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B4 9 Mar. 2017
Allegro and laughter By | Kristiana Mork Collegian Reporter Laughter fills the vast expanse of McNamara Rehearsal Hall, bouncing off stacks of chairs, bleachers, paneled walls, and floor-to-ceiling window panes. Stray rays of sunlight escape from unhappy clouds and reflect off the metallic surfaces of a bassoon, a clarinet, a flute, a French horn, and an oboe — tools of the trade for the Hillsdale College Faculty Woodwind Quintet. Hillsdale adjunct music professors Cindy Duda, Andrew Sprung, Alan Taplin, Jaimie Wagner, and Kaycee Ware-Thomas, laugh at the last strains of a joke made during a break in rehearsal before looking up. Here, laughter is plentiful and time is precious. The quintet members rehearse every week between teaching classes at Hillsdale, working with high school orchestras, conducting private lessons, teaching at other uni-
versities, performing in ensembles, caring for families, and, in Taplin’s case, even playing full-time with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. “The biggest challenge for a lot of us is driving,” Duda said. “Driving to work, to different schools. I am kind of cranky until I get here because it’s a lot of driving.” Sometimes, she said she asks herself why she continues to make the trek through the snow and ice of Michigan winters. “But then I get here,” she said. “And I work with the students, and I play, and it’s like, ‘Aha.’ I remember. It’s not work anymore. I’m making music. And it’s just cool.” Duda has been playing bassoon since high school. She said she started with the flute, but noticed the bassoon when a colleague was cleaning out a closet. “I asked what it was,” Duda said, “and she said to take it home and try it. I just loved it, and she told the high school band director that I tried it and he recruited me.”
The faculty woodwind quintet: Alan Taplin, Kaycee Ware-Thomas, Andrew Sprung, Jaimie Wagner, and Cindy Duda. Stacey Jones-Garrison | Courtesy
Her private high school was in need of bassoon players, so when the band director heard she was interested, he offered her a scholarship. She hasn’t stopped playing since. Sprung and Ware-Thomas both started playing their instruments in fifth grade. Sprung said he chose the clarinet after realizing he could make the biggest and best sound with it. Ware-Thomas said she decided to play the oboe when her older sister suggested she would get all of the solos. Composers Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss brought Taplin to the horn. “When I was a kid, my Dad used to play classical music on Sunday morning before church while we ate breakfast,” Taplin said. “I would sit by the stereo and listen to recordings. I thought the horn made the coolest sound. I knew from age 3 or 4 that that’s what I wanted to do.” Taplin went on to play in a brass quartet in college. His first gig was sitting on the street corners of Ann Arbor,
Michigan, playing for change. He made $30 per day. Now, Taplin plays in 170 concerts a year with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. “One hundred seventy concerts a year? Not including rehearsals?” Ware-Thomas asked when Taplin mentioned his schedule. “They’re working you to death!” Taplin disagreed. “If you enjoy what you’re doing, then it’s not work, is it?” he said. Years of training and hours of practice brought each of the five to their respective positions. “I think we’re busier than the average person,” WareThomas said. “All of us have probably studied long enough to be brain surgeons by now. We probably have more training than they do because we start in elementary school. String players start when they are 3. We’ve been training longer than any profession I can think of.” But the five call themselves lucky. Few schools of Hillsdale’s size possess the
time or resources to sponsor programs like the faculty woodwind quintet, Sprung said, and there are plenty of talented musicians with graduate degrees working retail to make a living. Working freelance also provides schedule flexibility. “The benefit of freelancing is the fluidity of schedule to change things around,” Duda said. “If my husband needs to work late, we can switch off and he can come home in the evenings. I have a little flexibility that makes it much easier to be there for really important events. That makes it really nice to be both a mom and a musician.” For the first time ever, the quintet also asked a student to perform with them. Senior Kaitlyn Johns, an economics major and music minor, has been playing clarinet with the group this spring. “I thought it was going to be intimidating, playing with five professional musicians,” Johns said, “But it has been a joy to work with them. Everything is very collaborative, so
I am comfortable expressing my thoughts and ideas about the piece, but I am also learning a lot because I’m getting instruction from five different teachers with five different perspectives.” Hillsdale provides an amazing opportunity to engage with music and the arts in ways few rural areas experience, Sprung said. Every week there are free concerts and recitals, yet many students miss out. “What we have here with weekly rehearsals is really nice — it doesn’t usually happen that way,” Ware-Thomas said. “With chamber music, I think you do need to just put in the time together to feel like you’re gelling as a group. It’s different than practicing individually and learning your notes. You’re learning to read each other’s body language, to become one unit instead of individual players. That’s the hard part.” The quintet will perform April 10 at 7 p.m in Howard Music Hall.
From partying to praying and painting Steve Wismar, frequently called Steve the Painter, is known around town through his painting business and ministry. S M. Chavey | Collegian
By | S. M. Chavey Features Editor It was a child’s chore that inspired Steve Wismar ’72— Steve the Painter — to begin painting. Wismar and his younger brother were painting some furniture in the yard for their mom. Eventually, she let Wismar’s younger brother go play. In response to Steve Wismar’s complaints, she said: “You’re the better painter.” Almost 60 years later, Wismar runs a painting business in Hillsdale, but said he’s a drastically changed man. He came to Hillsdale College in 1968 — the year it was ranked as a party school in Playboy Magazine, he said. “We weren’t like you guys are now. We didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with the town,” Wismar said, adding that in contrast, the school is about 1000 percent improved since then. A Phi Sigma Kappa and avid player of the popular game “gut frisbee,” Wismar would occasionally visit his friend at
the University of Michigan to “bask in the hippy-ness.” By the time he graduated in 1972 with a double major in history and political science, he was married and owned a janitorial service. In 1975, the drinking, smoking, and partying Wismar was radically transformed. After a coworker came back from a vacation talking about “being saved,” Wismar started to examine his own life and considered converting to Christianity. During the altar call at a fundamentalist church one night, Wismar said he was saved. “I stopped doing the things I did before and started doing the things I never dreamed I would do. I went to church. I was agreeing with God,” Wismar said. In addition to giving up drinking, smoking, and many other habits, Wismar developed a passion for the pro-life movement after a personal experience with abortion. “Somewhere in heaven, I have a child,” Wismar said.
“I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, but I know for a fact it’s there. That’s the only child I’ve ever had. The Lord showed me, and I just couldn’t believe that it was first-degree murder.” He’s a heavy donor and occasional volunteer at the Alpha Omega Care Center now, and uses his story to evangelize. A changed man, Wismar worked as a social worker and in lumber yards before deciding to open a painting business called Steve the Painter about 15 years ago. He said he loves the process, which has a clear beginning, middle, and end. “The prep is what really makes a good paint job … and the finish is just gorgeous,” Wismar said. “It thrills me every time even after all these years to see the progression.” He and his coworkers paint buildings, exterior and interior, but Wismar prefers exteriors because people can see his work. He’s painted houses and buildings all over town, including the Chi Omega house on Hillsdale’s campus. When
painting, he never listens to music, preferring instead to pray, think, meditate, and concentrate. “I’m the only contractor in the whole wide world that doesn’t have a radio going,” Wismar said. “I’m so radically changed. Because of the transformation, it’s easy for me to be calm and laid-back, but that’s just what I want to do: spend many, many hours working, more hours on books. Because what I really like about painting is meeting the people, going to do a quote. Everybody’s different, every job’s different.” Seniors Luke Martin and David Johnson, who were among four college students to work for Steve the Painter last summer and were nicknamed “Steve’s Boys,” said “many, many” hours of work might mean staying up all night to finish a paint job or working on Thanksgiving or Christmas. “He kind of runs his busi-
See Painting B3
Elsa Lagerquist By | Anders Hagstrom
How would you describe your style? The goal is to be elegant, classic, and fun without sacrificing real comfort.
What are your favorite places to shop? Boden is hands-down my favorite clothing brand and probably owns the most space in my wardrobe (compared to any other brand).
How many suitcases would it take to fit all of your clothes? Probably more than I would care to admit.
If your style was a character on a TV show, who would it be? Tough question, considering I mostly watch shows and movies with characters in 19th-century garb. I guess, though, I can give a nod to Laura Petrie from ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show.’ I’m definitely not up to her level of sophistication, but I think she’s got lovely taste.
What’s your most embarrassing article of clothing? I don’t think I have any embarrassing pieces of clothing ... If something is that horrendous, it wouldn’t last long in my closet. I purge pretty regularly. Anders Hagstrom | Collegian
Anders Hagstrom | Collegian