Bromfield music director Tom Reynolds. (Courtesy photo)
When Tom Reynolds came to Bromfield as a music teacher in 1999, he was conflicted. He had a great job at Ayer High School, and in his words, “That was a hard decision, to come over here, just because I didn’t want to let those people down.” But he “had a great group of people” here in Harvard, and 17 years later, has built a music program that he looks at with pride. As he prepares for his final Bromfield band concert, Reynolds reflects on what he’s learned while teaching at Harvard’s high school.
One of his goals has been to make music a priority for his students. Bromfield is a school well known for its core academics, but Reynolds emphasizes that music can be just as important. He likens teaching music to teaching literature or a foreign language: “It’s like reading Ernest Hemingway’s, ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ Why do we read it? We get past the elements of reading language, the grammatical elements and the sentence structure, and we are profoundly affected by the message.”
For Reynolds, music is another language, another way to communicate and share ideas both simple and profound. He looks at his job as a way of giving kids skills “to be able to consume music at different levels, whether it be a simple folk tune, all the way up to some really sophisticated music.”
This conviction was strengthened early in his career, when he was manager of the Massachusetts Youth Wind Ensemble. In 1975 the group gave a concert tour in Finland and the Soviet Union, and it played a joint concert with a youth orchestra in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Despite not speaking each other’s languages, and despite the huge differences and distances between their countries, the fact that they could play the same music together left a big impression on the young teacher. “To me, it was so empowering to see how music can tie people together,” he says, “even transcending cultures and languages.” It’s a lesson he has tried to pass on to his students about the importance of music.
It hasn’t always been easy. With a growing academic course load, athletics, and other extracurriculars competing for students’ time and attention, music can get lost in the shuffle. He admits that there have been times he’s been frustrated as the band got squeezed out of many students’ schedules or relegated to short rehearsals before or after school. But now, he says, “I have a real core of kids that put music really high on a pedestal.”
He’s also tried to make more personal connections with his students. “For those middle school kids, seventh and eighth grade is the most traumatic time of their life,” he says. “Everything’s changing.” Trying to figure out how best to work with these kids has meant that he has had to embrace change himself. “I’ve tried to take the attitude that there’s always something I can learn as a teacher,” he says, “and I think that’s helped me.”
Proud to be performing artists
Reynolds is particularly enthusiastic about this year’s group. “I’ve enjoyed this year as much or more than any of the 39 years I’ve been teaching,” he says, pointing out the high level his groups are playing at and the great strides the program has made in his 17 years. He feels like there’s been a shift in the way that students think about music and the arts at Bromfield, explaining that “more and more, as every year has gone by, we’ve started to develop a culture here where the kids are proud to be performing artists.”
Next Wednesday’s concert will be his last as the music director at Bromfield. It will feature all of the instrumental groups at the school, along with the high school chorus. Reynolds explains that the concert audience “will see in very clear stages, in terms of grade level, how students make progress.” From fifth-graders just learning how to play their instruments right up to the high school band playing the finale of a Kalinnikov symphony, the program will showcase all levels of music at Bromfield.
The program will also showcase Reynolds’ ability as an educator, working with a diverse set of students and taking them from novices to musicians capable of performing complex pieces. He views this as the ultimate goal, noting, “I’ve always tried to get my high school kids exposed to music that has some level of sophistication where it could have some profound effect on them.”
Something worthwhile
What’s next for Tom Reynolds? He’ll be keeping busy as the director of the MIT Concert Band, as well as working with the John Philip Sousa Honor Band. He’s finishing up his doctorate, which he hopes to have completed in the next couple of years. And he’ll be helping the next generation of music educators in Massachusetts by working with student teachers at Anna Maria College and the University of Massachusetts. He’s excited about what lies ahead, even if he’s less excited about leaving Bromfield. “I love these kids,” he says. “Am I excited about losing these kids? No.” But he’s ready for the next step and proud of what he’s accomplished as a teacher.
Reynolds is modest about his achievements. “I don’t feel that what I do is all that extraordinary,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve played enough wrong notes to write a symphony!” But many students and parents will remember him as a teacher fully dedicated to showing kids just how wonderful music can be. Looking back at his career and the more than 3,000 students he’s taught, he’s happy with how it all turned out. “I do feel pretty good that at least I gave them something worthwhile. That’s what my goal was.”
