Author: DougR
Date: 2008-06-06 16:08
Actually, he may not have been my "best" teacher, but he's the guy who inspired me to transition from a cluelessly mediocre grade-school honker to the committed, dedicated (although perhaps still mediocre) clarinetist I am today.
His name was Bruno Laakko, and he taught junior-high band. Always nattily dressed, always conducting with a little stub of a baton, he taught us passion and musicality. Once, entirely unexpectedly, he brought in a pile of 78s and a gold-plated tenor sax and played along (well) with the recordings. That made him a figure of inspiration to me.
Only recently have I discovered that he was a student at Juilliard in the thirties, and led a pioneering swing band, Lepakot, in Finland before WWII. The records he played along with for us kids were ones he made with the band. (If you search YouTube for "Bruno Laakko" you can hear him singing "Jeepers Creepers" in Finnish!) He also used to entertain us between numbers with stories of the plucky Finnish guerrilla forces fighting the invading Soviet army in the winter snows. He was there!
Being a self-absorbed 7th-grader, I always took him a little bit for granted, but I sure understood (and assimilated) his passion for music. He's a continuing inspiration to me, and I'm glad to have an opportunity to share it.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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