Music and Family

 My mother, Dr. Rachel Waddell is a remarkable woman and a fantastic musician. She is also a flutist and she received degrees from James Madison, Peabody, and the University of Nebraska. She was my first ever teacher, and I owe so much of my progress in music and as a person to her. My mom taught at Hillsdale College in Michigan for a while, and now does life insurance. Though music is not at the forefront of her career anymore, she keeps the flute in her life and we play the occasional duet together. She is also incredibly smart and well-spoken, and here are some of her thoughts on music: 

(We had trouble figuring out how to record the interview, so all of this was typed out as we were going. Meaning a few details may be left out, sentences may seem a little fragmented.) 

Me: What is your earliest musical memory? 

Mom: Hearing people sing in church, my dad used to sing to me at bedtime. You are my sunshine and stuff like that.

Me: How old were you when you started learning music?

Mom: I guess I was about 6 or 7 maybe? We had a recorder at home that my dad knew how to play. We had a piano too, but I don’t think I learned that until I was taking lessons. 

Me: What were your lessons like as a child? How did they change as you got older? 

Mom: My very first piano teacher was my mom, and it didn’t go very well. She wasn’t very patient. And then I had piano lessons with one of our babysitters, Paula. She was in high school. I think Paula also played the flute, it was one of the first times I knew someone who played it. When I was in like 4th grade, I had someone with a real piano studio. We just went through the Bastian piano books. They’re classics. Outside of band, my first flute lessons were a few with a flute teacher at Virginia Tech named Trigby Peterson. He was not very good with kids. I remember that I cried when he was trying to explain some rhythms on a Handel sonata. Probably in 7th or 8th grade. I had different teachers at different times. Went through a lot of repertoire with Donna Tucker, I enjoyed those lessons. The teacher that really made a difference for me was Sherry. She was really big on tone and fundamentals, she had studied with Carole Knowe. She knew about competitions, and she had a flute choir. Her students were consistently doing really well, they had a good reputation. I got much more serious when I could see progress and I had a plan. 

Me: Were you ever in music ensembles? Which ones, and how did they affect your social circle? 

Mom: I was in band of course, and marching band. Youth symphony overlapped with band in Virginia. The city school had really strong strings, and the county school had strong winds, so we got to know each other better. Sherry had a flute choir, I sang in my church choir. Wasn’t close to them as they weren’t from the same social circle at school. 

Me: What musicians of your instrument do you like the most? Are there any that you dislike? 

Mom: That’s a loaded question. My favorite flutist is Emmanuel Pahud. I’m not a big fan of Paula Robison or Susan Milan. I don’t hate them, I’m just not a big fan. I love William Bennett. 

[Syrinx is one of the first pieces that I remember hearing my mom practice around the house.]

Me: What was your experience in going to college for music like? How was it different in different institutions/degree programs? 

Mom: I loved it. I went to a large state school (JMU) with a big music ed program. Not a ton of performance majors. I was one of the only flutes who didn’t do marching band. Carol had a huge studio and talented players. She fostered friendly competition, and required that we be supportive of each other so I had a lot of friends in the studio. I got experiences like opera, pit and symphony, just getting to play all the time. In my master’s degree, I was studying music history, so I didn’t really fit in or play in the ensembles. I took lessons for one year as part of my degree. I felt like I wasn’t as good as a lot of other people there because I wasn’t there in a performance capacity. My teacher Emily worked with Alexander technique and other body works studies. It was interesting to kind of put your whole person together, which is what she did. I had a few years in between that and Nebraska, so I was a bit more mature. I wanted to teach college. John Bailey had a lot of music ed students and a small group of really solid grad students. I got to teach some of his weaker students a few times a month and I learned a lot about analysis and theory and history from Dr. Bailey, as he was very academic. Sherry gave me a lot of tone, Carol gave me structure, Emily gave me a whole person and more picky details about sound, and John was a lot about how a piece of music or etude fit into a whole bigger structure or scheme of things. 

Me: What kind of music did you listen to in your youth? 

Mom: I listened to a lot of big 80s fun roller skating music, a little bit of classical music. We listened to it a lot at my house too. 

Me: How has your music taste changed as you’ve gotten older?

Mom: I would say it’s expanded. I feel like I can appreciate a lot of different types of music and a lot of genres. I love early music more than I used to from being around it a lot. I got to study a lot of true Appalachian folk music too. 

Me: What music from your youth do you think was overrated? 

Mom: Country pop maybe.

Me: What technology have you used to listen to music throughout your life? 

Mom: Old record player, 45’ records, cassette tapes, CDs, I don’t really stream a lot but listening to it online, radio of course. 

Me: Favorite and least favorite genre and why? 

Mom: My favorite genre would be, broadly, classical music because I’ve been a part of it my whole life and I feel like I can enjoy so many aspects of it. I don’t really love pure heavy metal because I just don’t understand it, it’s just loud and obnoxious to me. 

Me: How big of a role does music play in your everyday life? 

Mom: It’s a huge one. I feel like there’s music going through my head every single second. I don’t sit and listen to a lot, but it’s always there. I love going to concerts, and it always brings back memories and touches something very deep. Can’t imagine life without music, it’s always embedded in my memory.