Last night, I commented on the FB post of a former Copenhaver student at Carolina who was sad she could not attend the Celebration service for him presented by family and friends in the band hall that bears his name. I wrote that we missed her and that it was an “Epic Carolina Day.” Just minutes after my family and I left the service in the hall, I said the same thing to President and Mrs. Harris Pastides in their home at their annual holiday reception for the campus community at Carolina. What made the day epic was not just the power of the man that we gathered in great numbers to honor, or the profoundly moving and excellently delivered memories of those he loved and who loved him. To me, what was most epic is what inspired us all to be there and to remember him in the first place—what it is that this most extraordinary of ordinary men created here, in our special place that is beyond the feelings or memories any of us have of Jim the man or Jim the band leader. James Copenhaver envisioned, founded, and nurtured a musical home to which we will all be connected and where we will always come for our inspiration. He did it by insisting on excellence and pursuing it with the mix of expectation and love that is necessary to achieve it. It worked not only because he was a great musician, but also because he could actualize this mix of expectation and love in a most natural but never-ceasing way. I weep when I watch the video of the 2008 Midwest Clinic performance of the Palmetto Concert Band. When it was first posted to FB on Thanksgiving Day to honor Jim’s passing, I clicked on it. I handed my laptop to my freshman flute-playing daughter Mimi to watch and when I told her that it was the embodiment of a life well-led and we should all aspire to such a great thing, I almost could not finish the sentence. Here was this modest but gifted man bringing great music to life at a very high level, with professionals and amateurs alike that he educated and influenced who chose to devote a few hours on some Sundays every year to making music largely because they loved still being able to do so with him. It makes me swell up just thinking about it—it is the perfect manifestation of that to which I, and a great many of us here at Carolina have devoted our beings—enriching the lives of others through the power of music, and here he was doing it in a lasting way, a way that will last far after his final downbeat. Further, it is also so meaningful because it is unique. Very few bandsmen of the last two generations have been able to experience anything like what Jim and his legions of students created here—I should know—though I cherish my own musical education, I did not experience this kind of communal devotion when I was coming along and my envy of it is eclipsed only by how lucky I feel to be connected to it now and responsible in some way for sustaining it into the future. When I think about Jim and our day-to-day dealings, I have little to remark about. We were colleagues to an extent, but he also never let me forget, as most dont, that I was his “boss” and there were some things that just had to be off the plate between us. I am used to that, even though there are times when that is hard for me. He was also even more humble around me than he might have been with many. The discussions I had with him when he began seriously considering his retirement were not like the conversations he had with very many people I would guess, and I sure hope I did enough to make sure he knew that I WAS THE ONE HUMBLED by what he had to say as the end neared. He was the model musician, colleague, man as he self-evaluated in the context of all he had done and wanted to do. These were intense chats we had and I knew that for him they were among the hardest realizations of his life. To conclude, through our experiences together at that time, that I admired him would be to vastly underestimate the meaning of the word “admire.” I wish I had known him in the way most of his students and other colleagues did. I was not trained a Gamecock. I grew up in another great band tradition of the south, one that also was built in the shoulders of giants, only those giants were not still the band director there when I came through. My mentors were great people--some are gone and some are not. We all lived and learned in a special place and I love going back. But we could not ever have had there the kind of gathering that Carolinians were lucky enough to have had yesterday. I am a bit sad to think that someday the meaning of the “Copenhaver Band Hall” will symbolize the same thing that the Bachman Band Hall did in Gainesville, FL before it was removed in favor of a classroom and a newer adjacent band hall in someone else’s name who gave money but did not give expectation and love in music. I am heartened, though, that I can play a role in making sure that does not happen here, and I have dedicated myself to the premise that progress lifts us, but diminishing the past does not. The fact that James Copenhaver lived as he did, dedicated to music and young musicians, would be enough. It will always be more than enough. It is what we will remember and wished would never end. And yet, just a few years before it did end he took even another profound step to insure that what mattered to him would matter forever—he provided the largest gift himself to the endowment founded years earlier by his former students to honor him. As a result, not only will students of students of students of Jim come through here in the years ahead with the goal of making our world better in music (as was his goal) in the BUILDING THAT CARRIES HIS NAME, but many will do so on SCHOLARSHIPS THAT CARRY HIS NAME. A life well-led indeed.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 14:16:44 +0000
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