t get the mixer board in.  Go figure.

Pianos.  We always need new pianos.  We’ve been very lucky with donations.  And one year we couldn’t afford to get things fixed.  We have no line item for repairs.  Which just blows my mind.  So we got creative – go out of the box, right, we aren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.  We put up a huge poster of a piano with keys and we started selling the keys.  And it was fabulous; because it was visible. And the word got back to the administration that we were doing this and it was kind of embarrassing.  They bought a whole bunch of keys, and we got our piano repair budget.  So, I don’t know.  We have to kinda get creative and almost.  The one thing we’re not afraid to do is to be visible and embarrass people if things are just ridiculous like that.  I mean, come on, we stood to lose three grand pianos if they didn’t get repaired. That is a couple of hundred thousand dollars which a far cry from $5000 worth of repairs.  And we just couldn’t get it across to them.  So we’ll come up with whatever we have to.  It’s kinda funny and humorous, but it worked.  It worked to get those keys, and students were buying keys, everybody was buying the keys on the piano.  It was fabulous.

Electronic music program.  We now finally have the lab completely outfitted.  That’s quite a _____ – you might talk to Ed McManus about that.  The good news is that this program is so popular that we’ve been actively working with NCC to create a four-year program that they will finish and that will train people to do studio recording.  Hands-on, behind the glass, we call it.  And the U of O, these students will be able to transfer to do what they call a BFA in music technology the more compositional side of electronic music. So this program is booming.  I cannot tell you how many people I’ve talked to that want to go on for a bachelor’s that never would have before.

PG:  What is NCC?

BM:  It’s the Northwest ChristianCollege.  And so that gives us two outlets for our students that want to able to have some choices.  And other than that they have to go out-of-state to finish their degree.  But just to have two right here in Eugene is going to be fabulous.  And, of course, they can just go out and do their own studio without finishing a degree.  So it’s a really exciting program.  So we’re excited about all that.  We made a commitment to that one.  Commercial Music is kinda what we labeled it ten years ago.  So this idea has been germinating for ten years.  What you see in that lab is the fruition of that ten years of germination.  So we’ll start germinating the piano tuner technician program, which actually would be great. Good.