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The 4,300-seat efficiency area about an hour north of Carnegie Hall was eerily empty, apart from 9 judges in uniform sitting behind a thick black curtain.
Ada Brooks, her mouth dry from nerves, lifted the bell of her euphonium, a smaller relative of the tuba, and ready to play the notes that would decide her future.
“Breathe,” she thought. “The beginnings are probably the most treacherous half.”
Ms. Brooks had advised herself this earlier than. Her fervent pursuit to professionally play the euphonium, which isn’t utilized in conventional symphony orchestras, had include many demanding auditions. This one was her tenth for the establishment that calls itself the nation’s largest employer of musicians: the United States navy.
Time and time once more she had practiced and ready and tried to recollect to breathe. She was turned down repeatedly or supplied jobs in regional bands. Now got here a possibility for a premium place, a not often open seat within the prestigious West Point Band.
Some points of the audition — like enjoying for a jury hidden behind a curtain, to protect in opposition to potential bias — could be acquainted to most orchestra musicians. Others have been distinctive to the navy. Two of the opposite 4 candidates stated they needed to drop some weight to qualify, and the finalists have been examined for coordination in marching drills.
Scores of regional navy bands symbolize the armed forces at ceremonies, parades and vacation celebrations. About a dozen premier bands, together with the U.S. Military Academy’s ensemble in West Point, N.Y., carry out at inaugurations and overseas dignitary visits.
Seats within the premier bands are significantly engaging, offering job safety and regular pay — the beginning wage is about $70,000 — together with well being care and different advantages. Those who win them have a tendency to remain for a few years, if not their complete careers.
Ms. Brooks had been training three hours a day in Denton, Texas, utilizing high-end recording gear in her lounge to establish imperfections in her pitch or tempo.
At the audition, she was assured and exact whereas enjoying excerpts from works by Schoenberg, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich, in addition to from the soundtrack of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” by John Williams.
At one level, a judge requested if she may “be extra declamatory.” She repeated just a few measures. After she performed Boismortier’s Sonata No. 12 with the band’s principal euphonium participant, Staff Sgt. Christopher Leslie, one of many judges barked: “I feel you are able to do a greater job matching his fashion and intonation. One extra time.”
In the top, Ms. Brooks was certainly one of two finalists requested to play further excerpts and to take a seat for a face-to-face interview with the judges. The remaining query got here from the band’s conductor, Lt. Col. Daniel Toven: Why is your dream to be in a premier navy band?
Ms. Brooks paused.
“As you most likely know,” she stated, “euphoniums don’t have quite a lot of choices.”
There was a burst of laughter.
After cautious deliberation, Sergeant Leslie delivered the decision. She was in.
Well, nearly. Ms. Brooks needed to full greater than two months of boot camp earlier than she would turn into an Army musician.
A Music Mission
Ms. Brooks, 27, was launched to the euphonium by her eighth-grade band teacher in Columbia Falls, Mont. At the time she thought it “was only a much less cool tuba,” as she put it, and no one was involved in regards to the restricted profession alternatives.
By tenth grade, she had made the all-state band and was now not planning to check math, science or physics in school. She was now decided to play the euphonium professionally.
She spent $7,000 on a euphonium and two years at Interlochen, a performing arts highschool in Michigan. Ms. Brooks then earned bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in music efficiency on the University of North Texas, the place she made an eight-year dedication to the Air National Guard Band of the Southwest, looking forward to part-time expertise enjoying music in a navy setting.
When Ms. Brooks’s unit was deployed unexpectedly to the border of Texas and Mexico as a part of Operation Lone Star, most of the musicians stop. “Our band shrunk to half of its authentic measurement,” she stated.
During her 10-month deployment, Ms. Brooks labored from midnight to eight a.m. within the armory issuing weapons. Many of her bandmates offered water to crossing migrants and sat with them till Border Patrol brokers arrived. She lived in a lodge, which made it laborious to organize for auditions.
“I used to be training my instrument out in my automotive,” she stated. “It was actually depressing.”
Military life could be a shock to musicians, most of whom don’t have any prior expertise with the armed forces.
“We should put on a fight uniform to play the tuba, it’s somewhat bizarre,” stated Staff Sgt. Alec Mawrence, a tuba participant within the West Point Band. “Eventually, your head is shaved and also you’re screaming, ‘Yes, drill sergeant.’”
Rifles, Not Instruments
The solar had not but risen over the Ozark Mountains in south central Missouri, however the trainees in Company B, third Battalion, tenth Infantry Regiment have been already marching. It was early January and chilly — 1 diploma — and tendrils of mist hung over the unit.
“I left my house to hitch the Army,” the trainees sang in unison.
Ms. Brooks — now Specialist Brooks — had thought the daunting expertise could be effectively value it, saying earlier that “primary coaching isn’t any massive deal in comparison with 20 years of a efficiency job.”
But now, after six weeks at Fort Leonard Wood and with 5 extra to go, Specialist Brooks appeared exhausted. She favored morning bugle name and rifle coaching, particularly the precision, which reminded her of training her instrument. Less gratifying was standing for hours within the chilly and consuming abnormally quick.
“While I’m right here, I apply my jodies, my marksmanship,” she stated, referring to the call-and-response cadences sung whereas marching or working. She couldn’t carry alongside her euphonium, and tried not to consider it. “It seems like an entire totally different life,” she stated. Most of the trainees have been unaware she was a musician.
A quiet perfectionist, Specialist Brooks had a tough time with the barrage of reprimands which can be the hallmark of primary coaching. Her coping mechanism was to smile, prompting the drill sergeants to snap, “Brooks, disguise your tooth!”
“I wasn’t certain how I might deal with getting yelled at,” she stated. “But you then notice that they’re not truly offended. They simply try this on a regular basis.”
When the corporate reached the armory to choose up rifles for vary coaching, the shivering trainees stood at consideration. “Soldier’s creed!” a drill sergeant shouted.
“I’m an American soldier,” Specialist Brooks responded, along with her unit. “I stand able to deploy, have interaction, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in shut fight.”
Music and the navy have lengthy been intertwined. For centuries, drums have been used to set the tempo of marches. Fifes and drums have been used to speak on the battlefield earlier than radios. The nation’s first navy band — the United States Marine Band, generally known as “the President’s Own” — was fashioned by an act of Congress in 1798.
Loras John Schissel, a senior musicologist on the Library of Congress, stated that through the Civil War, band members would put down their devices, take up their weapons and combat — after which resume enjoying. By the early twentieth century, music was thought of essential for navy morale.
“Music,” he stated, got here solely “after meals, water and ammunition.”
Direct publicity to fight has turn into more and more uncommon for navy musicians, however it’s not unheard-of. In 1941, all 21 musicians aboard the battleship Arizona died within the assault on Pearl Harbor whereas passing ammunition to the ship’s weapons. On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Army Band helped with search and rescue on the Pentagon.
Quiet Confidence
The risk of battle is one motive musicians get the identical coaching as infantry troopers. So on one other freezing morning throughout primary coaching, Specialist Brooks and 136 different troopers ready to rappel down a 40-foot-high wood construction generally known as the Confidence Tower.
During a principally silent 1.5-mile march to the tower — speaking was prohibited — the loudest noises have been the crunch of frost beneath boots and the swish of camo fatigues in opposition to heavy packs.
Cut off from music in boot camp, Specialist Brooks would hum Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat whereas working laps. Before she arrived, she transcribed track lyrics, together with “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine, into her pocket book in order that she would have a radio in her head. While packing for a area train, she and her roommates sang the present tune “It’s the Hard-Knock Life.”
On the march to the Confidence Tower, a cadence Specialist Brooks had been required to yell many instances was caught in her head.
Sitting in my foxhole
sharpening my knife
out pops the enemy
needed to take his life
die kill ’em die kill ’em
Why gained’t you die?
“I just like the singing half, however the violence is somewhat stunning to me,” she stated later.
By the time the trainees reached the tower, two had been disqualified for marching too slowly. Several others couldn’t full the small coaching wall close by. Specialist Brooks, a rock climber and caver, was unfazed.
The wind shook the tower, and the wooden creaked. As Specialist Brooks reached the highest, one drill sergeant sitting close to the drop-off known as out to a different: “You take Esophagus.” It was an affectionate nickname the instructors had given her, a play on “euphonium.”
Specialist Brooks knelt by the sting on the high of the tower. Unconcerned about hiding her tooth, she broke into a smile.
Throughout primary coaching, she tried to not dwell on what she was lacking most from her house close to Dallas: Baking her favourite blueberry muffins with chia seeds. Lingering over a cup of coffee. Watching a film on the sofa along with her canine and her three cats, Kiwi, Biscuit and Momo.
When it was time for Specialist Brooks to depart Fort Leonard Wood, her boyfriend arrived along with her euphonium. She performed a solo even earlier than consuming her first meal off the bottom.
‘Tax Dollars at Work’
In April, two months after she completed boot camp, Sergeant Brooks, who was promoted to employees sergeant after commencement, was at a faculty in North Salem, N.Y., for her first live performance as a member of the West Point Band. She had rehearsed with the group twice and was now nervously adjusting the ornate pin on the lapel of her black blazer.
“Does this look straight?” she requested. Glancing at her full live performance uniform in a mirror, she stated, “It’s thrilling and bizarre to see your self dressed like this.”
The repertoire for the live performance was chosen to hint West Point’s legacy. By the time the band reached “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” the group was cheering and singing alongside.
The conductor, Colonel Toven, wrote in his grasp’s thesis that music helped the Army accomplish its public affairs mission of engendering belief and confidence amongst residents. “These are your tax {dollars} at work,” he stated proudly throughout a mid-concert speech.
After “The Official West Point March” and a rousing encore of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” Sergeant Brooks’s first live performance with the band was over. She appeared elated and relieved.
As the musicians mingled with enthusiastic viewers members, Sergeant Leslie discovered Sergeant Brooks. “Congratulations,” he stated, with a collegial nod that was removed from his impartial facade as a judge at her audition eight months earlier. Sergeant Brooks, holding a bouquet of flowers, beamed.
She clutched at her collar and requested a bandmate, “Is anybody else heat in these uniforms?” As her adrenaline started to fade, she stated that enjoying alongside these navy musicians felt surreal: “It’ll take some time to recover from the impostor syndrome.”
