BROOKINGS Dr. David Reynolds may feel a touch of nostalgia on March 31: At 7:30 p.m. the United States Army Field Band and Soldiers Chorus will open their free concert at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center. The director of the School of Performing Arts and professor of High Brass and Orchestra at South Dakota State University is a former soldier-musician who played trumpet in the United States Army Band Pershings Own home-based in Washington, D.C.
During his nearly 20 years as a member of the SDSU faculty, Reynolds has championed bringing in 16 band groups from our nations armed forces to entertain Brookings area residents free of charge. Bands of the Army, Navy and Air Force have all been represented.
For Reynolds, who grew up right outside of Joplin, Missouri, music became his lifes vocation at an early age; it would later become his lifes avocation.
My mother was a church pianist, he explained. One of my fondest memories of childhood is sitting next to her on a piano bench every Sunday and every Wednesday night in the South you go to church three times a week and listening to her play the piano.
(Someone) in my extended family owned a trumpet, the professor added. My mother had a first cousin who when he got drafted to go to Vietnam, there sat his trumpet; so it was given to me. Thats how I got started.
Finally, add to that a great-aunt who had been a music teacher and recently retired. She took me under her wing. She really knew how to teach rhythm and how to count music. To this day I still use a lot of the methods that she used with me, I use them with my own students.
Moved by Marine band
Following his graduation from high school, Reynolds attended the University of Kansas (Lawrence). One of his teachers had been a trumpet player in the Marine band in the 1960s and Reynolds, 9 or 10 at the time, had seen him perform with the Marine band at a high school gym in Purdy, Missouri. Reynolds got to thinking that was something I wanted to do.
We still are the best of friends, he recalled of that trumpet teacher. We talk regularly on the phone: not just about trumpet but about life in general. Youve just got to love what happens in music when it comes to the mentoring that goes on. The fact that Ive been out of college now going on some 30 years and I still talk to my teacher every other week.
The director would go on to the College of Music at Florida State University (Tallahassee) for a masters degree; but then in the mid-1980s he took a sabbatical replacement position at a small college in Colorado. And recalling his seeing the Marine band perform, he started looking into Army band opportunities and learned about auditions to be held in Washington, D.C., for Pershings Own.
This was about 1986 or 1987. There were 18 musicians at the audition and after three or four rounds that went much of the day, Reynolds was so darn lucky to be the last person standing. The Army offered a position and he accepted.
Next came basic training at which he was at least 7 or 8 years older than any of the other recruits. He laughed, noting that he was the old guy. He spent about 4 years on active duty.
While stationed in D.C. he started working on his doctorate with the idea of becoming a college music teacher. Then Operation Desert Storm came along and some military personnel were not being released from active duty. However, that was over pretty quickly, but Reynolds replacement had been hired and he was released. But it was late in the year and he couldnt find a job for teaching trumpet. However, his replacement advised him that the job he had left to come into the Army band had not been filled. Reynolds got the job via a telephone interview and went on to teach at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana.
Twenty years at SDSU
I thought I would be there a year and I ended up being there 15, he explained. He had his masters from Florida State and all but the thesis he needed for a doctorate of musical arts (DMA), which is a performance degree. He would complete his doctorate work while at Rocky Mountain College. He had offers from several other universities. However, he opted for SDSU and with his wife Rina and their two sons, William and Thomas, came to SDSU in 2005.
Both of our boys are very musical and were very proud of both of them, Reynolds said. Older son William is working on a doctorate at the University of Colorado (Boulder) and playing trumpet in international competition.
Younger son Thomas is a senior at South Dakota State University and will give his senior recital in April. His father will accompany him on a selection.
Looking back to memorable performances as a soldier-trumpeter, Reynolds noted that he played Taps more than 800 times at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. He also played Taps at funerals at the National Memorial Cemetery on the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virgina.
I got to see a lot of history, he said, noting that he played at the White House when Mikhail Gorbachev visited President Ronald Reagan there. Additionally, he marched right behind Army generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell in June 1991 in the National Gulf War Victory Parade following Operation Desert Storm.
Those days are long behind him; but Reynolds is active as a director of the Brookings Community Band for all its summer concerts in Pioneer Park.
Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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