Jim Phillips: Entertainer, educator, family man

Jim Phillips, instrumental music director at Coeur d’Alene High School, sat at the desk in his office early Wednesday, surrounded by evidence of everything that makes him tick.

A stringed instrument similar to a zither rested atop papers on the edge of the desk.

His office walls are plastered with posters and images of people, bands, and the framed degrees and certificates Phillips has earned throughout a career that began taking root before he was in high school. Photos of his children smile out from the wall behind his desk, where their images hang near a blue ribbon that dangles, proclaiming “World’s Best Husband.”

It’s clear Phillips is a music man, but first a family man. He doesn’t have to sacrifice one for the other though, because music is a common thread in his family.

His wife, Kristina, is also a music teacher, and like Phillips, she is also a performer, often playing, and sometimes conducting, with the local symphonies and orchestras in the region.

Phillips is in his 18th year teaching music at CHS, his first job after graduating from Washington State University.

“People still call me the new guy, because I’m only the fourth music director the school’s ever had,” Phillips said.

He sat down with The Press and talked about his work, his family and some of the bright spots and challenges in his career of making music and helping others do the same.

How many instruments do you play?

I got a master’s degree in trumpet. That’s my main thing. As part of the training course to become a music teacher, you have to take classes in all the other instruments, so I play violin, very poorly, but I play it with my students just about every day. I can make noise on all the woodwind instruments, but you wouldn’t want to hear me play them. I’ve played horn and trombone on concerts, usually with the youth orchestra, if they need it, and percussion too. But my forte is brass. I play in the Coeur d’Alene Symphony and I’m playing in the next Spokane Symphony concert, and I play in a professional big band in Spokane, under Bob Curnow. That’s a lot of fun.

How old were you when you discovered you loved making music?

We always had music in our family. My mom played violin. My dad was a pastor, so I was in church all the time. My grandmother didn’t live close to us, but she taught piano and organ and violin. That’s her right there (points to framed photo on the wall)...I started taking piano lessons when I was five...I think I was in fourth or fifth grade when I started playing trumpet, and I stopped taking piano lessons. Big mistake. Don’t ever stop taking piano lessons

because then you have to take all the classes in college again. Then, I really started playing trumpet. Well, I’m still working on that one. That’s the one that’s got me hooked in. I discovered Maynard Ferguson and Doc Severinsen and listening to orchestra recordings and that just got me hooked, and I still kind of want to do that for a living.

You teach students how to be part of a band. How is the experience for you, when you’re a band member in one of the symphony orchestras or other groups you perform with?

One of my absolute favorite things about being a performer is not being in charge. Because at school, and I did the Air National Guard Band for 15 years — I was the commander of that unit - and in that role, and in school, I’m in charge. I have to run the rehearsals. I have to do all the background organizing. I usually get here at 6 in the morning, and I’m here until after school, every day. So to be able to just show up to a rehearsal, take my horn out and play, and be a part of the music-making, rather than out front, it’s an enjoyable experience. And sometimes you get paid for it, and that’s nice too.

Can you tell us a little about your experience with the Air National Guard Band?

Right after I got my master’s degree, I joined that unit and this job at the same time. It was one of 11 National Guard bands around the country, and in 2008 we got word they were going from 11 down to five. We were one of the bands that was cut. We fought the good fight. It took about three years from the time we got word until I was the last person on the rolls, and I rolled up the flag and handed it to the commander and the band was inactivated. Since that time, I’ve been a public affairs officer at Fairchild.

With the Air National Guard Band, did you do a lot of traveling?

With that unit, I got to travel to all the Northwest states. We went to Missouri, to Wisconsin. Our rock band actually deployed over to Iraq and Afghanistan, and Qatar and Kuwait. That was about a 35-day tour. It was a short one. We were covering leave for the active duty units that were there...We deployed in 2009, and that was the first time that actual unit, the 560th Air Force Band, deployed to a war zone. So that was a neat thing to be part of - to get to see why people fight over there, because it’s so hot. But really, it was a life-changing experience just to get to do it, just for a little bit. I really feel for them, especially the Army guys that go there. When you’re boots on the ground, it’s brutal. It’s hard to be away from your family that long. My wife was pregnant at the time and I got to come home just in time for the birth.

We often hear that people don’t always understand the importance of music and the arts in education. Is that your experience?

That’s actually changing, because with the new ESSA (federal Every Student Succeeds Act) music is now listed as one of the core subjects. It’s on the same par as science, math and technology. So STEM is really STEAM, and there’s a big push for that. The music education community, starting at the top, the National Association for Music Education, they have a big push for that...but we’re hoping that because it’s federally recognized now, that will eventually trickle down to the state level and then to the district level. Because we all know that none of us are funded at the levels we’d like to be, but what is actually appropriate versus what they are able to afford is sometimes different. We’ve been working with the district to take a step back and look at a bigger picture, not just this classroom, but all music ed. classrooms in the district. And how can we better fund them? We’re working collaboratively. Tim Sandford and I have been working on this for years, and it’s getting traction.

I have instruments that we use on a daily basis, and they’re from the 1940s. This school has been around a long time, and I spend an inordinate amount of our money repairing equipment, not necessarily acquiring more equipment, because I want kids to be able to use instruments that work. When I have a kid playing a baritone saxophone from the 1960s that’s missing pieces and parts, I have to take it down to Burt’s Music, and he works his magic and wizardry, because Denny is a phenomenal instrument repair guy. But he can only work with what he’s got. I have four in my inventory, but I should have four new ones, not ones that are 50 years old or more, in some cases.

I’ve been very fortunate in the last few years. I’ve written and received a lot of grants, but to get grants for the $5,000-plus, the big equipment that we need, that doesn’t happen very often.

Is that your greatest challenge, a lack of funding, or are there other challenges?

It’s one of them. Some of the other challenges are relevance - does what we do really reach today’s students? I always try to find the balance between something that is accessible for them, and something that is approachable and something that is pedagogically sound. Is teaching pop music really that important? I think it is, because that’s the hook that gets them in. We do the pep band at basketball games and football games, and then we have students that write arrangements and I help with that. We try to do current pop music with the bands and orchestras here.

You have to do the classics. With the strings especially, you have a 300- or 400-year-long list of literature. It’s important that they do Handel and Mozart and Beethoven, but they should also do Coldplay, the Beatles and movie music.

I think if Bach and Beethoven and Mozart were alive today, they’d be writing music for films and video games. Because that’s what the modern composers do, like John Williams, and Michael Giacchino and Howard Shore. They are the modern masters, and they write film music because that’s the mass audience appeal, whereas, 300 years ago, it was opera and church music.

Ultimately, what’s most important to me is that they’re exposed to a wide variety of music and they learn this is something they can do for the rest of their lives. Most of these kids are not going to be playing professional sports, but they can still be a musician and an architect, or a musician and a reporter, or a musician and a French teacher, or whatever. So that’s my ultimate goal, that they continue past high school in some capacity.

What are some of the non-musical skills and strengths students acquire through music education?

Teamwork, having long- and short-term goals and how to achieve them, because you know, we have six weeks to the next concert, but between here and there, we have other things we need to accomplish.

Public speaking. You have to get up in front of a group, so I have kids play solos all the time. Collaboration. That’s a big buzzword. Well, that’s what we do every day. ‘Trumpets, you go in this room and work on this passage of music.’ So they have to go and collaborate and figure out whose part is the most important and how it balances. Or, ‘Violins, you go work on this section.’ It’s the same thing that you would do in a business out in the community. You have a project manager, you have a project lead and you go and accomplish a project. That’s what we do. The students, when they put together small groups for ensemble competition, or as a soloist to compete, it’s the same thing you’re going to do in the business world, when you’re getting that presentation ready for the board.

We teach them a foreign language, because when you boil it down, you’re looking at lines and dots and dashes and circles, and if you came from Mars, you’d say what is this? They say music is the universal language, but you have to notate it.

Learning about how what we do impacts everybody else in the community. How can we as a school music department support the school? How can what we do in music class help the drama department be better? How can we help the math department? Well, we do fractions all day long. You know, 4:4 time, 3:4 time. How does compound, simple and duple meter work? We talk about all of these things.

Not that we have to justify what we do. Now that music is a core subject in the ESSA, we don’t necessarily have to say that music teaches all these other things. Music is important and stands on its own, but look what else you get as a part of that, which is really wonderful. I’ve always believe that. I decided in seventh grade that I wanted to be a band director and I’m still working toward that goal.

How did you come to that realization?

My middle school band director was just a phenomenal teacher. Greg Metcalf was his name, at Park Middle School, in Kennewick, Wash. He’s the reason I do this today. He played in the Stan Kenton Band, on baritone saxophone, and he always would demonstrate things for us. When I got to eighth grade, I started working with the high school marching band...so I did that all through high school, and then I went to Washington State University for eight years and got all my degrees there, up to my master’s, and then I got this job.

What’s the best moment of your day?

Going home and seeing my kids.

Are they musically inclined?

Every day is a concert at our house. We never know what they’re going to come up with. When we put on the soundtrack to “Frozen,” the girls are singing and acting it out, and it’s really fun. The boys took a little bit of Suzuki violin lessons. We’ve got all the instruments at home. My wife teaches close to 30 private student a week. They see and hear all of them, and they come to concerts, so the world’s open to them. We ask them what they want to play when they get older, and they can always give us an intelligent answer, and it’s usually trumpet. Thumbs up, kids.

What would you like the community to know about the high school music program at CHS?

We do this phenomenal work in class. We have kids that play on the state, district, regional and national level, and we’ll get 75 people at a concert, and it’s all their parents. I wish we could find a better way to publicize and make it more interesting so more people can come and attend our concerts. I don’t have a publicity department. I am my publicity department, and all I can do is email. I don’t have a budget to take out ads like the symphonies do, and we don’t charge admission, so that’s not a driver. But we’ll gladly take their money at the door. Donations are wonderful.

So it’s not just about coming and supporting the high school band, it’s about coming and enjoying some good music?

That’s more important. John Philip Sousa always said the job of the band is to entertain and educate, in that order.