The night Ensemble Department Chair Ron Savage discovered John Coltrane, he also discovered himself.

By Jason Roeder
(September 14, 2000)

It wasn't until he was a teenager that Ron Savage tuned into jazz. Literally.

"The radio station I grew up with went off when the sun went down," says Savage, who spent his adolescence in the small town of Ahoskie, North Carolina. "My younger brother was into electronics, and we kind of expanded the coil of our radio so we could get stations in Norfolk, Virginia. We could get Richmond late at night."

At first, his dial brought forth sleepy string arrangements of contemporary pop tunes, the kind of music usually confined to grocery stores, Macy's show rooms, and, of course, elevators.

"But we thought that was jazz," says Savage, who had been drumming in funk and r&b bands since he was 13, "because it wasn't what we were used to, and it was instrumental. So, we assumed a violin version of a Lionel Richie song was jazz."

	Savage accompanies saxophonist and alumnus Javon Jackson.
	Photo by Kim Grant

"When I was 16 or 17, one of these stations played [John Coltrane's] 'My Favorite Things'," Savage says, "and when I heard that—and I had no clue what it was—it just preempted everything. That music was me."

So Savage, who at times considered becoming a sociologist, a history teacher, or an architect, made his final choice with ease.

"When I really thought about it, it was music by a landslide," he says.

But sometimes it's simpler to make a decision than to execute it. One band director served all the schools in the county—he was the wrestling coach, too. Savage had been mostly self-taught, but he realized that if he wanted to really embrace jazz, he would need the right training. He enrolled in a Berklee summer program, figuring that a few weeks would be enough to help him decide whether he would want a few years. He made up his mind in three days.

"I thought that a person like me belonged in a place like this," says Savage. "In a small town, when you talked about music, people saw it as a little hobby. They said, 'Why would you waste your parents' money like this?'"

Actually, it's been money well spent. Since his student days, Savage has gone on to perform with Cyrus Chestnut, Christian McBride, Bill Pierce, and many others, and to record with artists such as Christopher Hollyday, Cecilia Smith, and Patrice Williamson.

But Savage, who's been on the Berklee faculty for seven years, has been teaching about as long as he's been playing. Even when he was 13, he'd teach younger kids beats on the drum set. In college, Savage covered his tuition costs by tutoring for a college preparatory program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology—biology, English, Spanish, Latin—everything but the uppermost levels of math. He says he's always liked opening young minds to new ideas, though that might not be the only reason he got into education.

"My wife tells me it's because I like talking so much," Savage says.

And when your audience consists of Italian students, your translator has to keep up. This summer, Savage and other Berklee faculty members held clinics as part of Umbria Jazz, one of Europe's largest and most prestigious jazz festivals. The 2000 installment of Umbria Jazz marked Savage's seventh appearance at the event, and over the years he's realized that students are the same wherever they are.

"Teaching is teaching," he says. "People have trouble with the same fundamentals—tone, maintaining a good feel, consistent tempo, playing as a band and interpreting the music in the same way—I start from there."

Page two: The Savage Samba