The 4,300-seat efficiency area about an hour north of Carnegie Corridor was eerily empty, apart from 9 judges in uniform sitting behind a thick black curtain.
Ada Brooks, her mouth dry from nerves, lifted the bell of her euphonium, a smaller relative of the tuba, and ready to play the notes that might decide her future.
“Breathe,” she thought. “The beginnings are essentially the most treacherous half.”
Ms. Brooks had informed herself this earlier than. Her fervent pursuit to professionally play the euphonium, which isn’t utilized in conventional symphony orchestras, had include many demanding auditions. This one was her tenth for the establishment that calls itself the nation’s largest employer of musicians: america army.
Time and time once more she had practiced and ready and tried to recollect to breathe. She was turned down repeatedly or supplied jobs in regional bands. Now got here a possibility for a premium place, a not often open seat within the prestigious West Level Band.
Some elements of the audition — like taking part in for a jury hidden behind a curtain, to protect in opposition to potential bias — can be acquainted to most orchestra musicians. Others have been distinctive to the army. Two of the opposite 4 candidates mentioned they needed to drop extra pounds to qualify, and the finalists have been examined for coordination in marching drills.
Scores of regional army bands signify the armed forces at ceremonies, parades and vacation celebrations. A few dozen premier bands, together with the U.S. Navy Academy’s ensemble in West Level, N.Y., carry out at inaugurations and overseas dignitary visits.
Seats within the premier bands are notably enticing, offering job safety and regular pay — the beginning wage is about $70,000 — together with well being care and different advantages. Those that win them have a tendency to remain for a few years, if not their total careers.
Ms. Brooks had been training three hours a day in Denton, Texas, utilizing high-end recording gear in her front room to determine imperfections in her pitch or tempo.
On the audition, she was assured and exact whereas taking part in excerpts from works by Schoenberg, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich, in addition to from the soundtrack of “Raiders of the Misplaced Ark” by John Williams.
At one level, a decide requested if she may “be extra declamatory.” She repeated a couple of measures. After she performed Boismortier’s Sonata No. 12 with the band’s principal euphonium participant, Workers Sgt. Christopher Leslie, one of many judges barked: “I feel you are able to do a greater job matching his fashion and intonation. Another time.”
In the long run, Ms. Brooks was considered one of two finalists requested to play extra excerpts and to sit down for a face-to-face interview with the judges. The ultimate query got here from the band’s conductor, Lt. Col. Daniel Toven: Why is your dream to be in a premier army band?
Ms. Brooks paused.
“As you most likely know,” she mentioned, “euphoniums don’t have lots of choices.”
There was a burst of laughter.
After cautious deliberation, Sergeant Leslie delivered the decision. She was in.
Effectively, virtually. Ms. Brooks needed to full greater than two months of boot camp earlier than she would turn into an Military musician.
A Music Mission
Ms. Brooks, 27, was launched to the euphonium by her eighth-grade band instructor in Columbia Falls, Mont. On the time she thought it “was only a much less cool tuba,” as she put it, and no one was involved concerning the restricted profession alternatives.
By tenth grade, she had made the all-state band and was now not planning to review math, science or physics in faculty. She was now decided to play the euphonium professionally.
She spent $7,000 on a euphonium and two years at Interlochen, a performing arts highschool in Michigan. Ms. Brooks then earned bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in music efficiency on the College of North Texas, the place she made an eight-year dedication to the Air Nationwide Guard Band of the Southwest, anticipating part-time expertise taking part in music in a army setting.
When Ms. Brooks’s unit was deployed unexpectedly to the border of Texas and Mexico as a part of Operation Lone Star, lots of the musicians give up. “Our band shrunk to half of its authentic measurement,” she mentioned.
Throughout her 10-month deployment, Ms. Brooks labored from midnight to eight a.m. within the armory issuing weapons. Lots of her bandmates offered water to crossing migrants and sat with them till Border Patrol brokers arrived. She lived in a lodge, which made it onerous to organize for auditions.
“I used to be training my instrument out in my automotive,” she mentioned. “It was actually depressing.”
Navy life could be a shock to musicians, most of whom don’t have any prior expertise with the armed forces.
“Now we have to put on a fight uniform to play the tuba, it’s a little bit bizarre,” mentioned Workers Sgt. Alec Mawrence, a tuba participant within the West Level Band. “Finally, your head is shaved and also you’re screaming, ‘Sure, drill sergeant.’”
Rifles, Not Devices
The solar had not but risen over the Ozark Mountains in south central Missouri, however the trainees in Firm B, third Battalion, tenth Infantry Regiment have been already marching. It was early January and chilly — 1 diploma — and tendrils of mist hung over the unit.
“I left my dwelling to hitch the Military,” the trainees sang in unison.
Ms. Brooks — now Specialist Brooks — had thought the daunting expertise can be effectively price it, saying earlier that “fundamental coaching isn’t any large deal in comparison with 20 years of a efficiency job.”
However now, after six weeks at Fort Leonard Wooden and with 5 extra to go, Specialist Brooks appeared exhausted. She appreciated morning bugle name and rifle coaching, particularly the precision, which reminded her of training her instrument. Much less gratifying was standing for hours within the chilly and consuming abnormally quick.
“Whereas I’m right here, I observe my jodies, my marksmanship,” she mentioned, referring to the call-and-response cadences sung whereas marching or working. She couldn’t deliver alongside her euphonium, and tried not to consider it. “It appears like a complete completely different life,” she mentioned. Many of the trainees have been unaware she was a musician.
A quiet perfectionist, Specialist Brooks had a tough time with the barrage of reprimands which might be the hallmark of fundamental coaching. Her coping mechanism was to smile, prompting the drill sergeants to snap, “Brooks, conceal your tooth!”
“I wasn’t certain how I might deal with getting yelled at,” she mentioned. “However you then notice that they’re not really offended. They only try this on a regular basis.”
When the corporate reached the armory to select up rifles for vary coaching, the shivering trainees stood at consideration. “Soldier’s creed!” a drill sergeant shouted.
“I’m an American soldier,” Specialist Brooks responded, together with her unit. “I stand able to deploy, interact, and destroy the enemies of america of America in shut fight.”
Music and the army have lengthy been intertwined. For hundreds of years, drums have been used to set the tempo of marches. Fifes and drums have been used to speak on the battlefield earlier than radios. The nation’s first army band — america Marine Band, referred to as “the President’s Personal” — was fashioned by an act of Congress in 1798.
Loras John Schissel, a senior musicologist on the Library of Congress, mentioned that in the course of the Civil Struggle, band members would put down their devices, take up their weapons and struggle — after which resume taking part in. By the early twentieth century, music was thought-about essential for army morale.
“Music,” he mentioned, got here solely “after meals, water and ammunition.”
Direct publicity to fight has turn into more and more uncommon for army musicians, however it isn’t unheard-of. In 1941, all 21 musicians aboard the battleship Arizona died within the assault on Pearl Harbor whereas passing ammunition to the ship’s weapons. On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Military Band helped with search and rescue on the Pentagon.
Quiet Confidence
The potential of battle is one cause musicians get the identical coaching as infantry troopers. So on one other freezing morning throughout fundamental coaching, Specialist Brooks and 136 different troopers ready to rappel down a 40-foot-high wood construction referred to as the Confidence Tower.
Throughout a principally silent 1.5-mile march to the tower — speaking was prohibited — the loudest noises have been the crunch of frost beneath boots and the swish of camo fatigues in opposition to heavy packs.
Lower off from music in boot camp, Specialist Brooks would hum Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat whereas working laps. Earlier than she arrived, she transcribed track lyrics, together with “Canine Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine, into her pocket book in order that she would have a radio in her head. Whereas packing for a area train, she and her roommates sang the present tune “It’s the Laborious-Knock Life.”
On the march to the Confidence Tower, a cadence Specialist Brooks had been required to yell many instances was caught in her head.
Sitting in my foxhole
sharpening my knife
out pops the enemy
needed to take his life
die kill ’em die kill ’em
Why received’t you die?
“I just like the singing half, however the violence is a little bit surprising to me,” she mentioned later.
By the point the trainees reached the tower, two had been disqualified for marching too slowly. A number of others couldn’t full the small coaching wall close by. Specialist Brooks, a rock climber and caver, was unfazed.
The wind shook the tower, and the wooden creaked. As Specialist Brooks reached the highest, one drill sergeant sitting close to the drop-off known as out to a different: “You are taking Esophagus.” It was an affectionate nickname the instructors had given her, a play on “euphonium.”
Specialist Brooks knelt by the sting on the high of the tower. Unconcerned about hiding her tooth, she broke into a smile.
All through fundamental coaching, she tried to not dwell on what she was lacking most from her dwelling close to Dallas: Baking her favourite blueberry muffins with chia seeds. Lingering over a cup of espresso. Watching a film on the sofa together with her canine and her three cats, Kiwi, Biscuit and Momo.
When it was time for Specialist Brooks to go away Fort Leonard Wooden, her boyfriend arrived together with her euphonium. She performed a solo even earlier than consuming her first meal off the bottom.
‘Tax {Dollars} at Work’
In April, two months after she completed boot camp, Sergeant Brooks, who was promoted to employees sergeant after commencement, was at a college in North Salem, N.Y., for her first live performance as a member of the West Level Band. She had rehearsed with the group twice and was now nervously adjusting the ornate pin on the lapel of her black blazer.
“Does this look straight?” she requested. Glancing at her full live performance uniform in a mirror, she mentioned, “It’s thrilling and bizarre to see your self dressed like this.”
The repertoire for the live performance was chosen to hint West Level’s legacy. By the point the band reached “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” the gang was cheering and singing alongside.
The conductor, Colonel Toven, wrote in his grasp’s thesis that music helped the Military accomplish its public affairs mission of engendering belief and confidence amongst residents. “These are your tax {dollars} at work,” he mentioned proudly throughout a mid-concert speech.
After “The Official West Level March” and a rousing encore of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Ceaselessly,” Sergeant Brooks’s first live performance with the band was over. She appeared elated and relieved.
Because the musicians mingled with enthusiastic viewers members, Sergeant Leslie discovered Sergeant Brooks. “Congratulations,” he mentioned, with a collegial nod that was removed from his impartial facade as a decide at her audition eight months earlier. Sergeant Brooks, holding a bouquet of flowers, beamed.
She clutched at her collar and requested a bandmate, “Is anybody else heat in these uniforms?” As her adrenaline started to fade, she mentioned that taking part in alongside these army musicians felt surreal: “It’ll take some time to recover from the impostor syndrome.”
