10/9/2010

 

The Post and Courier Article on Danny Leonard, our Band Instructor:

It has been said of Bach that he opened a vista to the universe, and that after experiencing his music, people felt there was meaning to life after all.

Continuing a 65-year family tradition, Daniel J. Leonard strives to open similar vistas for his students -- musically and beyond.

As director of the Leonard School of Music, a formal teaching institution established by his father, Patrick, in 1945, Leonard has provided students young and not-so-young with firm artistic footing and the tools to succeed. On the cusp of his 50th anniversary in teaching, he is just as committed to that goal today as he was in the beginning.

"I have no intention of retiring," says Leonard, 70. "I'm never going to stop. They'll have to carry me out. What am I going to do? Go home and paint my house?"

For many, living up to the legacy of a successful parent is daunting.

The school's colorful history is told in scrapbooks and displayed on the walls of its West Montague Avenue studio, a second-floor complex filled with photographs, commendations, awards and young faces alight with accomplishment.

But following in his father's footsteps was never an issue for Leonard, who built on a distinguished heritage while bringing his own sensibilities to the job.

"My father didn't have a jazz group at the school, like I do, which is one thing that sets us apart," says Leonard, whose sister, Patricia, also is a gifted musician.

"When I took over, I started one. That was my passion," he said. "I have a concert band like he did, but I also have a jazz band. Dad knew and played jazz, but he never got into it from a teaching standpoint."

Starting early

Leonard's first loves were the clarinet and sax. By the time he graduated from high school, there was scarcely an instrument he could not play. Yet it was never a foregone conclusion that music would be his life's work.

"No, I never knew that until I started teaching. It was a weird situation. I was in college at the University of Arizona on a music scholarship. I was also playing intramural sports and got hurt pretty badly. I came back to Charleston in 1961 to go to the hospital, and I was out of school for a month. Meanwhile, my dad also was in the hospital with bleeding ulcers. He needed another teacher."

When Leonard was ambulatory again, he offered to lend a hand.

"I told Dad I'd help him out. By the end of the year, I discovered I loved it."

He never returned to Arizona and college.

"I had been so bored there," says Leonard, who took the reins of the music school from his father in 1970. "Everything they were trying to teach me I already knew."

Leonard has taught on several academic levels, including college, but is best-known locally for teaching music and directing bands at varied elementary and primary schools, among them St. John's High School and First Baptist Church School, while also running his music school.

In 1979, Leonard was chosen permanent director of the American Youth Jazz Ensemble for its European Goodwill Concert Tours, and in 1981 toured Europe with the American Youth Woodwind Jazz Ensemble, participating in the Montreux International Jazz Festival. In 1984 and 1985, he traveled throughout Texas, Arizona and Oklahoma giving clinics on his three sight-reading books. Soon, he was broadening his school's horizons by expanding into Texas.

"I ended up staying there 12 years, working with 28 schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I also opened the Leonard Music Institute of Texas."

After a year of trying to operate schools in two states, Leonard shut down the Charleston operation 1985-96.

"I might never have left Texas had I not started feeling exhausted all the time. I was unwell and didn't know it."

The culprit was cancer.

Starting over

"I was leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark. The pace was wearing me down. In 1996, I decided to retire. I thought, 'Life has to be more than this.' So I came back to Charleston, and started teaching at First Baptist again."

Before long, the music school resumed operations. But Leonard's non-Hodgkins lymphoma had metastasized. In 1999, he was told he had less than three months to live. His faith, however, was strong.

"The Lord blessed me."

Leonard was advised there was one last treatment he could try, one that had demonstrated positive results against lymphoma. But the chances of him even surviving the procedure were not stellar. He awoke one day with the certitude that it was a treatment he should not undergo. Leonard told his doctor, a family friend, that he was going to be fine. The physician was aghast. Back home, Leonard destroyed all his medications.

"Three months later, they could find no cancer in my body. And 10 months after they told me I was going to die in a matter of weeks, I rode my bicycle across the country -- 2,905 miles from San Diego to Folly Beach."

Along the route, which took six weeks, he gave talks stressing cancer awareness.

In April 2009, on the 10th anniversary of his being clear of cancer, Leonard traversed the country by bicycle again, traveling 2,678 miles on behalf of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Only a recent rotator cuff injury has slowed him down.

Leonard, a recipient of the "Humanitati" (Humanitarian) Award from the French Society of Charleston, has been recognized in "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" and is a member of the Music Educators National Conference and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a professional music fraternity.

Former students recall him with great fondness.

"So many people think so highly of Danny and the experience the school gave us. I love the guy," says Bill McSweeney Jr., a professor of history at the College of Charleston and a trombone player with the New South Jazzmen. "My family and I have a long relationship with Danny. My mother, Ruth, was a secretary in the school office in the 1950s, and I was a student there in the 1970s. "If there is any one thing about Danny that stands out, it is the legacy he has created. I would like to see more support for the arts here, and in the same way Danny has dedicated himself to them. He creates an environment in which young people can learn."

Claim to fame

In Leonard's view, his chief claim to fame is as the author of books on sight-reading. As program chief, he uses most of the same methods of teaching as his father, yet says that for many years the key to the Charleston school was his mother Coralie, now 98, who ran the office.

"Basically, it's the same system," says Leonard, who directed the Leonard Studio Band and Jazz Ensemble for 12 consecutive years, making 11 record albums and touring the Southeast. "The difference is the rhythm system that I developed, a method of helping a child depend totally on himself instead of others. Children can be like copycats. You tell them, 'This is the way,' and they just copy you. That's not what our instruction is all about. It's about seeing music, to understand it and be able to play it."

Today, hundreds of Leonard's graduates are accomplished professional musicians, band directors, teachers and writers. Many received full scholarships to attend universities and colleges. They have won Grammy Awards, played in symphonies and big bands and performed with a number of popular singers.

Currently, the Charleston school employs 10 teachers and covers an array of instruments and musical forms. Students range in age from 8 to 70.

"Some do it for relaxation," says Leonard, who met his wife, Lynda, at the school. "Some of the older students want to refine skills, and some are just starting out. Some are highly gifted in other areas but find a means of expression in music. You support whatever they want to do but counsel that they can do both."

Leonard is proud of the fact that students have a keen sense of upholding a tradition of musicianship and comportment.

"They are very dedicated. Many have their school band and come here on top of that and their homework. Of the thousands of students who have graduated from our school, none have ever gotten into trouble. They are all good people. We teach them a lot more than music. We teach them about life."