SBO+: In this article, regular SBO+ contributor Kevin Lucas interviews Dr. James Yakas who is professor of percussion at VanderCook University in Chicago. Don’t skip this article if you’re not a percussionist. Yakas shares how his years of experience with the Madison Scouts and the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps has informed the way he teaches, performs, organizes, and leads. He also shares what he believes every music educator must have before joining that profession.
KL: Please tell me a bit about your background as a musician and educator.
I was raised in Canton, Michigan and was part of a great band program at the Plymouth Centennial Educational Park. I had an amazing director in James Griffith and many great percussion instructors such as Jerry Hotchkin and Chris Johnson. Most of my early training was on drum set and marching snare, but I realized when I was enrolled at Eastern Michigan University, studying with Dr. Whitney Prince, there was such a larger family of percussion instruments to experience. I transferred to the University of North Texas (UNT) and was involved in the marching program as well as percussion ensembles. It was at UNT that I first started teaching private lessons, percussion ensembles and marching programs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I remember many days in my academic classes where my attention was hindered by thinking about my next teaching project, as I was officially addicted to teaching and all the ways I could share my craft. After earning my undergraduate degree and marching four summers of drum corps with the Madison Scouts, I earned a teaching assistantship at Northern Illinois University and started teaching drum corps in the summer. As a graduate assistant at NIU, I could finally start to teach some of these other areas of percussion I had discovered in my undergraduate degree, such as keyboard percussion and world drumming. After taking a sabbatical replacement position at University of Central Florida, I moved to the Twin Cities, taught steel band at the University of Minnesota and met my wife. I then moved to Arlington, TX, to take an adjunct teaching position at University of Texas Arlington where I would stay for 11 years and teach and learn alongside professor Michael Varner. In 2008, I started my DMA at UNT and in 2015, applied for and got the position of director of percussion studies at VanderCook College of Music (VCM) in Chicago. I am starting my 10th year at VanderCook this coming fall.
KL: How do you think your background in drum and bugle corps helped prepare you to be a college educator?
I would cite two main musical traits I gained and two invaluable life skills. I always tell my students there are different “rates” that you can learn music at depending on the material and the date of performance. Everything is obviously on a spectrum, but the ends of that spectrum would be 1) a large amount of material over a small period or 2) a small amount of material over a long period of time. The ladder is what happens in the marching activity. You are asked to perform a relatively small amount of music over a long period of time. This cultivates and requires a high level of analysis of the material and how to create a scope and sequence of the refinement process, to eventually arrive at a level of excellence. Communicating performance expectations with a concise, efficient plan (learned as an instructor in the marching arts) is something I implement daily for others as well as myself as a performer. The other trait that accompanies that process is an acute sense of listening. It is analogous to an orchestral percussionist being able to hear one single cymbal crash and immediately analyzing the sound, size and quality of the crash; or a professional drum set artist hearing a ride pattern for less than thirty seconds to tell you something about that drummer. From the marching activity, I gained an extremely high level of listening in the areas of vertical alignment, rhythmic interpretation and sound quality. These are all useful tools as a teacher and performer. There were areas of music I had to compensate for, away from my marching percussion experiences. Some of them being sight reading, improvisation as well as immersing myself in more contemporary, world, and jazz music traditions.
The non-musical skills I learned through drum corps were many, but if I had to narrow it down to two, I would mention organizational skills and teamwork. The logistical piece of not only being a percussionist, but being a percussionist on tour, being responsible for all the equipment, organizing the performers, and being a caption head/arranger, quite frankly doesn’t happen anymore. I believe those duties are split between larger teams now, for a good reason. However, being challenged with all these duties, I was forced to develop a high level of time management and communication, which I use daily as a professor. The other necessary skill was working on a team of passionate teachers and artists, all for a common goal, with sometimes limited resources. Our corps director, Scott Stewart, who was our mentor in many ways, cultivated an environment of selfless, altruistic behavior that taught me to take every thought, idea or plan through the filter of how it would affect the greater whole. As teachers, we are in the “people business” and my experience of communicating with so many different personalities from the corps members to fellow staff and even support staff, gave me the confidence to connect with diverse communities.
KL: What areas of study within percussion does VanderCook offer?
VanderCook always has been and will always be a conservatory for music education. This mission is reflected in the percussion curriculum as well. I believe a healthy balance of foundational musicianship and excellence at your primary instrument helps to form two of our three pillars of our mission statement, excellence in teaching, performance and character. I use this as a guide for crafting the experience of my percussion students in our applied lessons, chamber music and studio class. Being a small school, we pride ourselves as being “nimble.” I can design every student’s musical, pedagogical and character-building path while simultaneously providing them with the necessary compulsory skill sets that define someone with a percussion degree of any kind (performance or education). This usually involves introducing them to what they need and expanding what they are already excellent at, giving them space to create and grow by their own means.
KL: How is the VanderCook percussion program different under your leadership than it has been in the past?
VanderCook has had the privilege of having some amazing percussion professors throughout its history. The PAS Hall of Fame member Haskell Harr taught at the school for many years. More recently Ward Durrett and Marc Jacoby were at VCM, followed by my predecessor Kevin Lepper. I try to tell future teachers that when they begin their first job, have a sense of security and confidence to not go in with an agenda. Assess what works and keep those things the same, at least for the first couple of years. Kevin was, and still is highly respected in the music community as an amazing percussion educator. I am trying more and more to simply build relationships with fellow teachers around our community, so they can get to know me and trust me as a music educator. We are all in this together, and having a relentless sense of service and community is really what being an educator is about. Kevin and I have become friends because I think we have the same outlook on life, work hard, be nice and don’t take yourself too seriously. That explains, on a side note, if our percussion studio got to pick the picture for this interview, I know they would have picked the one I did.
KL: What do you think is the most important thing your students should learn before graduating from VanderCook?
I would want them to remember why they chose a career in music. We all had one or many experiences that were unexplainable, intangible or emotional that provided a visceral experience with music or a teacher that drew us to the profession. Your goal as a teacher should be providing students the tools to create those opportunities, no matter how big, small, or frequent, no matter if they are musical, social or emotional. Nothing teaches like experience.
