Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand; used courtesy fo the Free Music Archive.

<Music Up>

Jo Reed:Welcome to Arts Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

My first real understanding of the scope and musicianship of the U.S. military bands came about through my conversations with NEA Jazz Masters. Jazz great after jazz great came through the military bands and all spoke glowingly about the musical skills they acquired there, often by playing with musicians coming from different genres altogether. After the U.S. Military Bands received the 2020 National Medal of Arts, I had the opportunity to speak to the commander and conductor of The Air Force Band. Now there are 15 Air Force Bands stationed around the world consisting of some 800 musicians. Colonel Don Schofield heads The Air Force Band which is stationed right outside of Washington DC. It has 172 musicians and six different ensembles. It gives about 1,600 performances a year, of which 800 are at Arlington National Cemetery.

Heading the U.S. Air Force Band is a dream job for Colonel Schofield. In fact, I spoke with him on the one-year anniversary of his taking command of the band. With six ensembles and 1,600 yearly performances given in and out of the country, there are many moving parts and requires organizational and tactical thinking along with the vision and musical ability required of a conductor. I asked Colonel Schofield to break down those two parts of his job.

Col. Don Schofield: The commander is the one that's responsible for running the squadron, running the unit, the CEO, making sure that people are in the correct places, they have the right training, they have the right equipment, we're planning out far enough. That's the commander aspect of my job. The conductor aspect is the musical director for each of the ensembles, to be able to provide the insight and direction musically on what effect we want to have on our audiences with specific pieces of music.

Jo Reed: All right, and please run down the ensembles.

Col. Don Schofield: Sure. We have—we have the Strolling Strings. We have a rock band called Max Impact. We have a jazz band called the Airmen of Note. We have the Ceremonial Brass. We have the Singing Sergeants. We have the Concert Band.

Jo Reed: There is such a long history of military bands. I'd like you to tell me why you think military bands have been so significant, literally throughout history.

Col. Don Schofield: So, we can start with military bands and the very early history of what those were, and they were used to move troops from one place to another, and they—they would be consisting of drums forming a cadence, being able to move troops into battle. Drum cadences and bugle calls were also used to signal troop movements on the battlefield, where you couldn't see each other but you could hear a drum cadence or a bugle call; you would know to do this type of maneuver. Then it got into more ceremonial use. You would think of "Taps" and "To the Colors" and the national anthem in terms of the United States. The history of the United States Air Force bands goes back to 1941, where the U.S. Army Air Corps developed a—started to develop a separate branch, the United States Air Force, which came into being in 1947, but U.S. Army Air Force bands started in 1941--

Jo Reed: Before the Air Force.

Col. Don Schofield: That is correct. There were over 60 Air Force—Army Air Force bands throughout the United States, and their—their purposes were very interesting. Their purposes were ceremonial, troop morale, and to draw crowds for war bond fundraising.

Jo Reed: How has that evolved throughout the years? When you think of your mission now, how do you see it?

Col. Don Schofield: So, our mission is the same as all the other Air Force bands as well. We all share the same mission of honor, inspire, and connect—to honor those that have served before us—you look at that as part of our Arlington mission, part of our ceremonial mission in which we play ceremonies for changes of command, anything that you would think of in terms of a military band honoring those who have served before us. To inspire—that’s being able to reach out and to the next generation to inspire. I also put our international work in terms of inspiring. When we do an arrival ceremony somewhere for a foreign dignitary, we are setting the stage for what America stands for in terms of precision, in terms of that type of engagement. And also, the last part that I think of our mission that's so important today is to connect—to connect with audiences that may never come in contact with another military member. When I was stationed in Europe, we would travel through, and I was in Ukraine several times, and not only was I the only Air Force member that these people had ever met, but many times I would be the only American that they ever met in their lives. So, this is an opportunity for us to connect with people outside the normal scope of a military operation.

Jo Reed: You know, we hear a lot about cultural diplomacy, and I really was surprised at the international scope that military bands in general, Air Force bands, have. Can you talk about how you see cultural diplomacy working in this context?

Col. Don Schofield: From a military band standpoint, we are able to project influence, to project a professional image of America and the United States, and what we stand for. I think this goes back—best back to a story into when we were performing in a town in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and this is in far eastern Ukraine. And to me the impact of cultural diplomacy, personally, comes down to this singular story: After the performance, we were shaking hands, signing autographs, taking pictures, and again, there was no English being spoken; these were all through the interpreters that we had, but the crowd was so engaging and so appreciative of that, and I had a gentleman come up and he was an ex-Soviet soldier, and through the interpreter, he was shaking my hand and he told me, through the interpreter, "I do not like the United States, but I like you." And for me, I thought, "That's exactly what we're doing. We are breaking down barriers and we're connecting with people on a cultural level." That type of trust being built, those seeds of cultural diplomacy I think is one of the incredible things that military bands can do for our country. We also have a full-time deployment mission—the Air Force bands do as well. We're at an undisclosed location at a base in Southwest Asia, but we perform across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, both ceremonially, doing troop morale, and connecting to those audiences outside the gates that may not have another opportunity to meet an American.

Jo Reed: So the Air Force band draws audiences internationally?

Col. Don Schofield: Absolutely, and we're also very aware that when they come to see an American band performance, there's some things that they want to hear, and when we were in Europe, Glenn Miller is still an incredible influence over there because of what he represented to generations during World War II, and that is hope and freedom. So, I was amazed when we played in a school in Poland, and the student body started dancing. They had practiced a flash-mob dance when we played swing music, and it was such a gift that they gave us. They love swing music, <music> and it is something culturally, like I said, that represents hope and freedom that the Americans planted there over 70 years ago.

Jo Reed: Well, I think we should speak about that seed that was planted, because Glenn Miller certainly had a hand in what became the U.S. Air Force Band.

Col. Don Schofield: Absolutely. Major Glenn Miller was a reservist and he was the first to sell gold records for "Chattanooga Choo Choo". So he was an international star before he joined the military, and when he joined the military, he formed his band, took his band, and did those troop morale shows. So he was a world-famous artist even before he joined the Army Air Corps, and then took that around and was able to connect with those troops all over the world, and through radio broadcasts put that beacon of hope out to communities, that maybe that was their first introduction to American culture.

Jo Reed: And of course, he tragically was killed during World War II.

Col. Don Schofield: That—that is correct. Unknown how his—his plane went missing, but it was a tragedy, and he was on his way to more performances that he was going to do later in that tour.

Jo Reed: Tell me how you choose the members of the band.

Col. Don Schofield: The job itself is an incredible opportunity for us to do two things—and when I say "us", it is military musicians. We're able to do something that we love and have a passion to do, and it's an also an opportunity for us to serve our country through a talent or a passion that we have. So, we're very lucky, first of all, to be able to do that. It's a competitive field to be able to get into, so we will advertise a vacancy. People will then send in résumés and recordings to be able to be considered by a committee to be able to be invited to a live audition.

Jo Reed: Are people outside the military asked to come in and audition, or allowed to audition, or is strictly within the military?

Col. Don Schofield: That's a very good question. It is outside the military—so one of the important things for Air Force bands to understand is you are accepted into the Air Force bands before you go to basic training. So, you go to basic training knowing that you are going to serve as an airman musician when you graduate from basic. So, from a civilian standpoint, you come in and audition just like you would audition for symphonies or any other production, a professional musical ensemble, to be able to do that, with certain expectations. So, we do it behind a curtain. So, you're assigned a number on one round, a letter on a number round. We have carpeted floors so there's no footfalls that may be able to tell or distinguish any type of footwear or gender that you would have based on that. So, it's a completely just anonymous audition and we look for the best-qualified candidates that we can find.

Jo Reed: Well, what I really can't get over is the scope of the music that you perform. It's extraordinary. The flexibility of those musicians, they’re doing everything from classical to jazz to rock.

Col. Don Schofield: So, well-trained and talented musicians can do anything. <music> Going back to the beginning of the United States Air Force Band here in Washington DC, it was during the draft. So, when the—the draft happened, they had a wide variety of classical players and jazz players that were thrown together in one ensemble as the Air Force Band and had to be able not only figure out how to work with each other but how—how to play such a diversity of music. So, the beauty of that situation is that the classical players taught the jazz players how to play classical music, and the jazz players taught the classical players how to swing. So, in that sense, and even today, we continue to learn from each other and build on each other's strengths to make sure that our product is as good as it can be.

Jo Reed: That's exactly what I was going to ask you. I was going to ask you about how musicians work together to create this great diversity of music.

Col. Don Schofield: We have a classically trained opera singer right now that is currently deployed and he's singing in one of our rock bands, and this is not a style of music that he grew up studying in his graduate work, but as a professional musician you open your aperture to be able to do what the customer needs you to do, and he is an incredible—first of all, he's an incredible member of the Air Force and then he's an incredible musician, and approaching it with such a positive attitude that he has developed into a world-class rock singer, in addition to that—that classical side that he has. I think our musicians enjoy the versatility that they're asked to do, because it really broadens the scope of their musical product, and I think they actively look in many cases for opportunities to broaden and study with peers in the unit that are maybe good at one thing, and our members will seek those people out and continue to advance through their careers and develop their musicianship.

Jo Reed: How many people does the US Air Force Band reach in a year?

Col. Don Schofield: So through—through live performances, all of the Air Force bands, we played live audiences, over 9 million people last year. That's in 48 states, that's the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and that's in 47 countries, so, you're talking truly global reach with Air Force messaging and what we do. With the Air Force Band itself, through social media and broadcasts, we had well over 20 million people that we reached with those. Performances that we do that are picked up, sometimes on social media—we have one single performance that has over five million views of something that was just very quickly captured on somebody's cell phone, and it was us singing Cohen's "Hallelujah" in one of the senior leader's houses for an event that they were having, and the Singing Sergeants were there, and it was so beautiful that one of the—the senior leaders filmed it and then put it out, and it had worldwide views like that. Another example of reach is we performed at the Chief of Staff's house with the Polish Air Chief and his wife and his team, and we wanted to, again, have the cultural diplomacy, so we learned and performed a very popular piece in Polish. Now, none of the members speak Polish, so we learned—and again, this goes to the versatility and the willingness of their airmen musicians to learn and broaden their scope to be able to reach the audiences that we're looking for. But we researched, and the singers really figured out how to sell that piece in Polish to a Polish audience. <music> Afterwards the Polish Air Chief and his wife were so moved that the United States Air Force had much such attempts to reach them culturally and thank them, and it made such a big impression. That was videoed as well and went viral. It went viral so much that the Polish Embassy in Warsaw asked us to do a video of us, the Singing Sergeants, singing "Jingle Bells" in Polish, and the U.S. Embassy broadcast that across Poland on Christmas—a gift from the United States, that cultural bond that we share with other countries through the universal language of music.

Jo Reed: I want to back up for a moment. When did music come into your life?

Col. Don Schofield: It was a rainy day in middle school. So I mean, I've thought about this question, and it was eighth grade basketball tryouts, and I got cut, and I remember going out of the gym and I sat in the car, and my dad says, "I'm proud of you for trying." I'm like, "I appreciate that, Dad, thanks." It was raining, and then I thought, "Well, basketball is not going to be for me." Now, I'm also very short, so at the long-term it probably helped. But I was also involved in music in middle school, and I had a group of friends that were motivated—motivated young musicians. We were curious, we wanted to get better; and I had an opportunity in the ninth grade—I made what's called the All State Band. So, I grew up as a tuba player. So, I found early success in music, and I had early failure in basketball in this case. So, I think for me, it was a combination of having the group of friends that I had that were good, solid, committed musicians. I look back on—on the teachers that I had, and one year ago today, on the 15th of January, was a really special day for me—not that I got to take command of the United States Air Force Band—it’s that my middle school band director was there in the audience, and I had him stand up. My high school band director was there. My college band director was there. And I'm tearing up now as I'm thinking about it—it was such an impression on me that these people had invested so much in me as music educators and provided me with the opportunities to do what I did and enjoy the successes that I've had. So I look back on that, and I look back on Mr. Webster, my middle school band director, who did something to foster us, and I look back on my high school band directors who did the fostering and enabled us to be successful. So, the long answer is that. The short answer: I was cut from the basketball team and I found that I was good at tuba early on.

Jo Reed: <laughs> Now, how did you move into conducting?

Col. Don Schofield: If I thought about it, I would draw that back to high school and a curiosity for the mechanics of what made music work. A tuba player sits on the back row. I'm kind of far removed from the epicenter of the decision-making of music. Now, of course, we learn to follow and to watch, but I think there was a curiosity in me early on on how the mechanics of this work, "How does this magic trick happen?" And I do remember having some early conducting opportunities in high school to stand up in front of the band—and I felt comfortable, I mean, I didn't know what I was doing, but I felt comfortable in front of my peers. Then, at the University of Georgia, having a music education degree, I did have opportunity to be able to grow with that, with the confidence on the podium, and being able to know how to both connect and communicate with my peers. Went to LSU—go Tigers, by the way—and—for my graduate work, and had incredible opportunities given to me there, both to watch masterful teachers work, and then experience the confidence that's created by successes on the podium. I went then and I taught high school for six years in Georgia, loved it—will go back to education after I finish my service in the military. For me, it was the ability to create a singular identity of composer intent, and I think that's what continues to draw me to conducting, is to be able to take 32 separate parts, a room full of musicians, and dilute the composer's intent into something that I think meets what they wanted to hear.

Jo Reed: Okay, but—but how do you do that? What does it take to be a good and effective conductor?

Col. Don Schofield: I think empathy, understanding what the tenor of the ensemble is at any given moment, being able to read them. I also think having some—a good deal of musical intuition, to understand what the composer is trying to convey to the audiences. You are only the conduit of what they're trying to say to the audiences. Going to talent—the talent of musicians. I really believe that talent is the inherent ability to know how to practice—how to practice correctly. So, harnessing the talent of the ensemble, having an empathy for what they need from you, and having some intuition from what the composer is trying to convey. <music> I think putting all that together and being able to have a little bit of salesmanship up on the podium to be able to convey that, and motivate your group in front of you. That is for any ensemble, from beginning band all the way up to—to professional bands and orchestras. It's the ability to connect with your players.

Jo Reed: Well, with the U.S. Air Force Band, you have so many performances. How much rehearsal time do you get, and how do you structure the rehearsal?

Col. Don Schofield: So, rehearsals for us are not practices. So, rehearsals are fine-tuning pieces of music to do this. So, the musicians maintain their level of performance on the outside. That's—that’s part of their duty day is to keep their skills sharp. So, when we rehearse a piece of music, it is different than maybe a—a school band practicing. They're practicing their craft while they're learning how to play a piece of music. So, the secret for us is long-range planning. So, we have our programs planned up through the summer, so the musicians know what the expectation is. It's in the slots. So, they will look at the calendar and say, "Okay, on this day, we're rehearsing these pieces." They'll get it out; they'll make sure that they can make it through; we come into rehearsals; we rehearse transitions; we rehearse anything that needs to happen; we'll fine-tune things; and then we'll go. So, it's a very quick turnover.

Jo Reed: What motivated you to move from education into the Air Force?

Col. Don Schofield: My wife and I were both teachers, music teachers, in South Georgia and loved it, and like I said before, we'll do this again after—after I retire. We had an opportunity—I had a friend who was in the United States Air Force Band and they had a conductor vacancy, and he mentioned to me offhand, "Hey, you ought to consider doing this." And that is something that I had never considered. The track that I was on was doctorate and then look at either going back to high school or looking for a college opportunity, something in those lines. So as a professional musician, it had really never entered my line of thinking. But a friend mentioned it to me and I started exploring this, and—and took the audition and was offered the job, and really, it came down to adventure. "Let's do something different—an opportunity, be able to have experiences, for our family, for us," and an opportunity for me to serve, to be able to do that, through something that I enjoyed. So, for me it was an incredible opportunity, something that I really had not planned on through my education.

Jo Reed: Well, the Air Force Band is also involved in music education. You have a program called Advancing Innovation through Music. Explain what that is.

Col. Don Schofield: So, the—the AIM, as we call it—military loves acronyms, so we'll use AIM as that acronym—that’s an opportunity for us to specifically connect with students when we're out touring. And even here, we'll bring students to us. We will go to local DC schools and we'll be able to integrate into their music programs, look at what they're studying, sit side by side with them, and provide them some professional context. I know as a teacher it is really, really difficult to use words to explain correct tone quality. So if I'm trying to explain a correct tone quality for a clarinet to a young player, it is so much more efficient to have a professional or a quality player say, "Sound like this," and sit down and make that sound, and the Advancing Innovation through Music is an opportunity for us to be able to provide that boost to educators, being able to sit down and say, "Okay, as a violin player, it should sound like this." "As—as a wind player, use this type of breath support." "As a singer, use this type of pronunciation." When we're on the road, one of the things that I love what we do on performances is we will have students join us onstage. So they do a rehearsal with us in the afternoon in which we go through the piece one time, and that's all, and they sit down, they play it through, we practice how to stand for the students and take the applause, and then we do the performance with them that night; and some of the things that I enjoy about that is watching them go through the gamut of confidence, that they come onstage initially with the Air Force Band maybe a little star-struck, maybe a little intimidated, but as the players in the Air Force Band envelop them and help them develop their confidence; in just those few minutes we spend with them, to watch them elevate—the young players elevate in their confidence, so by the time they walk onstage for that performance they are incredibly proud of what they're doing. So being able to bring that to different communities, to be able to showcase to the communities, "Look at these incredible musicians, young musicians, that you've got in your community," and—and be able to have a venue in which those players are playing for several thousand people in the audience that night. So, our goal through the AIM is to be able to inspire at that young level through professional modeling that we do.

Jo Reed: I think it's also so important because, as we know, music education is really in decline, and to be able to offer students the ability to—to play and to be mentored by professional musicians is wonderful.

Col. Don Schofield: I think music education has such an incredible role in today's society, and I don't—and as a music educator, I was very clear with the parents of the students that I was not trying to turn their students into music majors. That is not the objective of what we're doing as music educators. It is creating an environment in which they learn how to lead and to follow in a peer group that's safe. That's what music education does, and we do that through the teaching of music and the performance of music. And so, I think that we as music educators need to constantly reframe what we're thinking about in terms of how education and music education fits into the long-term development of that student as we prepare them to be a member of our society. Our job is not to make them music majors. Our job is to provide them an atmosphere for them to grow, practice leadership, and followership skills.

Jo Reed: How many students does the AIM program touch?

Col. Don Schofield: I would think that since its initiative, it's been going about nine years, I'll say around 10 thousand students that we've had the opportunity to—to sit side by side with.

Jo Reed: Wow. That's quite a bit.

Col. Don Schofield: It is, and it's—it’s very meaningful because at some point, every one of us in the Air Force Band was a beginning student. So, we've had that influence; it's our time to give back.

Jo Reed: Imagine my surprise when I found out the U.S. Air Force Band did flash mobs. <laughs>

Col. Don Schofield: Yes. They are amazing things, aren't they?

Jo Reed: They are a lot of moving parts. It's extraordinary.

Col. Don Schofield: It is. They're a lot of fun. They are a tremendous amount of work, as you can imagine, to be able to put that on. <music> But what we've loved from watching those work is the joy that you have had to be able to watch that, and then watch the faces of the people that are there when we do it and watch the awe of what's happening, and then the—the surprise of something else that happens outside of that. So, it's another way for us to connect and it's a unique way for us to connect, and that's—that’s one of the signature things that the Air Force Band has had.

Jo Reed: You’ve been commander and conductor of the Air Force Band for a year. Has there been a moment for you when you are performing a piece of music that you find particularly memorable, either because of the music, or the performance, or the audience?

Col. Don Schofield: Believe it or not, "Star-Spangled Banner". We performed in Chicago, in December, at a large convention, and during one of our performances, we did a side-by-side—an AIM event with students from a group called United Sound, and these are students with disabilities, and these are students who play instruments alongside music mentors. So, these are high school students that help these students with disabilities play, and I chose the national anthem for these students to play alongside with us. And so we had ten students and their mentors standing with the Air Force Band as we played the national anthem, and I can—I have a distinct memory: To my left, as I looked down and I saw this—this young man—he had to have been maybe middle school, and he was playing violin, and he had one mentor that was in charge of his bow, and then he had one mentor that was in charge of his fingers. So, it took two people for him to be able to play, but at that moment, for that minute and 14 seconds, he played the national anthem with the Air Force Band. And what it meant to him and what it meant to his parents and to the crowd afterwards—it’s something that elicits that response. So, for me, watching those students be elevated to that level of respect because of that piece of music—incredibly meaningful to me.

Jo Reed: And finally, the military bands receive the National Medal of Arts, and of course the U.S. Air Force Band is one of those military bands. Can you tell me what the award means to you, but also to the band members?

Col. Don Schofield: So, I—I accepted that award on behalf of the Air Force bands, both the active duty and the Air National Guard members, 800 of them, both past and present. So it was an honor for me to stand amongst my other military band peers up there, and I am aware that this award goes back to military musicians since they started for the Army Air Forces in 1941, and I think the special thing is for me to know that they, in spirit, were all standing with me up there to do that, to be recognized for what they have set for over 70 years. We are non-threatening, yet we project strength and American ideals when we go out, and I love that.

Jo Reed: Okay. Well, Colonel Don Schofield, congratulations and thank you.

Col. Don Schofield: I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Jo Reed: You’re welcome.

<Music Up>

Jo Reed: That is commander and conductor of the U.S. Air Force Band, Col. Don Schofield. You’ve been listening to Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. You can subscribe to Art Works wherever you get your podcasts, and then leave us a rating on Apple because it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.