Wholehearted harmony

COEUR d'ALENE - Come on, come on. Join the band.

That's how it was back in 1972, when Jim Barnett urged Larry Strobel to pick up the french horn and start playing again.

Barnett, a longtime musician, was a clerk at the Coeur d'Alene post office at the time. Strobel, now 74, was a city mail carrier.

"Jim said, 'You need to be playing. You're wasting your talents,'" Strobel said.

Back then, Strobel and his wife, Sharon, a flute player, had young children, and they had taken some time off from making music.

Barnett, a saxophone player, was performing, when he wasn't working at the post office, with big bands throughout the region.

A newspaper story about a new community band forming at North Idaho College prompted Barnett's plea to Strobel. NIC's music department was looking for local residents to shed their day job demeanors, to sit side-by-side with instrumental music students to breathe notes and tones into melodic strains of chords and scales.

"He did a good thing," Strobel said of Barnett's prodding.

Strobel and Sharon, of Coeur d'Alene, have been playing with that band, now the North Idaho College Wind Symphony, ever since.

Until recently, the Strobels were among five founding band members who have been playing and practicing with the wind symphony for nearly four decades.

Now, they are down to four original band members.

Jim Barnett lost a battle with pancreatic cancer on March 31. He was 79.

"It's just a blow to have him gone," Strobel said.

The band's spring concert takes place Wednesday, and the performance, titled "The British Are Coming," is dedicated to Barnett.

Terry Jones, an NIC music instructor and director of the NIC Wind Symphony for 25 years, said Barnett was a stellar example of a community musician. He worked hard, practiced his parts, rarely missed a rehearsal or concert.

Although the musical selections for the spring concert were chosen well in advance of Barnett's death, Jones said it seems appropriate that the "music represents the foundation of band repertoire, just as Jim's example represents the foundation of the NIC Wind Symphony."

Barnett's connection to the band ran deep. It's where he met his wife, Linda.

"That was our first band marriage," Strobel chuckled, recalling how the relationship began.

At the post office, Barnett would often stop by Strobel's sorting desk, and the two men would chat.

"One day, he came running up to me, and said, 'That little saxophone player, Linda, asked me to go to her office Christmas party,'" Strobel said. "He a had a list of reasons why he couldn't take her. He wouldn't fit in. He wouldn't know what to say."

Barnett went, and afterward told Strobel Linda was "such a nice lady, and she's so talented."

"Next thing you know, he was in line to buy a marriage ring," Strobel said.

The couple married in 1976.

The band was formed in 1973 by local historian and musician Robert Singletary, then a music instructor at the college. He had been hired in 1972 to develop an instrumental program.

"I looked at the enrollment at NIC, and didn't think they could muster a full concert band with just using college students alone, so I came up with the idea of involving the community," Singletary said.

Larry Strobel, after being recruited by Barnett, worked with Singletary in 1972 to recruit community musicians, including high school band members.

"It was a hit from day one. We had just a phenomenal response. We had lawyers, doctors, former teachers. They came from almost every profession you can think of," Singletary said.

Sarina Spatola was 16 when she started playing clarinet in the NIC Wind Symphony.

It was the mid '80s, and Spatola was a junior at Coeur d'Alene High School.

She played with the Strobels, the Barnetts, and other older musicians.

"That was the first time I'd ever played with adults playing music, and it was a really great thing for me to see. There were people in their 50s and 60s, and they were still playing," Spatola said. "Now I'm 41, and I'm still playing."

The elder musicians and college students mutually benefit from the arrangement, said Strobel.

"We've been around the block a few times, us old-timers. You learn things, and the youngsters come along, and it's refreshing. It helps keep me young," Strobel said. "I feel that it's my responsibility to set a good example because I'm supposed to know something. I hope I'm a good influence."

NIC Wind Symphony tuba player and Hagadone Corporation employee Eric Haakenson said it's not unusual to be playing with musicians who are in their 80s and 90s.

For a time, Haakenson's dad played trumpet, and his wife played french horn, while Haakenson and his son, Karl, were each playing tuba in the NIC wind band.

"How many soccer teams, dance groups or football teams do you see with three generations participating and contributing equally at the same time?" Haakenson said.

A classmate of Strobel's recently pointed out to him that back in high school, Strobel was playing in the band, but it was the members of the basketball team who got the most attention.

"He said, 'Here you are, 55 years later, still playing the horn, and they're not playing basketball anymore,'" Strobel said.

He pointed to Barnett as a "classic example."

"Even though the cancer was running him down, he came to rehearsals as long as he could hold his head up," Strobel said. "It's just part of your life."

North Idaho College Wind Symphony

What: "The British Are Coming," a celebration of the musical contributions of longtime band member Jim Barnett

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Boswell Hall Schuler Performing Arts Center

Free and open to the public

Information: 769-3276