My high school flute teacher
Thursday, June 11th, 2009I seriously have got to be the world’s worst blogger….my excuse is that I have been busy doing things instead of writing about things, and that facebook is a nice, quick substitute for keeping people informed about what I am up to.
Some highlights from early 2009 are a trip to Florida to play Roberto Sierra’s Sonata and give my “It Sounded Better at Home!” presentation at the Florida Flute Fair. A side benefit to that trek was that I made some time to swing down to West Palm Beach and visit my wonderful flute teacher from when I was in high school. He has since retired, and he and his lovely wife now enjoy winters in Florida. Bob Webb (I always still think of him primarily as “Dr. Webb,” even though he signs his Christmas cards “Bob” and would be very amused if I called him anything else but “Bob”….similar to my childhood best friend’s folks, who will never, ever be anything but “Mr. and Mrs. Olsen” - it just seems to go against every fiber of my childhood “respect your elders” upbringing…and it’s probably a nice little subconscious method I use for my own personal sense of nostalgia, as well) was the flute professor at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, near where I grew up, and I had lessons with him all through high school.
He was a wonderful teacher - he gave me tons of recordings to listen to and dumped so many pieces of flute music and books about the flute into my lap, and I just ate them up. He had a marvelous sound (and still does!), and we would warm up at every lesson with harmonics or maybe some Moyse long tones. We’d end every lesson with a duet - usually Kuhlau, and so I think I’d covered every single Kuhlau duet in existence by the time I was 16. When I visited him in January, we did some of the same Kuhlau duets I played in high school, which was really fun. He was (and is) such a wonderful inspiration to me, and I owe a lot of my teaching methods to him. Thanks, Bob!
Dr Webb (I mean, Bob) and me - January 2009