I had spent a good part of my early childhood sitting in our kitchen with my dad listening to his radio. I was home a lot with asthma and wasn’t a very gifted athlete like my brothers were. Music class at my elementary school was mandatory and everyone learned the recorder. I loved playing the recorder. It was a way to try to emulate some of the sounds I had heard coming from that radio in our kitchen. The music teacher’s name was Andres Gutmanis and he was quite a good teacher. Passionate. He singled out five of his most interested students and created a recorder group. He had us learning and playing music far beyond our tender years experience and by the time I was in grade seven he had me playing the flute. He knew that I would be attending Macdonald High School and had paved the way with the high school teacher to make sure that I was accepted in their prestigious music program.
When I got to high school I took the music option and entered room 338 for the first time and became a member of the HUDSON MACDONALD HIGH SCHOOL BAND. There I was with 25 or so other young musicians of various experience and skill all being divided into sections and were handed our instruments. No longer just recorders but real orchestra style instruments…and the journey got a little more serious. Over the next four years I was taught by an over achieving and very skilled Ted West who also had us students playing music that was far beyond where we should have been. He also taught at neighboring HUDSON HIGH SCHOOL and had merged the two schools into one program thus assuring himself of a deep gene pool of talented musicians. He was also very passionate about his teaching and had been (and still was) a professional musician. He also encouraged certain students to “double” on a second instrument (play a different instrument than your main instrument). I was a solo chair flute player but doubled on guitar and alto saxophone.
We would play countless concerts, sing in choir, madrigal choir, jazz band and stage band. We toured to Boston (Massachusetts), Tampa (Florida), New York (New York), Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg and all points between. The band won prestigious awards at the Berklee Jazz Festival and Canadian Stage Band Festivals in both Toronto and Winnipeg. I was personally awarded a spot in the “all-star band” (at The Canadian Stage band Festival in Winnipeg) made up of the 20 most outstanding high school musicians nationwide.
Ted West also had his most promising students performing in his church choir at Wyman memorial Church in Hudson, Qc. He also hired several of his most skilled musicians to perform in his personal band professionally. I played in that band known as Ted West and The West Winds. By the time I finished high school I was already a semi professional musician and knew almost as much as I would need to become a full blown professional.