Vondis Miller — A Personal Reflection

by Anthony Reimer, Canada
WASBE Web Publisher

I have had many influences in my musical life so far, but there was probably none greater than Dr. Vondis Miller. This article contains the things I remember most about my time with Vondis, supplemented with some research to shore up my failing memory. I hope this series of vignettes might give you a glimpse of why he was so important to me and to so many others.

Building the U of Calgary Wind Programme

I first met Vondis Miller when he came to the University of Calgary (Canada) in 1982. A faculty position had opened upon the retirement of Capt. F.M. (Ray) McLeod, a man respected in the community for his contributions to the band movement. Ray had conducted military and community ensembles as well, and did so for a number of years after that. When Vondis came to campus, however, a whole new era began. Vondis brought with him a vision of what the program could become. (You'll read that word "vision" a lot in this article, because Vondis had it in abundance.) He quickly re-christened the Concert Band as the Symphonic Band and added a Wind Ensemble. The repertoire also evolved with the change to a more symphonic philosophy:

Vondis would continue that trend, programming works by Guy Woolfenden, William Schuman, Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson and others. Sometimes, we weren't quite up to the task, but that wasn't the point. Growth of the students and the program was the point. Vondis was playing things that no one else in town was touching. He was building.

He was building goodwill as well. I remember him recruiting faculty pianist Charles Foreman to perform Ives' The Alcotts at a concert just prior to his wind ensemble playing the transcription — very effective. Benson's The Solitary Dancer got the Programme of Dance involved. He had campus composers, both student and faculty, write for his ensembles. He also reached outside the walls of the University to the local wind band community: he formed a semi-professional adult wind ensemble and a youth wind ensemble.

The wind band programme at the U of Calgary owes an awful lot to Vondis for building such a strong foundation. [Note: I wrote an article for the Music Undergraduate Society newsletter about the history of the U of C Wind Ensemble after that ensemble's very-well-received performance at the 1999 WASBE Conference in San Luis Obispo. That article was never published as intended, but is still available on my personal website.]

Wind Conducting Summer Study

Arguably his biggest outreach was in the formation of the Wind Conducting Diploma Programme. Vondis had a vision: bring conductors together for three weeks during the summer to study from top conductors in our field, with a different headline instructor each week. While summer conducting symposia are commonplace in North America now, Vondis was a trailblazer. People came from all over North America (and eventually from overseas as well) because of the quality faculty he was able to attract. I guess this is one of those things that I as a student wasn't really aware of: Vondis had incredible ties in the wind band community. The respect that we gave Vondis was also present elsewhere in the wind world. At its peak, the Programme was drawing 50 students a summer. He was even asked to continue administrating the programme for a few years after he left for the Dean's job in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge in 1989 (the same time he became WASBE President).

It's no wonder why the Department asked him to do that: Vondis was incredibly organized. In order to secure the big name instructors, he routinely booked them two or three years in advance. The programme itself was structured so that students could get graduate credit for it, either as a diploma or towards a Masters degree. Educationally, the programme was solid. You received instant feedback from the week's instructor when you were on the podium, as well as a videotape review immediately after you were done. Yes, Vondis took advantage of technology to make the course better. (As another example of technology in action, I remember doing database work for him around 1984 on his Commodore PET, one of only two of my profs that had a computer at the time.) You had theory, history, pedagogy, technique — all rolled up into an intense three-week package.

I had the privilege of sitting in the flute section during the evening sessions for about the first six years of the course. Thanks to Vondis, I became familiar with even more repertoire and many of our finest conductors. Battisti, Reynolds, Kirchhoff, Hunsberger, Corporon, Paynter...the list goes on. The buzz around town was incredible when he was able to book Frederick Fennell! Calgary was starting to find its place on the wind band map and it was in no small part thanks to Vondis.

Yet if you ever attended the course, you know that Vondis did not put himself front and centre. Vondis simply provided the platform that allowed students to access all this great talent in one place. The Programme was not designed to further Vondis' conducting career or to be a stepping stone to something else. The wind band world needed this type of programme, so Vondis put it together. Arguably, The University of Calgary got more recognition for the Programme than Vondis did.

It is a reflection of the man that while the programme was under his control, the students favoured camaraderie over competition. They were so cohesive that they drove additions to the Programme like annual t-shirts, a banquet, and one year even got together with students from past years and funded a commission. One might even credit the two weddings of course participants over the years, but that might be stretching the togetherness point a bit. Nonetheless, he can be credited for creating a supportive environment that made the Programme flourish.

To Serve and Respect

You'd never know by talking to him that he had held the titles of President of our Provincial band association, Council Member and eventually President of WASBE, and other executive titles too numerous to mention. That's because Vondis was doing this to serve, not for the cachet attached to these positions. He was the ultimate team player in that regard. He dealt with everyone (including his students) in a respectful manner, and was accorded the same in return. The clearest evidence of this for me was that my undergraduate peers tended to call him Vondis when talking about him but Dr. Miller when we spoke with him. This was the ultimate combination of love and respect, to my mind. He knew his stuff and we respected him for that. He respected us and gave us the opportunity to rise to the challenge, and we respected him for that. Yet I still recall the year that Vondis joined in on the student-run Beard Growing Contest. He had to shave it off early due to a clinic or a conference (Vondis was nothing if not professional), but you could tell just from his willingness to participate that he was in tune with his students.

Reaching for a Higher Standard

One of the things I learned from Vondis was the goal of flexibility on the podium. I vividly remember Vondis discussing this matter during a dress rehearsal for a concert. We had just had a bit of a train wreck and had stopped to regroup. The reason we had been run off the rails was because some players fully expected that we would play it exactly like the last time we rehearsed it. As Vondis explained (in a much more eloquent and succinct manner than I am about to do), if something in the music at that instant in time told him to go in a different direction than normal, he wanted the ensemble to be flexible enough to go with him. This was not a capricious power that he wanted. He simply wanted any performance to be as "present" or "in the moment" as possible. This was a really strong statement about his musicianship. I strive for this in my own ensembles now. When a player asks me how I am going to conduct a particular passage, I can give them an indication, but I refuse to provide a guarantee. If I do something out of the ordinary (to draw out something extraordinary), I must be clear, but I must be allowed to lead (as much as the skill of my players will allow).

Nice Car!

Vondis was active in provincial, national, and international band association, particularly those with a music education emphasis. He was the first to arrange for Instrumentalist subscriptions for students. He actively encouraged us to attend our provincial music education conference to the point where he on more than one occasion drove a van or carload of his students up to the conference. I believe it was 1983 when I was fortunate enough to return from convention in Edmonton with Vondis. It is about a three-hour drive from Edmonton to Calgary, so Vondis and I had a great chance to chat in the first part of the trip. I don't remember what we talked about any more, I just remember how amazing I thought it was.

However, it had been a long conference for Vondis (I think he was President of the provincial band association at the time), so just before the halfway mark in the trip, he decided it was time to turn the driving over to me. What I haven't mentioned to this point is that we were not driving a beat up old University van but instead were cruising down the highway in a beautiful red sports car (a Toyota Celica or something similar). Now I was (and am) a pretty clean cut kind of guy, so I don't think Vondis had any worries about me getting a ticket or abusing his car intentionally, but there was one problem: I had only driven an automatic before. Needless to say, I was not very successful getting the car into gear. Vondis was amazingly patient with me, but I still couldn't quite get it. I was starting to feel badly about how I was grinding his gears and making his car lurch so ungraciously, but Vondis was determined to get a chance to nap, so he dug deep for a solution. He operated the stick shift while I did the rest under his verbal instruction. Voila! It worked. I was relieved and he could rest. It was a memorable trip.

Separate Ways

When Vondis moved to Lethbridge, I saw him less and less, mostly at conferences or when I went south to visit a close friend, but the connection was still there any time I saw him. When it came time to pursue a Master's degree in the mid-1990s, he was an obvious choice to write one of my reference letters (and to ask some advice).

The last time I saw Vondis was a couple of years ago when he was invited to be the conductor of the top band for the Calgary Regional Summer Band Workshop, a one-week camp directed mostly at Junior High and High School students. I walked by the staff room, saw him there, and he was up to greet me almost before I got into the room. We had a really nice conversation and he said he had hoped he would see me while he was in town. I was touched.

For when it comes right down to it, Vondis was my mentor. That's saying a lot, since I really don't believe in having a single mentor or patterning yourself after just one person's methods. But Vondis was the epitome of what I want to be as a conductor and in many ways what I want to be as a human being. He was a class individual all the way, always a man of integrity, of leadership, of humility and of vision. "Conductor" was a good role for him as a musician because he was such a great administrator and leader, with an inherent musical gift. To this day, I have never been more in sync with a conductor than I was with Vondis.

I've tried to paint a picture of the man that Vondis was in my world, but I know I have not done him any kind of justice. He touched me on so many levels that these anecdotes cannot adequately describe them. I was incredibly fond of him and feel I was blessed to know him as well as I did, for people like Vondis Miller do not show up in your life every day, or every decade for that matter. He was a builder, a leader, a visionary and someone who touched many, many individuals along the way. This is his legacy, not only in my corner of the world but in the wind band world as a whole, and for that we can all be grateful.

[Editor's Note: The picture on this page is from a dress rehearsal during the 1985–86 school year at the University of Calgary. This picture was published in the Student Yearbook that year. The piccolo player in the background is the author.]

©2003 WASBE