In the Game: Music and Multiple Sclerosis: A Memoir of Success and Unexpected Challenges

task.

Forward

Summer of 2009

2009 started out as a bad year. No doubt about it. Despite a terrible beginning of the year, the summer of 2009 was a good one. It began with a trip to New York City and included complimentary tickets to see the New York Philharmonic. Stanley Drucker, the Philharmonic’s longtime principal clarinet, was playing his final solo performance with the orchestra, Aaron Copland’s epic Clarinet Concerto.

My friend David Waybright and I had business to do in New York City, wrapping up a recording he conducted and I produced. Once our business was complete, we were off to Lincoln Center. Attending the Philharmonic concert was a perk for being in the right place and knowing the right people. Even though neither of us knew Mr. Drucker, we were invited to attend his retirement party following the concert by the people throwing the party. I had never met or worked with Mr. Drucker, at least not yet, but there I was, taking part in the celebration of one of the most remarkable music careers ever.

My summer continued going well from a musical standpoint although it had been a tough year, the most difficult one of my life. In early February, my mother passed away following a long illness. Then, one of my former students was killed in an automobile accident the day after we returned from Mom’s funeral. If these events were not bad enough, I was also diagnosed with the worst form of multiple sclerosis, one without treatment options; primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Three devastating events, all in the span of less than two weeks.

As I spent time in New York City that summer going to meetings, concerts, and parties, my ability to walk was developing into a serious problem. Just getting to my hotel room from a taxi was now a challenging ordeal. Still able to walk with the aid of a cane, I knew I would soon need additional assistance to get around. Happy to still be able to do what I did on my trip, the recent MS diagnosis and my worsening symptoms kept me thinking it was possible my traveling days were numbered. Despite a devastating February and my loss of mobility, it was still a good summer, all because of music.

Music is who I am, and not just what I do. It goes way beyond my job as a college music professor, which is an important part of my career, but not the entire story. Music in my life cannot be turned off, and that’s fine with me. It is the only thing I have ever devoted my full energies toward doing and has remained a fresh and rewarding experience each time I become involved with a project, be it as a trumpet player, recording producer, arranger, or conductor. I can also choose to work only with people I respect and admire.

Part of what I do as a musician is playing trumpet professionally, and during the summer of 2009 I booked seventeen playing gigs. Now, seventeen gigs in three months cannot provide enough income to live on, but all the income was extra. As an added bonus, the gigs were fun and I looked forward to doing every one of them. Imagine that, going to work and enjoying it. Playing trumpet has rarely, if ever, been just going to work for me. If it ever becomes that, I will stay home. My other career choices in music mean I can afford to do projects for which I have a real passion, and not just for the money.

During the first six months of 2009, I produced several recordings for individual musicians and ensembles, four of which were released that summer. I also said no to producing a recording that was going to be an unpleasant experience. It was for a violinist from a famous orchestra that I had worked with before. Nobody enjoys earning a little extra cash more than me, but turning down a well paying but unrewarding gig was not a problem. As a musician, it is a powerful position to be in when you can afford to say no to a gig.

I also taught a summer course at Syracuse University, where you are paid extra if you teach one. Long ago I realized money is not everything, but the salary for the eight week class was equal to playing sixty two gigs. My summer class, Miles Davis and John Coltrane: American Giants, was so enjoyable to teach, I almost felt guilty cashing the check. Almost.

Over the years, my musical experiences have led me to ask big picture questions such as: How did I get to this point in life as a musician? How did I get to the place where there is so much happiness in my career, even with the complication of having to deal with MS? What has been unique about my journey as a musician and where I am going in the future?

It has not been all sunshine and roses. My life has had its fair share of rough moments, and not all of my musical experiences have been world class or pleasant. I have played or conducted more than a few gigs keeping a close eye on the time waiting for them to end. Despite these infrequent events, I cannot imagine doing anything else. Unlike those individuals I know who would not go into music again if they had the chance to go back in time, I could not be happier with my choices. My decision to become a musician when I was a teenager turned out to be the correct one.

My musical journey has been nothing short of remarkable for a kid from Winchester, Kentucky. I do not believe what I do as a musician is special or that I am all that talented, but with my family background and the paucity of educational opportunities for me when I was young, my journey has indeed been miraculous. Thanks to music, I have had amazing experiences and visited amazing places.

Music as a career is one of the most noble professions I can imagine. It is not, by any means, an easy profession in which to succeed, yet it can be the most fulfilling one possible. The biggest key to succeeding and finding happiness in any pursuit is of course doing everything correctly. For me, this means working hard and seeking out the best musicians wherever I find myself.

One of the lessons learned during my musical journey is to be as involved in as many musical activities as possible. I call this being in the game, which is why those words appear in the title of the book. Success as a musician is in many ways like winning a game, and you cannot win a game unless you are first in the game. Over the years, I have been in more games because even as a young musician I put myself in music environments others chose to avoid. I discovered putting myself around music was not difficult; just be involved with more of it more often. It seems like a simple thing, but exposure to music early in life leads to additional musical opportunities later in life. By putting myself in different music environments, I have been able to hear more music and meet more musicians, giving me additional opportunities to be in the game. It is easy to be in more games, because all you have to do is show up. It is amazing how often people do not bother to show up for much of anything.

As I tell my story I include one personal relationship, the one I enjoy with my wonderful wife Mary Beth. She is my soul mate, she takes care of me, and she is selfless. She demonstrates these traits every day as she shares in my struggles with MS. When Mary Beth and I said, in sickness and in health, and, I do, to each other twenty five years ago, my illness was not part of our marriage. It is worth pointing out that during our time together, I have suffered from MS for longer than I have been healthy. Through it all, both good and bad, she has never complained or shown any level of frustration about my health.

I discuss my personal experiences dealing with MS in the last section of the book, what I have learned about it, and how I continue to prosper in life with such an insidious disease. My first symptom occurred in 1994 when I was a Ph.D. student at Florida State University and MS has been with me ever since. Due to these changes, my life and my music career are evolving to deal with my physical challenges, but I am still able to continue making music at a high level. Not by nature a particularly strong person, MS has forced me to be strong in many ways. Not much of a silver lining, but there it is.

It has not been fun dealing with MS, and over the years I have experienced my fair share of low moments. However, as my health started to change, I decided to use my disability as a learning experience. It sounds so cliché to say, but I learned the best thing to do when faced with a challenge is to refuse to give up. Be reasonable when dealing with personal challenges, but never give up.

Part One: Music

Chapter 1

Winchester, Kentucky

During World War II, Merchant Seaman James Laverty was recovering from surgery in a New York City hospital when he met Registered Nurse Sylvia Mitchell. She had just moved to New York City from her home state of Kentucky to find work. They fell in love during his two month recovery and were married in a union that lasted fifty four years.

James was an engineer on an oil tanker during the war years, happy and successful with his career choice. He brought home a healthy paycheck doing a job he loved. His job was a good one, but seafaring oil tankers did not operate in landlocked Kentucky. After beginning their new life together, the young couple moved to Sylvia’s birthplace in Central Kentucky. Sylvia’s wishes had a strong influence over James throughout their life together, and given a choice, Dad would do just about anything to make Mom happy.

Times were tough for the Laverty family during the postwar era. Dad moved from job to job, making a fraction of what he had working on what he always referred to as the boats. In 1957, he learned a new coal fired power plant was being built in Ford, Kentucky, and was accepting applications for open positions. He applied and was hired in what would be the second most rewarding job he ever had.

The tiny town of Ford is in one of the poorest parts of Central Kentucky, across the Kentucky River from Fort Boonesborough, the settlement founded by frontiersman Daniel Boone in the 1700s. My parents were living in Lexington at the time, so Ford was too far away for a daily commute. Years later Mom shared with me she was not going to raise her children in as economically depressed an area as Ford, so they had to find a place to live closer to the power plant, but not too close. There were two options for such a move, the city of Richmond, south of Ford, or Winchester, a city to the north. Both were equal distance away, so it was a coin toss as to where to live.

My parents chose Winchester, and after they lived there for two years with their first two children, a third child, me, was born. Being born in Winchester was the best bit of luck I would have in my entire life because of a remarkable music teacher, Chuck Campbell, my future high school band director.

If a young person were to be put into an environment that would inspire them, challenge them, and open up the world of performing music to them, it would look like the George Rogers Clark High School Band in Winchester during the 1970s when I was a student there. If my parents had decided to move to Richmond instead of Winchester, I doubt I would have become a musician and I would have missed out on many the experiences I now value in life.

Mr. Campbell was my only high school teacher that would say something to the effect of what you are doing is not good enough, try harder. None of my other teachers ever said work harder, but Mr. Campbell said it all the time. He introduced those of us in the band to composers like Pulitzer Prize winner Karel Husa, brought in soloists like trumpeter Vince DiMartino, and had us perform at places like The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He inspired us to work so hard the band could perform as well as any high school band in the country.

One of the important aspects of high school band in Kentucky is marching band competition. My band was no different from other bands, except for one thing. It was the strongest and most balanced program in the state. Marching band was serious stuff, and each fall we participated in four or five marching band contests that drove all the band program’s activities from June through October. It is debatable if winning or losing a marching band contest is the best way to develop a love of music making, but it was an activity we band members showed pride in doing. If you were part of the band, you had to be willing to practice many long hours so we could perform at the highest level possible.

For my band mates and me, competing as part of a band was appealing. We were drawn to the team effort of working hard to make music. Our work ethic carried through to concert band performances, and we did extra rehearsals and sectionals each week to ensure our concerts were also of the highest quality. All of our success started with having such a strong marching band, although it did not matter to us if it was a marching band contest or a formal concert, we were serious about how well we performed.

Starting out as an uninspired high school trumpet player, I sat last chair out of twenty four even though music came easy to me as a child, be it playing the piano or singing. When I was ten, my parents bought an upright piano and Mom and I took lessons from a piano teacher who lived in our neighborhood. Mom practiced and practiced but could not seem to get the hang of it. Unlike Mom, with just a few weeks of instruction I could sight read anything I was assigned to play. It was that easy for me. Being able to read music gave me a huge advantage when I started in band as a sixth grader. I chose to play trumpet, an instrument that seemed to fit my personality. I was well suited to play trumpet, growing up to be a strapping six foot three inches tall. The strength element of playing trumpet was never a problem, and I enjoyed above average range for a high school trumpet player, one of the measurements for how advanced a trumpet player is. With these physical advantages, the more I practiced, the more my technique improved, and as a result playing trumpet became easier.

Developing into a decent high school musician, I still hadn’t made the decision to be serious about playing trumpet. Doing so meant practicing on my own, but practicing requires commitment and discipline, traits most teenagers have difficulty demonstrating. What I needed was a reason to develop these traits. Then another trumpet player bought a new Bach Stradivarius Trumpet, and this single event pushed me out of my stupor. When he brought his new professional level trumpet to band practice for the first time, twenty three other trumpet players all began oohing and aahing. I made a comment about what a cool trumpet it was, and he asked me, in a patronizing way, why would I care about his new trumpet? The implication was that he and I, both sophomores in the George Rogers Clark High School Band, were not equals since I was at the bottom of the third trumpet section and he was already playing first trumpet. Maybe it would be best for me to run along and play my cheap beginner level trumpet, leaving the serious trumpet playing to the first trumpets. I never forgot this comment. Stunned by his bold and dismissive manner, my initial reaction was to ask who the hell did he think he was? A person can either be hurt or motivated by an offensive comment, and I became very motivated, almost driven. My negative reaction became so strong I was going to make certain he never had an opportunity to talk to me like that ever again.

Now ready to make a bigger commitment to playing trumpet, I asked my parents to buy me a better instrument, which they did. Neither of them made much money in their jobs, but they could see I was now more serious about playing trumpet. Mom always liked to tell the story of calling Mr. Campbell to ask what instrument brand they should buy, and he said he just wished I would practice more. When they spoke, neither one could have known I was already starting to do so, and had been for a while. Buying a new trumpet was difficult for my parents, but they decided to make the financial sacrifice to get me one. Trumpet playing was now a big deal for both them and me. Mr. Campbell also didn’t need to worry about me not practicing enough; those days were over. When my junior year started, I owned a new Bach Stradivarius Trumpet, a much higher quality instrument than my first one.

The next thing on my to do list was to get a job so that I could afford to take private trumpet lessons. My part time job was at a fast food joint called Burger Queen. Yes, Burger Queen, not Burger King. I kid you not! During my sophomore year we had a student teacher from Morehead State University who was a fantastic trumpet player and I took a few lessons with him while he was in Winchester. When he finished student teaching, he returned to Morehead to complete his undergraduate music degree. I arranged to take trumpet lessons with him my junior year once I could drive.

Saturday mornings after working at Burger Queen until 1:00 a.m. the night before, I got up at 6:00 a.m. and drove my first car, a 1974 Ford Pinto, fifty miles to Morehead to take trumpet lessons. My teacher was very generous and our lessons often turned into two or three hour trumpet explorations. I then drove back to Winchester and worked another long shift at Burger Queen. Ah, to be young again.

My developing playing skills began to show, Mr. Campbell noticed, and I moved up the trumpet section. He could pay a compliment to a person in such a way as to have a very positive effect on them. Following a few well placed compliments that came my way, I was motivated enough for another ten hours of practice a week. In a short period of time, I went from playing third trumpet parts to playing first trumpet parts. This was quite a leap.

After my junior year I made the decision to become a musician as a career choice, and to study music in college. I did not have any interest in doing anything else. Having just finished three years in a fantastic band program, I was becoming addicted to performing music at a high level. Once a serious musician has a similar type of experience, even in a small town high school band, they will do almost anything to recapture it.

Due to music, I was starting to develop a higher level of confidence for the first time in my life. Always a shy kid, and like so many young people, I was often filled with periods of self doubt. Playing trumpet at a higher level put many of those doubts to rest. Performing better and working in a slow but steady manner to improve had great appeal. The ability to play a piece of music today that was difficult yesterday and working to be able to play a piece of music tomorrow that is impossible today for me had its rewards.

At seventeen my career path was set but I didn’t feel like I needed to have a complete plan in place relating to my musical future. Concentrating on becoming a better musician was all that was required. If I did so, it seemed like everything else would fall into place.

When my senior year started, all of my attention was focused on studying music in college. My classes ended at 12:15 p.m., so I stayed at school every day and practiced for two more hours until the start of our late afternoon rehearsals. Although I was now practicing more than ever, my playing was starting to plateau. Most musicians have experienced periods of slow progress like this in their development. The key is to keep working through these periods because often the progress is slow, but still progress. What kept me going was the discipline I had developed when I started to get serious about music.

My first trumpet teacher had a strong influence on my playing, but he left Kentucky to go to graduate school so it was imperative to find a new teacher. Again, I was in the right place at the right time. In October, I was invited to attend a college football game as a guest of the University of Kentucky Marching Band as part of their recruiting efforts. The halftime show they performed featured Vince DiMartino, the trumpet professor at UK. I had heard him play before when he was a guest soloist with our band, but I had never heard the trumpet played the way it was on that day. A trumpet player performing a solo in front of fifty thousand people, backed up by a two hundred fifty piece college marching band is an awe inspiring thing to behold. Vince was fearless, and the way he played that day stayed with me right up to the time when I had to choose a university.

The summer before my senior year I visited Indiana University with another trumpet player from Winchester and had a lesson with Bill Adam, the famous IU trumpet professor. It was a good lesson, but for a number of reasons I crossed IU off my list, deciding to concentrate all of my efforts on going to UK. The most important thing was getting into the studio of the best trumpet professor possible, and for me that was Vince.

Vince learned I was interested in attending UK and offered to give me trumpet lessons. He taught a handful of high school students and I was now one of them. Vince was in his mid twenties but his mastery of the trumpet, amazing technique, and strong chops were all remarkable. Not knowing much about trumpet at the time, I did know enough to recognize that Vince was a special type of musician, and how he played was how I wanted to play. When I started studying with him, he had been in Kentucky for three years, having moved to Lexington from New York after playing lead trumpet in the Clark Terry and Lionel Hampton big bands. How he ended up teaching trumpet at UK has always been a bit of a mystery to me, but it was a good thing for all the trumpet players in Central Kentucky that he did.

During our lessons, it seemed like Vince treated me as though I was the most important student ever to study with him. When he made assignments or showed me how to better approach playing, I soaked it all in like a sponge. At one of my lessons, a young just out of college trumpet player, Allen Vizzutti, sat and listened to me play. He was on the road with the Woody Herman Band and just happened to be in town. Having him there was one of the many exciting musical activities happening around me at the time. While parts of my education in Kentucky were lacking in substance, my music education was world class.

Before the start of my senior year, Mr. Campbell sent an audition tape of our concert band to a music festival being held at Southern Mississippi University. The quality of our performance was strong enough for our band to be invited to perform. Over the years, the band often played concerts at out of state music conventions, and this one turned out to be the final big performance of my high school playing career.

The day before our concert, we visited New Orleans and walked around Bourbon Street for an hour to check out the sights. What a rare experience for a small town band. We were there just before lunchtime when Bourbon Street is tame and relaxed. That morning as we headed out to meet with Vince, our trumpet soloist for the concert, we had no idea what was in store for us. As our band made its way up from Canal Street, there he was, standing on a corner outside of a bar with two walls open to the sidewalks, perfect for passersby to stop and listen to the music, which was what Vince was doing.

It is common and gracious in the jazz world for a musician playing a gig to invite another musician to sit in on a tune or two. The invited person is often a friend of the band, but other times the guest is just a stranger in the audience with an instrument in tow. Strangers can be troublesome, especially if you treat them with disrespect before you know how they can play. The group on stage was a five piece Dixieland band with a trumpet player as the leader. In between tunes while speaking to the people in the bar, he noticed Vince standing on the sidewalk with his trumpet case. He said hello and asked if he wanted to sit in with the band. Vince said thanks but no thanks. The band played another tune as we began to gather on the sidewalk outside the bar. When the next tune finished, the trumpet player said again, in condescending way, Come on, don’t be shy. Play a tune with us. New Orleans, is the birthplace of jazz, was his city, and this was his band. The vibe was how dare a wannabe with a trumpet show up at his gig.

During the second invitation, one hundred band students and band parents milled around outside of the bar, filling all the open space along the sidewalks. Some of us heard the invitation, encouraged Vince to play, and it did not take much more prodding for him to jump up on the stage. We looked at each other as if to ask did the other trumpet player not know about the hornet’s nest he just poked with a stick? Vince has technique and range most trumpet players dream about, and while he has an easygoing personality, it is best not to make him angry with a trumpet in his hands. The real fireworks were about to begin. While Vince got his horn out, the two trumpet players talked about what to play, then the New Orleans trumpet player asked Vince if he knew any jazz tunes. This is a big insult to a jazz musician.

It was impossible to hear what else was said between the two trumpet players, so none of us knew what was going on, but years later I asked Vince about their exchange. He said the conversation went something like this.

Vince responded, Whatever you want to play is fine.

New Orleans trumpet player, in a sarcastic tone, Can you play in this key?

Vince, becoming a bit agitated, Yeah, that key’s fine.

New Orleans trumpet player, Can you play it at a fast tempo?

Vince, now becoming more agitated says, Just start.

Over the years, I have heard Vince play hundreds of times in many different settings. He is as flashy and energetic as any trumpet soloist can be, but I have never seen him belittle or embarrass another musician when he played, except for this one time. When the New Orleans trumpet player finished his solo, Vince erupted. His playing was akin to trumpet pyrotechnics, with each solo chorus being more exciting than the previous one. There was no doubt who the best musician on stage was, and it was not the bandleader.

When Vince finished his first solo, it looked like one hundred people walking past a bar in the French Quarter stopped to listen and applauded after hearing something remarkable had just taken place. It is impossible to know what the New Orleans trumpet player thought, but it is safe to say he probably never experienced a drubbing quite like this one. To be pounded in public at your own gig in front of your own band mates in your own city, now that’s special.

Following the first tune, the New Orleans trumpet player asked who he was and where he lived. Vince said his name followed by, I’m from Kentucky. We all went nuts. The New Orleans trumpet player said, Good, you’re not from here. Those of us in the audience stood a little taller because our hometown guy just smoked the New Orleans guy. Vince packed his trumpet away and made one final comment to the now humbled bandleader. He put his finger in the guy’s face and said, Don’t do that to anyone ever again.

Hearing Vince play like that answered my question about where to go to college. There could be only one answer. I was going to UK. My career as a high school trumpet player was nearing its end, and our trip south to New Orleans was the perfect coda for a graduating member of the George Rogers Clark High School Band.

I scheduled a music scholarship audition at UK in the middle of my senior year and needed to select a solo to play. Choosing a solo required a trip to George Hurst Music, the local instrument store where my parents had bought my first trumpet when I was a sixth grader. I made a random selection off the shelf, choosing Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for Trumpet and Piano. The reasons I chose it were the cover made it look like a serious piece of music and all the directions and musical terms were in German. Clueless, I did not know a single word of German.

This trumpet solo turned out to be a great choice for me to play. It was well suited to showcase my abilities as a musician. When I showed up at my next trumpet lesson, we dove right into it. The piece is not a technically demanding one, but it requires strong chops and a good sense of rhythm. It is the type of music that allows the soloist to demonstrate a big sound and their physical strength on the trumpet. I practiced the piece for a month, which prepared me for my music scholarship audition in late February.

At UK, the band program has dozens of full tuition scholarships for music students. At most universities, a school of music or a department of music controls the scholarship purse. Since this was not the case at UK, I auditioned for Harry Clarke, the director of bands, and Vince. My future education was riding on this single event because I had no back up plan if the audition did not go well. When it was over I was satisfied with my performance but I had to wait two more months to learn the results.

One day early in May, Mom met me at the door when I got home from school. She said an official looking letter from the UK Band Office had arrived. There are not many moments in one’s life when everything changes as the result of a single event, but this was one of them. No one in my family had ever attended college, much less received any type of scholarship, so the letter was significant for all of us.

As I opened it, the first word on the page was what I had hoped to see: Congratulations. I read the letter over and over again. The award was a full tuition and fees scholarship to attend UK. Two years earlier, almost to the day, I sat last chair out of twenty four trumpets in the George Rogers Clark High School Band, and now I had earned a full scholarship to study music at a major university!

Music education was my chosen major, but I was not sure of teaching as a career path. I wanted to be a good musician and had no other solid plans. My preparation for going to college included studying piano, attending every concert possible within an hour’s drive of Winchester, and listening to as many records, classical, jazz, everything, as I could find. A friend of mine, a music major at another university, also tutored me on the fundamentals of music theory. He showed me on a piano: intervals, cord structures, scales and modes, and other elements of music theory that would help prepare me for my music studies. We even had sessions where he gave me ear training tests once I knew the terminology. My commitment to being successful on the first day of my college studies gave me a head start on the other music majors. Studying hard to prepare for music theory before classes started helped ensure success.

Having done everything possible to hit the ground running when my studies at UK started, I was in the game for the first time in my life. This game was preparing to study music. Building on my trumpet practice habits in high school, I was motivated to be as good of a musician as possible long before the start of my first music class. There were two other students in my high school band who were going to be music majors, but they did not seem to be doing the same amount of work to prepare for college music study. All of this preparation never seemed to be a chore, instead it was a type of work I could not stop from doing, and it left me feeling energized, hardly able to wait for college to begin. But all my preparation failed to cover one important aspect of being in college.

The big mistake I made in high school was I did not take my other classes as seriously as I did music. Unlike my music studies where I did everything possible to succeed, I took the minimum number of classes to get my high school diploma. The state of Kentucky required eighteen classes to graduate from high school and I took six classes, the maximum, during my freshman and sophomore years, completing all of my science, math, and history requirements. Since most of the state requirements were completed so early, I did not take any additional, more challenging classes in those subject areas. All of my remaining state mandated requirements were filled with low level electives, ones I breezed through. During my last two years of high school, I needed a total of six classes to graduate. Mythology, American Humor, and Public Speaking, all of which fulfilled English requirements, were the most difficult ones. With such a light schedule my school day was over at 12:15 p.m. during my last two years of high school.

Taking so few classes and ones that were easy, I did not have to take a single book home or turn in any homework for half of my high school years. Most college bound students signed up for advanced science, math, and English classes to prepare for college, but not me. Instead, I practiced trumpet and held down part time jobs. Not being lazy, I worked as many hours at my jobs as I legally could and studied music or played trumpet during the rest of the time. My work ethic did not transfer into my other academic studies. Little did I know the price I’d pay for these choices during my freshman year of college.

I graduated from high school with a high grade point average and did well on my college entrance exam, the ACT test. My high ACT scores allowed me to test out of two required general studies classes in college including a basic freshman English composition class. At first it seemed like a stroke of luck to not have to take these classes, but it