Bandstand LUCA PERLMAN Remembering Jack MacQuarrie DECEMBER 25 1925 - JANUARY 10 2021 the way that an interview gives you a chance to do.” From the perspective of applicants, this year’s process has been both positive and negative. I spoke to a number of auditionees, for both jazz and classical programs (all of whom asked for anonymity, which I am honouring; the audition process is stressful enough). Of the comments I received, two constants emerged. The first, a positive: that videos gave applicants a break from the duress of the live audition process. It is tremendously difficult to be present and lose yourself in the moment when you’re so thoroughly aware that you are being assigned an objective value; recording at home, for one’s mirror and cat, removes this stress. The second, a negative: that the hardware and software involved can be frustrating to learn, and that one piece of gear – e.g. a USB microphone – can require unexpected technical expertise. There is also, on the part of school staff who are not always familiar with recording technology, an insistence on certain requirements that don’t always make sense. On the UBC School of Music website, for example, there is a note that videos should be “preferably recorded by a professional technician,” and also a note that “each recorded selection must not be edited or manipulated in any way.” This requirement, however, misunderstands the language of recording; video and audio are not recorded on the same devices (video uses cameras, audio uses microphones/audio interfaces/computers). Even on a smartphone, these are discrete processes; the two files are simply put together automatically by the device’s software. To assemble multiple video and audio files, to add titles and simple fades between selections; all of this, in the language of audio engineering and videography, is editing, but does not, of course, constitute the kind of recording “fraud” that this rule is in place to pre-empt. For students making a good-faith attempt to present themselves honestly and accurately, many of whom may be using recording and video editing software for the first time, making sense of these rules represents yet another step in an already-taxing admissions season. Ultimately, as Mather told me, there is an underlying attitude in postsecondary music programs that “everyone is in this moment together. Things may not work perfectly, and – even more than in other years – there’s a lot of flexibility and patience.” Though this year’s admissions cycle is fundamentally different from those that came before it, one hopes that these lessons – of the importance of flexibility, and patience, and of kindness – will continue to inform the way that music programs operate in the physically proximate future. Colin Story is a jazz guitarist, writer and teacher based in Toronto. He can be reached at www.colinstory.com, on Instagram and on Twitter. During a very brief period of palliative care and shortly after celebrating his 95th birthday, Jack passed away this past January, at Markham Stouffville Hospital. His Bandstand column occupied this very spot in The WholeNote, right before the listings, for more than 14 years, and readers who regularly made their way here to find him, will feel the loss, as will I. Two days before his passing he asked me to make sure to tell WholeNote colleagues and you, his readers, how much you meant to him. Right up until COVID-19 restrictions put paid to live community music making, Jack was still playing regularly (tuba, trombone and bass trombone) as a 25+ year member in The Newmarket Citizen’s Band, Resa’s Pieces Concert Band and Swing Machine, a Toronto based big band. “Not bad for someone with COPD” he once told me, regaling me with a tale of how his doctor had said it was impossible, so he should keep it up. Similarly, he stuck to his WholeNote duties to the last. His final completed column for The WholeNote (December/January) was an uncharacteristically “deep dive” into reminiscing about his early years in Windsor. To the last, we were chatting almost daily about the column that would have been in this spot, on the subject of circus bands. He shared with me each nugget of information he had gleaned from sources as divergent as his own unruly archives and “Mr. Google.” His wife of 35 years, Joan Andrews, told me last week that the plan is to have “a celebration of his life at a future date, when it is possible to gather together and create live music once again.” And what a life it was. In a 2014 interview in The WholeNote, MJBuell asked Jack if there had always been music in his home: “Always” was the reply. “Lots of radio music from Detroit stations. My parents met in a Gilbert and Sullivan production. It was in the auditorium of the place I eventually went to high school. My mother, Nan, was a semi-professional singer, church soloist, and for a time, a member of the Detroit Light Opera Company. My father, Archie, was a dedicated opera fan, and the Metropolitan Opera was on our radio every Saturday afternoon. My mother organized a vocal quartet which practiced regularly in our living room for some years. Probably my earliest musical memory would be my mother singing the role of Buttercup from HMS Pinafore as she worked around the house.” Jack was bitten by the band bug in grade 11 when he joined The High Twelve Club Boys Band (sponsored by a service club), and then the local Kiwanis Boys Band. The Boys Band was “borrowed” by the commanding officer of the local naval training unit who’d been asked to recruit a reserve band. Boys as young as 12 through 17, whose parents gave permission, found themselves Probationary Boy Bandsman with a uniform and rehearsal pay – for Navy parades, concerts in the park and Navy events. 26 | February 2021 thewholenote.com
JOAN ANDREWS Jack with his trombone Jack as a child (circa 1930) in Walkerville, now part of Windsor ON. It was the start of a lifelong Navy association, going on active service after high school; as he wryly described it in the April 2014 interview article, “learning some new instruments – radio and radar.” When WWII ended he completed his undergraduate degree at U of T where he played in the Varsity Band, the Conservatory Concert Band and the U of T Symphony. One memorable university summer, he recalled in that interview, he played trombone six nights a week in a dance band at the popular Erie Beach Pavilion – six days a week, from nine until midnight. And then Sundays they’d go to Detroit and hear all the touring big bands – Ellington, Kenton, Burnett, Herman, Dorsey. Jack MacQuarrie returned to sea during the Korean War as a Navy Lieutenant Commander and diving officer, laying aside music during those seven years, but never since. With music fuelling his lungs, mind and spirit, he returned to university, acquired an MBA and then did four years of graduate studies in engineering – investigating human performance in hostile (underwater) environments. He received a Massey Fellowship under Robertson Davies. He worked for some time at marketing in the airborne electronics business. He was a past president of the Skywide Amateur Radio Club, was the first instructor for the Hart House Underwater Club and to the last remained active in the Naval Club of Toronto. In January 2013 MacQuarrie was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for contributions to Canada. In one episode he wrote about in The WholeNote, in 2014, he and Joan Andrews enrolled as volunteers in research on brain function and aging, comparing musicians with non-musicians, at the Baycrest Centre. It was one memorable story among hundreds over the years as he regaled readers with great anecdotes and dreadful puns – above all else spreading the word about all the people he was in touch with who were keeping community band music making alive. Readers so inclined can find his most recent column on our website and then scroll back in time, column after column, as I’ve been doing this last while. Curious as to what might have changed or not over the course of this pandemic year, I went to look at the February 2020 column (wondering for a moment if just reprinting it would serve here to give readers a taste of the man). It didn’t disappoint: from Groundhog Day to the Newmarket Citizens Band’s bright idea of building their Christmas party around an open rehearsal: “How often do tuba players chat with clarinet players, after all?”; and from Henry “Dr. Hank” Meredith’s collection of 300 bugles, to Jack’s latest musings (something he was passionate about) on what bands should and shouldn’t take into consideration when selecting repertoire. There’s one more snippet from that column that is a fitting place to end this – an exchange with a reader: “He [the reader, Bernie Lynch] recounted a bit about his personal band involvement, from Orono around 1946, to Weston in 1950, and Chinguacousy in 2012. ‘Never a very good performer but always a good participant,’ is how he describes himself. [Well] we need more good participants. Let us hear from more of you out in the community music world!” A fitting place to end except for one thing. Jack always tried to throw in something at the end – a quip, a “daffy definition,” a pun – that would get a smile. So here’s mine: the part of his February 2020 column that he got the biggest charge out of researching and writing, was of all things, a piece of music called “The Impeachment Polka”. Jack would have liked that. David Perlman, with files from MJ Buell Jack (centre) and some young Navy buddies, fresh out of high school “We were high school friends with a common interest in jazz and big band music – the boy on the right played piano quite well.” thewholenote.com February 2021 | 27
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