CHUCK STEELE -- Woodwinds

The performer:

Charles S. "Chuck" Steele has been playing woodwinds since he was 9, professionally since 1968. He started piano lessons in 1955, switched to clarinet in 1959, and progressed to saxes and flute/piccolo during the Sixties.

While a freshman at Lehigh University, he got his chance to play in Carnegie Hall -- in a joint concert with the Yale Band. In the late Sixties, early Seventies, he was Tenor, Bari, Flute player and horn arranger for Gauze, a blues-soul-R&B-rock 4-horn band that played the Delaware Valley and Lehigh Valley regions -- mostly school dances, frat parties and the like.

The late Seventies had him doing all the woodwind work for Kohesion, Chuck Krasnov's jazz-fusion group that also was the house band for a PA Playhouse version of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well..., a Guthsville Playhouse rendition of Jesus Christ Superstar, and was featured on WXPN's (U. of Pa.) live jazz radio shows out of Philadelphia.

As a member of Bill Bausch's Melody Revival, Chuck played his Tenor, Alto, Soprano, Clarinet, and Flute in "darn near every wedding/banquet hall in the Lehigh Valley" between 1977 and 1995. He is also a charter member of the Lehigh Alumni Stage Band, which began in 1979, holding down the Bari Sax chair while doubling on Soprano Sax and Flute; it's an 18-piece big band that plays once-a-year, in June, for Lehigh's Alumni Reunion weekend.

Playing some of his woodwinds with The Thom Palmer Band

In the Baritone Sax/Soprano Sax/Flute Seat with the Lehigh U. Alumni Stage Band

The instructor:

Mr. Steele actually began teaching woodwind students during his teen years, when the music chair at his high school -- a trumpeter -- needed some help with the clarinet and saxophone beginners in the Elementary School Band (4^th & 5^th grades). As a senior, he was Student Director of his High School Band. While in college, he served two years as Freshman Manager of Lehigh's Marching 97 Band, and also volunteered at Wiley House (now KidsPeace) with younger students interested in learning about band instruments.

His instructional emphasis is on helping individual students to "merge" with their instruments. This is an evolving process, beginning with the mouth and mouthpiece (and, as applicable, the right reed). Fingerings follow and need to develop from an expectable beginning awkwardness to a natural feel and flow. Breathing techniques, posture and body language also play their own ongoing parts in the players' familiarity and comfort with their "horns" and the music they are able to produce.

If students hope to be able to "double" -- play several different woodwinds -- then he recommends beginning with the clarinet, due to the unique fingerings for the lower range of notes (all of the upper ranges for flutes and single reeds are similar). Chuck prefers elementary and intermediate students, regardless of their age, and believes it is never too late to begin studying a new instrument. In fact, he has just recently started to concentrate on his own study of the diatonic mouth organ ("the bluesharp"), even though he has been playing a chromatic harmonica for more than 25 years.

A brief solo on the clarinet