| That is how James Jenkins, primary tubist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra got his start. Jenkins, who will be performing in a free concert in Morphy Hall February 4 with Madison pianist Vincent Fuh, grew up in Miami's inner-city community of Liberty City. It wasn't until high school that Jenkins explored playing a musical instrument and he started out playing trumpet. But then fate intervened to set Jenkins on the path to musical greatness. The school's band had no tuba player. "I was one of the biggest and strongest kids, so my band director moved me to tuba and I fell in love with the sound of the instrument and the function of the instrument," Jenkins recalled in a telephone interview with The Capital City Hues. "At least the experience I was having at the time was the tuba provided a lot of the rhythmic foundation for what was happening in the rest of the band. I just loved that." Jenkins' marching band patterned itself after the marching bands of Florida A&M and other Historically Black Colleges (HBCs). "We played a lot of music that was popular during those days," Jenkins said. "We were playing a lot of Earth, Wind & Fire kind of music. We would dance on the football field. I learned very early on that when I started playing my instrument along with the percussion section, it always elicited a very positive response. People would get up and start dancing." While many of Jenkins' band mates went on to study and play at HBCs, Jenkins went on to the University of Miami to study classical music and he left the world of marching bands behind. "Initially, it was really, really a striking difference between the marching band music and classical music," Jenkins reflected. "My musical background had been rhythm and blues, soul and gospel. I grew up in the church. My father was a pastor. Stepping into and learning the classical world was so totally different." But again, fate intervened. Professor John Stevens -- now teaching music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison -- took Jenkins under his wing. "He was the first musician that I met who helped me to see and understand the similarities between the two types of music and how to use what I had learned in one type of music with a rhythmic type of drive and use that to play it with a kind of rhythmic integrity that is necessary in classical music," Jenkins said. "John Stevens was the first person who really helped me to form the bridge that way. But other than that, it was an entirely different world for me. It's an entirely different world, especially the way it sounds and a little bit the intent of the music. After I was introduced to it, I took to it right away. I really have grown to love classical music over the years." Jenkins must have been an excellent student because he landed a job with a symphony orchestra right out of college, no small feat. There are approximately 45 symphony orchestras in the United States and each of them employs only one tubist; that's right, just one tubist. Years can pass by without a vacancy coming open. And when they do, international searches for candidates can attract well over 100 candidates. And while Jenkins became one of the first -- if not the first -- African American tubists to secure a seat with a symphony orchestra, no one can take away from his accomplishment by labeling it as an "Affirmative Action" hire. "The orchestra would decide who they thought was qualified to have come and audition," Jenkins said about a hypothetical hiring process. "All of the applicants who are invited are then told very specifically what to prepare. So everyone who comes prepares the same music. And the whole process is done mostly behind a screen. The committee that would be listening and evaluating the applicants -- usually made up of 5-9 musicians including the conductor -- from behind a screen. All of the applicants come out on stage and play the same music in the same order and it's all done by numbers. It is all anonymous. Based on what they hear, they would narrow it down to maybe 10 musicians and then those 10 would play again. They go through great lengths to try to preserve the confidentiality. If you walk out on stage and perhaps cough or something of that nature, it could considered that you are giving someone behind the screen a signal and you could be immediately disqualified. It's a process of elimination until they get down to one person. And that one person is hopefully awarded the position." Jenkins landed the tubist position with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the rest is history. "It was pretty unusual for me to come right out of college and win a job, especially at that time," Jenkins confided. "I'm fortunate to be one of the few musicians that is able to make my primary living from playing with a symphony orchestra. I was very fortunate. Now there are two of us. I was, for quite a while, the only African American tuba player in this country. Now, a student of mine has a full-time position with the Portland Symphony Orchestra." As the primary tubist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, Jenkins performs in 120-130 concerts per year plus rehearsals. Yet, he has found the time to found Body & Soul of the Art of Healing. "We form a partnership between the arts and the health care industry," Jenkins explained. "We help with various types of research such as studying the impact of music or the visual arts on Alzheimer's patients. We'll study the impact of music on cancer patients as they are taking treatment. Or we try to change the esthetic environment in some of the facilities." Jenkins is a classical musician with rhythm and heart. Jenkins will give a lecture and lead a discussion on Body & Soul of the Art of Healing on February 3 at 2 p.m. in the Humanities Building's Morphy Hall on the UW-Madison's campus. On February 4, Jenkins will perform with Vincent Fuh, a versatile Madison pianist who performs with MadiSalsa at 4 p.m. in Morphy Hall. Both events are free and open to the general public. |
| Tubist James Jenkins to perform at Morphy Hall Classical rhythms By Jonathan Gramling |
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| While athletics, particularly basketball and football, have often been heralded as a means by which African American students have been able to escape poverty -- with education being the primary one, of course -- particularly in the South, music has also been a major pipeline for children from economically challenged neighborhoods into the halls of higher academia. Indeed, while winning seasons may come and go at predominantly African American high schools and colleges, it is usually the school's marching band that generates positive publicity for the school year after year. Even when the home team is on the wrong end of a lopsided score, it is the marching band at half-time that kept the fans in the stands. |
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