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The Joe Viola Era
This biography of the woodwind professor originally ran in the program for the Joe Viola Tribute Concert on April 12, 1997.
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Joe Viola (left) with his students in 1956. |
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The master teacher known simply as "Joe!" or "Joe V," who would define jazz education for students worldwide, began his musical career while growing up in Malden, Massachusetts with lessons from his brother Tony. Thirteen-year-old Joe had been playing saxophone for about one year when two of his older brothers, active professional musicians in the Boston area, began to let him sit in on some gigs. "Finally," says Joe, "one time Tony took me along just to play second alto on a job."
Music quickly became his occupation. When Joe graduated from high school in 1938 the United States was crippled by the Great Depression, but Americans were in love with the sounds of dance bands and fascinated with the relatively recent ability to bring "live" music into living rooms via radio. "If you could play in those days," says Joe, "jobs were easy to find and plentiful." At age 18, fresh out of high school, Joe was earning his living playing alto sax. A band he was traveling with soon broke up—stranding Joe in California. But the teenage saxophonist rapidly found both a new job, with Ben Pollack's band, and a new teacher: Benny Kanter, "one of the top lead alto players out of New York at that time" and a former member of one of Benny Goodman's original orchestras. "It was a beautiful experience. I remember when I took over the lead alto chair, Benny Kanter came to some of the early rehearsals and gave me some excellent coaching."
After a year with Pollack's band, Joe returned to Boston and regrouped. "I wanted to move to New York and break into the musical scene there. I worked around Boston for about six months and saved enough money to move to New York." The formidable transition was a success. "I never really felt alone in New York," says Joe, "because of all the musicians I knew down there from Boston." Nearly four years flew by, while Joe honed his performance skills. He also heard of Joseph Schillinger's modern system for composing music and thought he'd like to learn more about it someday. But World War II happened to come first. Drafted, he spent the next four years in the U.S. Army, "playing in the band and performing medic duties."
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| The original Faculty Saxophone Quartet in rehearsal in 1966. |
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The war's aftermath sent Joe, like many other veterans, practically back to square one—in his case, "back to Malden to live with my parents for awhile until I could establish myself." But Joe, now 26 years old, almost immediately turned the setback into opportunities for growth. "One of the first things I did was begin studying the Schillinger method of composition with Larry Berk in a small studio off Massachusetts Avenue in Boston." He also began to take oboe lessons, and in no small way: his teacher was Fernand Gillet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. According to Joe, "Fernand really captured my imagination. He was the kind of teacher that would always play with you and he would demonstrate something and talk about it and notate it in detail on paper. Analyze every move you made." His oboe studies with Fernand continued for five years.
New York still figured in Joe's plans—his "ultimate goal" was to return. "Then about that time, Larry Berk asked me if I was interested in teaching in his new school, the Schillinger House on Newbury Street in Boston." It was 1946, and the interlocking legends of Joe Viola and Berklee were about to begin.
For most of Berklee's first decade and more, Joe taught theory, composition, ensembles, saxophone, clarinet, and flute. "I taught the bulk of the ensembles at the Schillinger House, and later Berklee School of Music, for 12 years or so. I had some very talented young musicians in many of my ensembles. People like Herb Pomeroy, Ray Santisi, Charlie Mariano, Dick Nash, and Quincy Jones."
Joe quickly proved to be an expert and versatile teacher, but he remained an enthusiastic and resourceful student as well. In 1955—decades before "professional development" or "sabbatical" became part of any Berklee teacher's agreement—Joe took himself to France to study with saxophonist Marcel Mule. "I was so impressed with that man's playing," Joe recalls. "I wanted to see how he did it and simply wanted to observe him." With characteristic initiative, Joe got Mule's address from Maurice Selmer "and wrote Marcel saying that I wanted to study with him. We agreed on a time and I flew over to France." Joe found that Marcel "stressed practice more than anything else. That was probably the most important part of his philosophy." He also found his new colleague to be "simply a beautiful person!" They became lifelong friends.
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Founder Lawrence Berk brings 40 saxophonists to greet Joe as he returns from Paris in 1955. |
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Returning to Berklee, Joe found his keen sense of observation turning naturally toward a new application. "Early on, I noticed that most students had great difficulty trying to improvise jazz solos using whatever knowledge they had of scales and arpeggios. I often demonstrated how to improvise jazz melodic lines by going to the piano and playing chords and adding jazz melodies."
Responding to his students' needs, he began writing them down. The jazz methods contained in the three volumes titled The Technique of the Saxophone, first published during the 1960s, remain a vital part of Berklee's curriculum. Volume Two, devoted to chord studies, so far outshone the "technique of the saxophone" that it has been adapted for bass, brass, flute, guitar, vibes, and violin and translated into German, Italian, and Japanese. Joe's method books reflect the depth and ease of his expertise—both straightforward and complex. As Viola alumnus Bill Pierce observes, "His books can help players of any level." And yet, "His Creative Reading Studies [first published in 1982] is so hard, even the most advanced player will have to really study it."
As the Berklee School matured into Berklee College of Music with departments and divisions, Joe became the first Woodwind Department chair and designed the standards which have shaped dozens of top-flight musical careers. His own superb musicality and professionalism, including fluency as a performer on all saxophones, clarinet, English horn, flute, and oboe—ensured that practical approaches to doubling skills became a vital part of the department's curriculum. But Joe never placed doubling, or musical athletics, ahead of solid fundamentals. "I like students to first get a good saxophone sound." He also raised no stylistic barriers. "I don't necessarily see a great deal of difference between a classical non-jazz sound and a jazz sound." Says Joe, "I've always tried to equip my students to play all kinds of music." Joe himself has been always well-equipped and always in demand, from gigs with Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne to regular performances with the Shubert and Colonial theater orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also founded the Berklee Faculty Saxophone Quartet with John LaPorta, Harry Drabkin, and Gary Anderson and led that group to notable success.
Musician, author, innovator, teacher, and friend—for 50 years, Berklee students have known where to come for sage advice on everything from their struggles with improvisation to the most efficient way to eliminate "saliva buzz" in a mouthpiece. During all of this time, Joe and his loving wife Alice have been very important members of the Berklee community. Berklee's Woodwind Department continues to embody the epitome of contemporary woodwind instruction, and Joe Viola's example has formed the department's soul. Perhaps the ultimate reason for the department's unsurpassed effectiveness is best expressed in a few words straight from Joe's heart: "I really enjoy teaching and I take a sincere interest in my students. To me that's my job. I'm very concerned with what they do as a player, I really am." Joe's students who join us here tonight amply prove this to be true.
The Joseph E. Viola Scholarship Fund
Berklee College of Music established the Joseph E. Viola Scholarship Fund in recognition of Joseph Viola's many contributions as chair of the Woodwind Department and of his appointment as chair emeritus. Since 1993, Joe Viola has contributed to the fund personally so that it will grow into an endowed fund which will better serve our students in the future. Awards are made biannually to fifth-semester woodwind students with outstanding musical potential. Proceeds from this concert's ticket sales, as well as college fund-raising efforts, will benefit this scholarship fund..
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