My Musical Journey Lukas Gruber

Earliest Experience With Music The earliest experience with music that I can remember is music on Sundays at church services. There is also some vague memory of some marching music by John Philip Sousa and German marches, but to this day I’m still not sure where that comes from. The most significant musical event for me occurred while visiting my mother’s uncle with my family in Colorado when I was about 5 years old. He jokingly had me try out his tuba and was extremely surprised that I somehow managed to get a sound out of it (I don’t personally remember this, this is what I’ve been told, so I’m not exactly sure just how musical this “sound” was).

First Experience With Music In 5 th grade I was asked to choose an instrument. Building off of my experience in Colorado, my top three choices were Tuba, Euphonium, and then Trombone. I ended up with the Euphonium. I can only assume the thought at the time was to start me out on Euphonium and have me move on to Tuba sometime later. For some reason that never happened and I mainly perform on Euphonium to this day.

First Out of School Music Experience In the summer of 2008 I joined the Foehrer Musik Freunde which is one of only two German Brass Bands left on Long Island (I soon joined the other, the Pilsner Brass Band). Up until this point, I really wasn’t that interested in music at all and only joined after constant pestering from my dad. This turned out to be a real baptism by fire because I was given the 3-inch binder full of music exactly one week before a performance with one rehearsal and with instructions to learn all of the music because the band leader just called out numbers from the book during the course of the 4 hour gig.

As you can imagine, this first experience was just slightly overwhelming, especially when you consider that I also had to learn the German style of notation which is quite different from what I was used to in middle school band. But despite all of this I performed that first gig and just kept coming back and I perform with these groups to this day (the last time I played with the Foeher was a couple weeks ago and the last time with the Pilsner was the Monday before this past Christmas).

I have learned so much from this experience and this was the first time that I approached music seriously. We’ve had some pretty good gigs over the years, from performing in front of the Stock Exchange on Wall Street to two times at Citi Field to the Larchmont Yacht Club to being the featured Grandstand Band for the annual Steuben Parade down Fifth Avenue for the past 5 years.

Expanded Participation in School Music Soon I had realized how much I enjoyed performing music in any capacity, so I started joining any school extra-curricular music group that I could. The first group that I joined was the high school brass ensemble. By the end of freshman year I had joined the soon to be cut Fiddle Club, jazz ensemble, and the pit orchestra. However, at this point in my life I still just saw music as a hobby to occupy my time with while I worked towards becoming an engineer.

More Focus on Music The first time I seriously considered a career in music was when I took my first theory class in sophomore year of high school. I think I was more surprised than anyone else at how well I did in that class. And when I saw an inverse relationship between my theory and music scores and my math scores I seriously questioned continuing the pursuit of the engineering degree. So I decided to see how much I could do with music and if it started working out I would make the switch in career focus.

That year went very well. There were long stretches were I was playing at least 2 gigs a week and was averaging about 6 rehearsals a week. I also started some of my own student run groups and was encouraged by the results and how happy I found myself running a group and arranging the music. By junior year I was fully committed to making the switch and started working towards applying to music schools, eventually selecting The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam.

Views of Teaching I always enjoyed performing, so I knew I wanted to pursue a degree in performance, but teaching was also on my mind at the time. For the past 7 summers I worked at the summer festival held by my school known as SCOPE. For the past three I worked as an assistant to the brass teacher, where I discovered that I enjoyed teaching. In every section leader position that I got whether in or out of school I started to see an opportunity to test out teaching and see whether I liked it. By the end of junior year I was fairly certain I enjoyed teaching so I made sure that I could set myself up to get a double degree in performance and music education.

However, the more I paid attention the more I saw that there was a completely different side to teaching that most kids don’t even think about, such as the wonders of inventory and the phenomenon of trying to get something done in a 45 minute period and having it be better the next day. However, after a couple conversations with all of the music teachers in the department (by this time I was either in a class or a club that was run by all of them), I was confident that I would be able to handle the job and the things that come along with the job.

The Future…. So where does the musical journey go from here? Right now the plan is get the dual degree in performance and education and hopefully by the time I graduate I will have gravitated towards one side or the other. Whatever happens I know that I want to continue with all the things I enjoy with music; performing, conducting, arranging, and composing.