Recalling My Times with John Swallow, Part 4

As I mention in this video, my main purpose for doing this is to just let my times and experiences with John just flow from me in any order in which they want to appear. It is great for me to do this because it is helping me access things about John's teaching with me and it is bringing up some things about my own teaching as seen through this experience of thinking about John.

I seem to be having a difficult time remembering certain pieces and the names of what trombones I was playing on during these video recordings! Weird actually. Carol is here to correct me though! Even when it comes down to my not remembering the Strauss opera Salome! She is such a wonderful partner with me in all things because of her perceptions and depth of sentiment in her thinking and feeling life. Even though Carol was with John and his wife Myra only twice in person, she vividly recalls how impressed she was with him as a person and having such a brilliant and creative mind.

John was one of my greatest influences as a musician-trombonist and with a mind that was very clear that not everyone is the same. He worried about people thinking they have to follow the crowd and play in a way that was really not natural for them. I totally agreed with him and always believed that. I had many great influences in my life and in this video I recall John telling me about his influences, including  composer-conductor Gunther Schuller and trombonist Neal Di Biase, former principal trombonist of the NBC Symphony under Toscanni .

Part 4