 |
Goodbye, Mr. BMemorial teacher goes
|
- By John Aehl
- Wisconsin State Journal
Give Mr. B an "A" grade, with lots of vibrato in the strings for emphasis, for his 33 years at James Madison Memorial High School.
"I want Tom Buchhauser to stay forever," the Memorial principal, Pam Nash, said this week.
That isn't going to happen.
Buchhauser, "Mr. B" to just about everybody, is retiring as director of orchestras at Memorial after a career that began in 1966 with his filling in, by necessity because of lack of a player, as a violinist in a student string quartet, and ended this school year with an orchestra program that had 154 string players, plus the requisite other instruments, in three school orchestras. In between, he has taught thousands of students.
Retirement will arrive with some pomp and circumstance. There will be a not-so-little party, "a celebration" with Buchhauser as the focus, on June 8, four days after the school year officially ends. The celebration sort of began last night as a packed house of about 600 enjoyed the 28th annual school pops concert, "dedicated to Mr. B, our beloved conductor," as the students and parents said in the program.
"My favorite description of Bucky is that he is a national treasure," said Carolyn Taylor, principal at Memorial for 16 years before she retired at the beginning of this school year.
"Tom knows so much about the musical literature that he does more than you expect one person to do." |
"He is so committed to the program and so devoted to the kids. He is able to pull the best right out of them while they still enjoy it. They're having a great time while he is working the daylights out of them.
"He's one of my all-time favorites. I have said I retired so I wouldn't have to endure the process of replacing him."
That is all fine and dandy, but what about the students? One cannot reasonably interview 154 string players, so Matt Valley, a senior who plays violin, may serve as a representative, especially since Mr. B taught him for seven years, through Jefferson Middle School and Memorial.
"He has a very informal approach in a friendly environment," Valley said. "He gets it done, but we have fun doing it. He respects the students. He is really excited about the music, and the students pick that up. He gets into it at rehearsal (an hour every school day), even jumping up and down, putting the music across.
"The biggest reason the program is so popular is his approach, I think. He doesn't have auditions, and his orchestras are set up by grades - ninth, 10th, and 11th and 12th combined. This is not elitist. The effect is to increase enthusiasm among students who might not enjoy orchestra. People enjoy it, they are with their friends, making music. I think that's important."
Can this fellow be as nice as these testimonials indicate?
Well, yes, it seems.
Not a large man, quiet but certainly not retiring in his usual demeanor, with gray hair and a rather hesitant goatee, Buchhauser, in a conversation last week unemotionally and directly addressed what he thinks are some of the reasons for the growth of the orchestra program at Memorial over the years.
"I had some kids I was teaching for nine years, and sometimes had kids from the same family for maybe 15 years," he said. "That certainly has helped with the growth. I have been almost a member of the family. Most teachers don't have that kind of long relationship with the kids. They teach a kid one year, maybe two.
"I feel that this long-term relationship was at least partly responsible for the success here."
He didn't mention teaching ability. Nash did.
"Tom knows so much about the musical literature that he does more than you expect one person to do," she said. "We expected him to do so much, and he has done it. He's just fantastic with students. When his students play at the beginning of the school year, they're good, but when they play near the end of the year the improvement is amazing."
Retirement will ease the pressures of getting the music ready for seven or eight public performances a year - October and December concerts with all three orchestras, a concerto concert, a March concert, an April and May concert, and the pops concert.
Of course, Buchhauser has been active in other areas, too. He has directed the Philharmonia Orchestra of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, and will continue to do so. WYSO assembles nearly 400 high-quality high school musicians from south-central Wisconsin in Madison for weekly rehearsals and performances in a group of orchestras and ensembles. WYSO has taken up more than 30 of Buchhauser's Saturdays each year for 16 years.
Buchhauser also played cello with the Madison Symphony Orchestra for 19 years, into the mid- 1980s, and coordinated the Capitol Christmas pageant from 1973 to 1993.
Cello has been his musical instrument of choice since ninth grade as he grew up in Chicago. His interest in music became fixed as a career at Lane Tech High School, where one of his teachers was the father of Richard Blum, for many years with the Pro Arte Quartet, now retired. Buchhauser came to the University of Wisconsin as a student in 1957, then taught at Wisconsin High and Central before arriving at Memorial in 1966.
He remembers those early years at Memorial well because he taught at other schools as well - Lakeview, Mendota, Stephens, Crestwood and Falk among them.
"I traveled 2,200 miles between schools that first year," he recalled. "I had a half hour to go from Mendota on Northport Drive, to Falk. I used to eat my lunch in the car, going around the back of the lake at 70 miles an hour."
"I believe I was in the seventh-grade orchestra the first year he taught there," said Leyla Sanyer, a violinist who has played with several groups in the area, including the Oakwood Chamber Players, and who teaches orchestra at Oregon High School.
"I would have been in the first class that he taught all the years through high school. The strongest attribute I took from Tom into my teaching is the idea of giving students ownership over their own learning. The orchestra room was always open. It was a place to share. He was there, but he enjoyed having us explore music on our own. He was very influential in my growing-up years."
Nash said the quality of playing Buchhauser gets out of his students "is astonishing for this age level. The loyalty that the kids feel for him is amazing. Ever since he announced his retirement (in February) there has been a series of little faces at my door coming up with ways they can honor him. They truly admire him. . . . I don't think `love' would be too strong a word, either."
While Buchhauser declined to discuss any particular student, "because there have been so many," he said, "I have had the pleasure of seeing many of them continue to play and enjoy good music, even if they are not professional musicians. That is what means the most to me."
Buchhauser, single, said he is looking forward to spending time in his yard and garden, working with WYSO, "and, hopefully, I'll get my cello out and play more. I have been too busy swinging my arms as a conductor.
"But it has been wonderful."
Posted June 14, 1999
 |
All
About WEAC - News
- Education Resources
|
 |