Dr. Kaplan

Tomorrow, I get to conduct the 7th grade band in its hormone-driven, idiocy-prone entirety. It's gonna be me versus 74 complete fucking retards.

... and I'm scared out of my mind.

This is precisely what I want to do for a living. I want to be a band director. I want to stand on a podium and teach a bunch of kids how to be the best band they can possibly be. But this is going to be the first time I've ever actually done it. I've run sectionals, done masterclasses, taught lessons, and shown beginners the raw essentials of playing their instruments. But I've never faced this many kids while armed only with a baton. And in all honesty, I'm completely fucked... I have no idea what I'm doing musically, professionally, or pedagogically.

When I was in high school, I played in an extra-curricular band run by a man named Nathan Ivan Kaplan. Dr. Kaplan was a dentist by trade and a teacher at heart. His dental practice supported his lavish wife, but he was happiest when he was making music with kids. He was the person who introduced me to band literature as serious music (instead of the school-oriented bullshit it usually is). He taught me that music is more than notes and rhythms and dynamics and blend; it's passion and community and something just slightly divine. He was a musician in every sense of the word... a player, a composer, and a teacher. He wrote things like a dixieland version of Also Sprach Zarathustra and transcriptions of Shostakovitch symphonies. He inspired me to be the best trombonist I could be, and he showed me an entire realm of music I'd never before considered. I could never have become who I am were it not for Dr. Kaplan.

Dr. Kaplan was also a serious diabetic. He had regular dialysis, and he occasionally missed rehearsals because he was having necrotic toes or fingers amputated. I remember that he had to be led offstage after his last concert because he was in such bad health. He died a few months later.

Right now, I really want to talk to Dr. Kaplan. As I cross the threshold between student and teacher, I desperately wish I could tell him how much he means to me. I'm sure he wouldn't tell me anything I don't already know, but it terrifies me to go to school tomorrow without his benediction.

Dr. Kaplan, I miss you.