Conrad Susa: I cut my playtime to zero, because I would study – or when I began piano, I would practice until it was time to go to bed. I had almost no friends except a few from school. When I got to junior high things changed. In the secular school there was time for a very different sort of organization and it was a lot looser. The study wasnt stressed quite so much. I think if I didnt have that background, I dont know what my grades would be. But I started to goof off a little bit. But we had this brilliant choral teacher, Ruth Johnson, who got her high school choir together with sufficient verve to win state contests. They were the pride of the town. So was our band, the high school band, run by Dwayne Wareham, was very, very good. I was in the band, I played oboe. I never did really learn to play it because I never practiced. There were no oboe teachers to send me to except what he could show me. But I did manage to play in the concerts, and went to All State, and all those things. But when I left school I dropped the oboe entirely, and thought about it never again. What I did with him, however, was arrangements for the band, I arranged various works from the choral catalog. We had a choral library that was gigantic, it had transcriptions of vocal works by Tchaikovsky, it had a lot of choral music that was beyond us. But I became aware of these composers suddenly, and this writing. There were three of us – four, really. Sally Fold, who had a wonderful soprano voice, and the alto whose name escapes me at the moment, and a very good tenor, Charles Shoup, from an old family of the town who had been in school and knew Sally. And we would meet at one of our houses, and sing, or play duets. my.sfcm.edu/web/sfcm/conrad_susa/section_1
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 11:43:58 +0000
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