THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100667
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 226 lines
THIRTY YEARS AGO, Hampton Roads' largest music school came floating down the Potomac. The USS Cado Parish and USS Monmouth County carried not guns and ammo but drums, horns, musicians and music.
The Armed Forces School of Music opened at Little Creek Amphibious Base in 1964. Soldiers, sailors and Marines streamed in for basic and refresher courses, continuing a decades-long tradition of military band training.
Just a few years before, a high school kid in western Pennsylvania had fallen in love with the Navy Band. It came right to his house every Saturday afternoon on the radio. He went with his father and a friend down to Washington to audition and was amazed.
``This is what these guys do,'' he said. ``You get into a band and all you do is play all day long. That sounds pretty good to me.''
It still sounds pretty good - better than good - to Cmdr. Raymond A. Ascione. But Thursday, as the School of Music celebrates its 30th Anniversary, the school's commanding officer will conduct the Navy Hymn, ``Eternal Father, Strong to Save,'' and close his 34-year career.
Ascione may be leaving, but about 500 young men and women like him arrive at Little Creek each year to follow in the footsteps of John Philip Sousa. After enduring a threat of closure last year, the school has continued training recruits and officers in skills ranging from basic bandsmanship to advanced jazz skills.
The school itself is a converted three-story barracks reached by entering Gate 5 and hanging a left at McDonald's. The lobby is just like that of a college music department, with obscure instruments in display cases.
But conservatories don't usually welcome guests with waist-high shell casings. And few civilian student musicians rehearse in camo.
Early one morning last week, Ascione took a concert band through a Latin piece in preparation for the anniversary concert. He conducted with clipped, efficient, bird-like motions.
``He's a good conductor. A good, solid conductor,'' said Capt. A.J. Omdahl, commander of the Marine element of the school. Omdahl said Ascione's leadership extends to administrative duties.
``Being the (commanding officer) has got to be a tough job in any joint command, a tri-service command such as ours. He does a real job of making things mesh.''
Ascione began at the bottom. Or below the bottom, in what used to be called the ``kiddie cruise'' - back in the '50s, a person who enlisted at age 17 would be discharged the day before his 21st birthday. He'd planned to stay just one term and get out, and his first posting confirmed that decision.
After training at the Navy School of Music in Washington, he was stationed with a band in Iceland, where he did less playing than groundskeeping and painting. But after being posted to the Naval Academy band in Annapolis, Md., he rose through the ranks to principal clarinet. His career was under way.
He marched, but did not play, at President Kennedy's inaugural parade. ``It was one of the coldest days of my life. I stood there, and I saw the reactions of the people when those bands came by. To me, it seemed the bands just stirred the emotions of everybody around.''
As leader of a military band in Philadelphia in the early '70s, he saw audience emotions stirred in a different way. ``There were times during that period military bands went out and performed in civilian clothes because they were afraid of what would happen if they showed the uniform.''
But after the abolition of the draft, bands have been used proudly in recruiting. Today, Ascione said band members' primary responsibility is supporting the troops.
The School of Music day begins at 7:30 a.m., with some students raising the base flag, while others learn to march in formation. The drill sergeant herds them up and down the lawn behind the school, halting them in mid-turn to make them see how misaligned they are.
``A lot of them have drum and bugle corps, marching band skills,'' said Staff Sgt. Randy Corey, the school librarian and public information officer. ``That's all helpful, but it doesn't teach you how to do a change of command.''
The head of marching instructors is a Marine drum major, Gunnery Sgt. James Eckles. ``It's one of the largest schools in the military and one of the toughest ones to get through,'' Eckles said.
And military musicians, Marines especially, still have combat functions should the need arise. Eckles said, ``Any one of my Marines here could go out and pick up a rifle and ding the black out of the target.''
But the most familiar pose of the military musician is in a dress uniform on stage. The School of Music sends graduates of its 20-week courses to dozens of bands worldwide. It also presents its own concert and jazz bands for public performances.
In April, the school hosted its annual All-Eastern Band and Instrumental Clinic, a week of public concerts and seminars by military bands and guest clinicians. Among the events was a performance by the school's band under noted conductor and John Philip Sousa impersonator Keith Brion.
The ensemble of faculty and students played at about the level of the average college concert band. The audience included barking Marines.
The next night, Ascione led the faculty concert band in a program featuring a documentary film score by a jazz musician who performed on synthesizers. During ``Servicemen on Parade,'' a medley of service anthems, active and retired servicemen from all branches rose to attention. The Marines stood ramrod straight.
This summer, Marines dominate the student body, though the school is funded and administered by the Navy. Neither the Coast Guard nor the Air Force sends band members through the program. The Coast Guard has just one band that it staffs by recruiting fully trained musicians. The Air Force trains its players on the job as well.
Last year, the Navy proposed closing the school as part of a $6.5-billion reduction in its training programs. Ascione says the school's annual budget is $500,000, not including faculty and student salaries. But a fight led by Rep. Owen Pickett, a Democrat representing parts of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, kept the facility open.
``The atmosphere was very thick and tense,'' Musician First Class Brian Walden recalled. At the same time, the school was also being re-evaluated by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. But Walden said Ascione ``provided the guidance and the leadership you would expect. He got the job done.''
This was not the first call for closure. In 1972, Les Aspin, then a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called the school ``a first-class boondoggle.''
But Eckles said Air Force-style on-the-job training is not sufficient for Army, Navy and Air Force recruits.
``It would be tough to achieve what we achieve here out in the working bands,'' Walden, 31, said. ``The performance schedules are too tight. To give (students) the extra training they need to advance and be promoted would be very tough. We hope that when a person walks out of here, they can walk right into the job and start working. That way the taxpayer gets the most out of them.''
The colleges and schools association also re-approved the program.
The programs are quick. The basic course is 23 weeks. The bandleader program takes players from instrument to podium in just 21 weeks.
In her third week as a conductor, Gunnery Sgt. Teri Dolshak was leading a student band through one of the classics of the band repertoire, Holst's First Suite.
Frustrated by a lack of ensemble, she said, ``Trombones, I will give it to you, OK? I may decide to hold the note with tubas and euphoniums forever and a day. If I do, you'll wait forever and a day.'' Her instructor, soft-spoken Master Sgt. Paul Trebbe, showed her how to command a band with the baton instead of words.
Dolshak, 31, joined the Marines after two years studying music education at George Mason University. She'd lost her civilian job and was having money trouble.
``I ultimately wanted to be a music therapist,'' she said. ``Now I like the corps. I like being a musician. As long as the Marine Corps will let me stay, I'll stay.''
She said her time at the School of Music has been much like her college days. ``The only difference is the military discipline. And the chain of command comes into contact on occasion. When we're in classes we might as well be at ODU or Virginia Wesleyan.'' Some students have been able to transfer credits for the 21-week and 23-week School of Music programs to colleges.
``We get instruction in conducting the band during military ceremonies. Not only do we have to know the music, we have to be the duty expert on the way the ceremony is supposed to take place.''
Military musicians play more than marches. They also play jazz concerts and what librarian Corey called ``music to be ignored by'' - background pop for dinners and receptions.
The jazz ensembles recruit performers on such nonmarching instruments as electric bass and piano. Guitarist James McSwain, 18, is a Marine recruit from Thomaston, Ga.
``Little town, ain't nowhere to make money. And nobody to learn from, either,'' McSwain said. ``I figured, `Hell, go into the Marine band.' '' He had little musical training before coming to the school.
``I would mostly just sit in my room and jam to the radio and stuff. Anything from speed metal to rock and roll, blues. This is the first time I ever played jazz. I can't wait to get out into the fleet and start gigging around.''
His studies include private lessons, big band and small combo classes. ``It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Probably the hardest thing is keeping up with your uniform and room inspections. I have to play bass drum or cymbals in drill band. That sucks.''
McSwain isn't the first in his family to come through the program. His father, a former Navy trumpeter, visited him recently. ``He said it's pretty much the same as it was when he was here. The military is unchanging. You look at the walls and there's a few new coats of paint and that's the only difference.''
The McSwains aren't the only family of Naval musicians. After Cmdr. Ascione retires this week, the Navy will still have its fair share of Asciones. His brother leads The Commodores, a Navy show band. His oldest two sons are Naval musicians as well. A third son plays guitar and bass for a civilian cruise line.
``I knew what a good discipline studying music was for me,'' Ascione recalled. ``When the kids were small, around age 6 or 7, I started them all on piano. I didn't push these guys into doing this. They kept the interest up themselves.''
The Navy his sons are inheriting is different from the one Ascione entered. In 1960, there were 47 bands worldwide, with 2,500 musicians. On Oct. 1, at the start of the new fiscal year, there will be 14 bands and 665 musicians.
``I don't know how to put it so I can make you realize how much I've loved what I've done over the past 34 years. I'm not ready to retire. I'm only retiring because it's a mandatory time to retire.
``I can't predict what will happen to this school. We may have fewer bands, we may have smaller bands, but the need for a ceremony being dignified by a band will always be there.
``Let's face it. We do things they did in the Navy 200 years ago.'' ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff color photos
TOP: Sgt. Dave Anderson gets in the groove as the 17-piece band
rehearses.
LEFT: Sgt. Thomas Hunt plays clarinet in the military band.
ABOVE: Sgt. Alex Gray, a Marine band leader, conducts the School of
Music marching band.
LEFT: Cpl. Gearl Stephens practices in one of the school's practice
rooms. Stephens has completed 5 1/2 months of the six-month
program.
Photos
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Sgt. Chris Murray, an instructor at the Armed Forces School of
Music, advises Pfc. Kristina Ostergren, practicing on the tenor
sax.
Cmdr. Raymond A. Ascione is commanding officer of the School of
Music.
Graphic
CONCERT FACTS
The Armed Forces School of Music presents its 30th anniversary
concert Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Naval Amphibious Base Theater.
The program includes music by Bernstein and Gottschalk, plus
excerpts from ``Showboat'' and ``Les Miserables.'' Admission is
free. For more information, call 464-7501.
by CNB