Bill Caballero on music education

Bill Caballero has sat in the principal horn chair of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for the past 26 years. And in addition to his time as a performer, Bill is fiercely committed to teaching, as he spends 12 hours each Monday with around 10 horn students at Carnegie Mellon University.

He recently shared some thoughts and stories on music education with Classical MPR's Julie Amacher.

On early keyboard teachers:

"I think for any musician there's maybe one person that was the catalyst for them. But I think for myself it was several that pushed me through and at different junctures in my life but also different instruments. My first one was a lady by the name of Marjory Brown in Arizona ... in the 60s. And she was my piano teacher. And I got together with Marjory, we hooked up beautifully. And besides the liking and wanting to play piano, she really taught the basics in the sense of chords, progressions. Here I was, being exposed to theory and I was in third or fourth grade. And I was only with her for 3 months and then we moved to Wisconsin at that point. So that was remarkable to have that experience with her. And I also had an organ teacher, Father James Mackey. I worked with him for a year and a half. And the same type of thing. I was excited about it but he taught the beauty of the instrument, the limits but also the strengths and also our own, too."

On music education in Wisconsin:

"And I have to give a lot of credit to the music educators of my youth, in junior high and high school. We didn't have distractions, videos, phones. We had more of the lines of hobbies — painting or model building or fun things like buying a Heath kit stereo and putting it together! But in a sense of that, one of the focuses was music. And the music program in Kenosha was a huge program, quite large. To give an example — my high school had 24 French horns. You talk about x amount of trumpets and x amount of flutes — we had tremendous numbers of instruments. Why? Because there was an interest and a satisfaction. And healthy competition, too — we learned to be competitive yet be friends. That was a tremendous catalyst."

On Gunther Schuller's influence:

"And then you get into the college level — certainly my two horn teachers, Thomas Newell and Richard Mackey were tremendous teachers. But the one who really kicked me in the pants — and he just passed away — was Gunther Schuller. I really got to know him when he was in charge of Tanglewood. He'd take you under his wing and you just kept your mouth shut and listened. He pushed you. Boy, did he push you. And probably, overall, in the sense of being an orchestral musician — he was the biggest push for me, the biggest leader, mentor ... to the point where I got to be in his ragtime ensemble for two years and the stories he would tell. About ragtime — it was like a history lesson every time he spoke. A tremendous loss. I feel that for sure and I'm sure the music community does as well."

On getting schooled by Gunther Schuller:

"I was doing a program with Gunther in 1983 ... I was 23 years old. I was solo-ing and he was conducting and it was a very difficult horn concerto and I just could not play this rhythm correctly. And in this open rehearsal with people listening and the whole orchestra there — Gunther stops and (I'm reminding you, I'm 23 years old) ... and he says to me, "Bill, you should be able to play this rhythm at this point in your career." And I'm like, didn't I just start? And so I went home that night and practiced that all night. Next morning, practiced. And I was playing the concerto the next day. I played it, I nailed it, I looked at Gunther after I did it — and nothing. He made his point. I got the message, it's how you took it from him. That's one of the lessons I learned from Gunther, for sure."

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