BLOOM Horning Around Bruce Stuart is often at or near the center of a number of area musical programs. His acoustic bass and slide trombone are featured in musical presentations throughout the area every week. June 2007

Bruce Stuart

I earn a living as a piano technician but make my life as a musician. Three years ago I became bass trombonist in the Stockton Concert Band. Last April we were the featured band at the Wind Band Festival in New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

Playing in Carnegie Hall was one of the high points of my life! It is one of the six greatest music halls in the world. That place is beautiful beyond my ability to describe and the acoustics are magnificent.

I’ve been listening to music from Carnegie Hall since I was six years old. One wall has a display of LP record covers for live-at-Carnegie-Hall performances. At least six of those albums hold honored positions in my own library. And now I have become part of the stream of that magnificent history because I’ve created music there myself!

The Stockton Band played six pieces; I played trombone in five of them and conducted the sixth piece, American Elegy by Frank Tickeli. The elegy was commissioned as a memorial to the children killed at Columbine High School, and to serve as a reminder, the composer said, “of how fragile and precious life is and how intimately connected we all are as human beings.”

The elegy begins with a somber musical theme but builds to a cry of hope. Lyrical and serene elements interact with each other to develop a mood of poignancy and loss. Themes of sadness, peacefulness, and hope are then repeated throughout the work concluding with the sonorous melody by an offstage trumpeter suggesting a heavenly voice before the full band finishes with a final, exalted, and climactic restatement of the main theme.

At the finish there wasn’t a dry eye in the house or on the stage and certainly not behind the conductor’s podium!

Roots of Life and Music

My earliest memories are of being enchanted by the music of such great bands as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. As a young child I developed a longing to play music like that — to be able to awaken in the souls of others the rush of passion that their music stirred in my own.

I began playing an acoustic bass in a string orchestra at Concord’s Wren Avenue School when I was only a third grader. I later decided that I wanted to play the trombone along with my bass. The Wren Avenue School music program was a strings-only affair, so the trombone and private lessons represented a big financial investment for my parents and getting their support was not a slam-dunk. I finally wore them down with my wheedling and whining and began taking lessons in the fourth grade.

From the beginning I was a self-actualizing musician. My parents never had to force me to practice; my goal was to play like those guys on my records.

I was taking lessons on both bass and trombone from a musical genius named Louie Costello. He could play any instrument and wrote his own arrangements. He organized a band consisting of those of us kids who were taking lessons from him.

We called ourselves The Tempos, and decked ourselves out in great-looking uniforms that our parents bought for us. We began doing gigs for dances and parties at places like the Elks Club, the Moose Lodge, and various women’s clubs. We eventually were playing someplace nearly every weekend.

Ours was the first band to perform while riding on the bow of a yacht for the Bethel Island Opening Day Parade, and later that evening we played for the yacht club’s dance.

The organizations we played for would pass a hat at the end of the night and people were always generous. I think they were blown away by what great music a bunch of school kids were making. I often would take home $30 or more, which was a lot of money in those days, when a kid might get a quarter or a half-dollar for mowing somebody’s lawn.

The band started to get a reputation and we were invited to play at the Cow Palace for a 1960 event at which John F. Kennedy spoke before an audience of thousands of people.

It was so cool the next day to tell my buddies at my Oakley grammar school that I had performed in the same room with the man who might become the next president. Of course, it was a really big room, but nevertheless the experience of being there created memories that will remain with me forever.

The group was transitory because the boys in the band kept graduating from school and moving on. I was one of the youngest members and finally a year came when I was in junior high in which no new generation was available to replace those departing and the whole thing fell apart.

Spending those years playing in that band and taking lessons from that amazing teacher whetted my appetite for performance while developing my abilities to do so. Costello had taught me techniques in both how to perform and how to entertain.

Growing up in East County

I spent my formative years growing up on Bethel Island, where my dad had a grocery store called Stan’s Market. Even though I found practicing on my instruments to be as much fun as playing with my buddies when I was a kid, I enjoyed running around with my friends, as well.

Bethel Island in those days was a Huckleberry Finn-type paradise for kids. This was long before the advent of such things as video games and Myspace. We would spend hours doing such things as making our own crude skateboards by nailing the wheels from some disassembled roller skates on the opposite ends of a couple two-by-fours. We would spend entire days boating and skiing, then hanging out on the beach at night until the sun was gone from the sky and the beer gone from the cooler.

Members of my gang and I were having a great time getting into any kind of trouble we could figure out. Even though we never did anything that was actually criminal, we participated in an outrageous brand of juvenile social anarchy.

My first year at Brentwood’s Liberty Union High School was an awful experience. My buddies and I were still trying to practice our chaotic Bethel Island behavioral styles in a place that made you pee only in the bathrooms.

My salvation came through joining the high school band and coming under the influence of the incredible Alan Jones. He was an amazing musician and principle trombonist in the Stockton Symphony Orchestra. Alan coached me into excellence and got me started down the road of mastering the classical orchestral trombone literature.

I joined the marching band during my sophomore year, but didn’t like that very much. You necessarily lose subtle nuances of modulation and phrasing while trying to march in step and maintaining your place with rows and columns of other musicians in front of bleachers full of hot dog eating fans while the West Delta wind blows grit into your face.

But I put my best effort into marching up and down the field on those Friday evenings and received the John Philip Sousa Band Award in my senior year. That was a real honor!

Into the World

After graduating from Liberty I majored in music for two years at the San Joaquin Delta Junior College and became the principal trombone in the fledging Contra Costa Symphony Orchestra. The college gave me credit in an Applied Music Program for taking private lessons, but required me to perform with an accompanist every Friday while getting graded by the teacher.

One week Roberta, my accompanist, called to tell me that she wouldn’t make it but that her roommate played the piano. The roommate’s name was Sue Schaldach. Two years later I changed it to Sue Stuart.

The sparks didn’t begin flying until the next year when the two of us were together in an orchestra pit while playing for our college’s production of West Side Story.

The musical centers on a romantic story, of course, but the theatergoers didn’t suspect that a romance was beginning between two members of the orchestra that would easily match any of the lovey-dovey stuff happening on the stage.

Sue and I were engaged in six months and married in a year.

The summer before we were married I got a draft notice so the next day I went into the local recruiting station to sign up as a member of the Coast Guard Band and spent the next four years supporting our efforts in the Vietnam war by playing trombone on various parade grounds around the country and occasionally from the deck of some ship.

Of course, forcing me to play the trombone for three hours a day, or so, took almost all of the hellishness out of the war for me. But unfortunately being a member of a Coast Guard band forced me back to marching, as well. Serious marching, in fact, because we had more than 200 performances and parades during the four years of my tour of duty. My back and legs still hurt just to think about it.

I mustered out of the Coast Guard and went back to school at Cal State Hayward, Sue’s alma mater. I was playing all over the place.

Meanwhile, Sue had finished her degree and went on to get her teaching credential.

I should note at this point that Sue is a gifted pianist, timpanist, a third-generation Brentwood resident, a great dancer, an amazing human being, and after 36 years still a lot of fun to be with. For the past three decades she has managed Liberty High School’s award-winning choral program. When referring to me people most local residents will say something like “That’s Bruce. He’s Sue Stuart’s husband.”

The best gig I ever had was as trombonist in the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Band. We spent a few months traveling with the circus from LA to Wisconsin and back.

Kids have a lot of fun at the circus but it turns out that the musicians have the most fun of all, I think. The job involved two grueling hours of playing almost without time to take a breath. It wore us out completely. But our spirits would quickly revive and then we had a lot of fun during the 22 hours before the next performance.

I did that tour with the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey’s Circus Band in 1976, the year that Sue got a job at Brentwood’s Liberty Union High School. I was always interested in tinkering with things — trying to figure out how gadgets work, etcetera. I was able to meld my love for music and for fixing things in starting an East County business as a piano technician.

I was playing in the Stockton Symphony Orchestra but began branching out and joined a group called the Devil Mountain Jazz Band, playing New Orleans style jazz. That was the beginning of an eclectic career as member of a number of bands playing everything from jazz to swing. I’m currently a bass player and trombonist in five different ensemble groups. In addition, every year I’m probably involved with a dozen musical productions of one kind and another.

Two years ago just for nothing — just for the love of music — I founded the Brentwood Concert Band. About 55 of us have had a great time practicing together each week and doing eight performances a year. We’ve already made three recordings.

I continue practicing on my instruments a couple hours every day and intend to continue picking at my bass as long as my fingers work and to continue horning around with my trombone as long as I can still take a breath and blow into that thing.