Life-Changing Lessons from a Music Teacher – Rich Kingera [Podcast]

Teachers have one of the most important jobs on the planet: They have the power to shape the trajectory of a young person’s life for the better. And that was precisely the case with Jim’s first music teacher—and now lifelong friend—Rich Kingera.

Rich was a music educator for 36 years, and now spends his time still actively playing music. He’s the organist and choir director at his church in Pennsylvania, as well as the keyboardist for three local music groups. Most recently, he obtained a professional certificate from Berklee College of Music.

In this episode of Sound Health, Rich talks about how learning and playing music can develop the brain in some pretty amazing ways—no matter your age. (He stresses that it’s never too late to learn!) Rich also shares a few personal experiences in witnessing music’s power to improve the quality of life in both children with autism and the elderly.

You might also be surprised to learn this music teacher’s philosophy when it comes to practicing, and what happened after Rich caught Jim playing the school’s drum kit without permission.

Rich and Jim also touch on the threat to music education, its big-picture potential, and how educational curriculum should be revised to use music as a tool—especially based on what we know now about its many benefits.

Transcript

JIM DONOVAN:

Today on the Sound Health Podcast…

First of all let’s just set the frickin’ record straight here…

Rich Kingera:

Okay. [laughing]

JIM DONOVAN:

So you retire and then you go back to school.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah.

JIM DONOVAN:

All right. Tell us about this.

Rich Kingera:

It was a professional certificate. It was nine credits. And I started in January and finished up in September. It was straight through. I thought there might be a break, but there was no break.

JIM DONOVAN:

Where was it?

Rich Kingera:

It was through the Berklee School of Music out of Boston and it was online.

JIM DONOVAN:

So you go through your whole career… You already went to college, you go through your whole career, and now you’re going to go back to Berklee.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. [laughs]

JIM DONOVAN:

I love that. I want to be you when I grow up.

JIM DONOVAN:

Hey there. Welcome to the show. This is Jim Donovan. I am so glad you’re here. Today, we have a very special guest. He is someone who is very important to me, Mr. Rich Kingera.

Rich is a lifelong music educator and performer with a degree from Edinburgh University and a professional certificate from Berklee College of Music.

He’s the organist and choir director at Christ Casebeer Lutheran Church in Somerset, Pennsylvania.

He’s also a keyboardist for Western PA groups, including Candle in the Wind, Doc’s Hayes Boys, and the duo, Deja Vu with guitarist Bob Bretz. Thirty-four out of his 36 years of teaching included time at Rockwood Area High School in Southwestern PA where he was—among many things—my first music teacher. [music interlude]

JIM DONOVAN:

So welcome to the show Rich. It is such an honor to have you here. I never would have imagined back in seventh grade I would be sitting across from you doing something called a podcast because that was a very long time ago and the Internet didn’t even exist back then.

Rich Kingera:

True.

JIM DONOVAN:

How are you doing tonight?

Rich Kingera:

Fabulous. Glad to be here.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah, so good to have you.

First of all, when I got to the high school, or the junior high school, that we were at together, I was seventh grade and it was the first time that I was ever able to take music lessons. I came from a Catholic school. They didn’t offer lessons unless you could buy the instrument… That was the deal. So of course, my parents didn’t have the money for that.

So I waited and I waited and then I came across you and I found out lo and behold that the school already had drums. That was pretty exciting. And I remembered that first lesson there were like 10 of us in the room. And I distinctly remember you saying, “Now, does anybody want to play any other instrument, because we have too many of you.”

Rich Kingera:

There was never a problem with having enough drummers.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. And of course I wasn’t going to budge on that one. I’d waited too long to get there. So I just kept my mouth shut and for some reason, I got to stay.

Rich Kingera:

Luckily, you did.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. So what I’m wondering is, you dedicated a giant portion of your life to teaching young people about music. You did it in a very small rural school from where I grew up in a little place called Rockwood, Pennsylvania. And I’m just wondering what inspired you to get going with teaching?

Rich Kingera:

I don’t know if the idea of the teaching was started when I was this young, but I think I would have been about seven or eight years old. My mother worked at, actually, a record shop among other things—a little grocery store record shop combined. And so she had access to, obviously, records and the Beatles came upon the scene and I couldn’t wait. The gentleman that owned the place, “Well, I think we can get that record for you.”

So Meet the Beatles arrived at my home and I listened to that a great deal. And I would say I was seven or eight years old. I thought, “Yeah, this is what I’d like to do… be involved with this music.”

JIM DONOVAN:

Wow. So, that’s the initial spark.

Rich Kingera:

Oh yeah.

JIM DONOVAN:

Just hearing those guys.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. And then I was playing in a group through high school, et cetera, and then college playing in different groups. But when I got to college, somewhere along during that time, then I decided, “Yeah, I think this teaching thing, this would be a really good thing to be involved with kids, children and young adults.”

JIM DONOVAN:

Now when you taught at Rockwood, you ended up teaching a lot of elementary school kids and the high school kids.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah, I had the entire band program—grades 5 through 12. So I was your teacher for eight years, if you stayed in it.

JIM DONOVAN:

What are some things that you notice? So I know that there’s kids that join and then they fall away. Like it’s not for them…

Rich Kingera:

Not too many.

JIM DONOVAN:

Not too many. Oh, that’s fantastic. What do you think, those kids when they stick with it, what are some things that you saw, you saw them from when they were little until they became young adults?

Rich Kingera:

I would tell the story that I was their teacher from the first day when eight fifth graders came with… “Here are our clarinets,” and they don’t know how to open the case… To eight years later, you’ve got them playing in county band or in a district jazz band or something to that effect. So it was quite rewarding to watch this happen.

JIM DONOVAN:

What are some things that you notice about them as they got older, besides the musical part. Did you notice that it affected their development in any specific ways?

Rich Kingera:

Well, I think the study of music just as a general comment or discussion, it requires you to organize your mind. And if you want to play these three notes on the flute at the beginning, there’s a bunch of motor planning and thought that has to go into it. “Okay, this finger goes down and now, these two get down and this one comes up.” And that’s the beginning of the process. So it really helps you to organize your mind.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. So it’s like builds parts of your brain that might not otherwise have a chance to be built because of the demand.

Rich Kingera:

Sure. My wife and I have talked about this for years about just in the situation we worked in the public school…

If I would get the chance someday and someone said, “Well, we’d like you to develop… or what’s the perfect school here? What would be the perfect school?” And I’d say, “Okay, we’ll start in kindergarten.”

Each day…and this would continue through 12th grade…

Each day you would have obviously your reading and math, et cetera, but you would have music each day. You would have art, some type of drawing of pottery each day. And you would have, if we want to call it Phys Ed. Okay. You would have that each day. In some way, shape or form. You would be exposed to this every single day of school.

JIM DONOVAN:

And it’s interesting because I was just reading some studies out of Norway. So, the whole country made it mandated that by this year, so 2020, every elementary school child gets exposed to music and art. I think it’s at least once a week, but I think it’s multiple times a week.

And they’re doing it because of the research that they’re finding, how it improves processing speed. And how it helps all these different brain processes and they can see in the data that the academic scores go up and rates of addiction go down. And they’re connected intimately with being in a music program, specifically a music and arts program.

Rich Kingera:

Sure. They’re figuring it out. And I’m certainly hoping that there’d be young people with young children that are listening to this and will come upon this. My comments or ideas for them is to add music playing at home each day. Before you send your children to school. And it doesn’t have to be all classical music. It’d be nice to play some classical music. But I think you expose them to all the genres and have it playing at home. So they listened to this. They grow up listening.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. That’s the thing I noticed with my kids. They did these programs called Kindermusik. So both of my daughters did this and both of are still musical today.

My oldest daughter, she’s singing, you know that. You’ve seen her sing. And my middle daughter, Ella, is in musical theater, also singing.

And I could tell, their ear development and their ability to hold melody and hold pitch was already good and I wasn’t teaching them anything specific, other than just listening to music with them, taking them to some structured activities that really help them.

And then the big thing I did, and I still do with Ella and Oliver—my two youngest—is whenever we’re in the car, I listen to their music… no matter how much I dislike it.

Back in the day, it was that Kidz Bop stuff. Do you know what that is? The CDs’. Oh my God. I think I earned some stripes or something just listening to Kidz Bop over and over again. It was sheer torture, but they loved it and they sang to it and I knew that it was way more important for that to happen then for me to listen to something I’ve heard a million times.

Rich Kingera:

And I think we could pull together another part of this we’re talking about, your brain development. Some years ago, 20 years ago, maybe more, and I’m not sure exactly where this came from. If it was a music community… we were trying to show our worth to the world.

But somehow it came along that, you know if you listen to Mozart, if you listen to a lot and you can do better on this test or whatever. Okay. So they went through that for a while and well. And if you study Mozart—what he did, beautiful, fabulous… can’t believe how great this writing is, things that he wrote. Okay. Music. So, then it became, “Well, we’re not sure that there is a connection, but we have come to this and figured this out…”

When you’re singing in the church choir, or if you’re playing your flute that you played in high school and you’re playing a little bit again, or you’re taking guitar lessons, or you’re playing the piano… Whenever you’re actively engaged making this music, both sides of your brain are engaged at the same time.

Now, that’s really not a bad thing! That’s actually a really good thing!

So, talking with people… Well, I’m 40 years old and always wanting to play the piano, but, and I would say to them, “No, I think it’s time to jump in, to get started up again.” And so yeah, a lot of benefits… a lot of things going on when you’re making music and when you’re listening to music, but especially when you’re making music.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. When you’re making it, when you’re a part of putting your fingers on the strings or you’re pressing the keys or hitting the drum, it’s just a whole other range of processes that happen in your physical body, in your emotions, in your mind. Absolutely. [music interlude]

Now I know the answer to this question. After all these years and as well as you play, do you still practice?

Rich Kingera:

Every day.

JIM DONOVAN:

Every day. What do you practice when you practice?

Rich Kingera:

Well, and this is what I’ve thought: The longer you live and you’re playing all this time.

When you sit down at the drums or the piano and if you start playing a little bit, the instrument will give you the feedback as to, “Well, I thought I could play that.”

But, at any rate, with the passage of time I’m still practicing, but every day I try to play more than I practice. And there is a difference.

I try to play through lots of different songs. But there are things that I work on but I try not to tip it that, “Well, I’ve spent an hour pushing the keys down on the piano…”

Well, let’s play some songs. Make some music.

JIM DONOVAN:

There’s a balance to keeping your chops and all the muscle stuff and then getting the enjoyment out of-

Rich Kingera:

Oh, absolutely.

JIM DONOVAN:

… of what you do, which is the reason to do it.

Rich Kingera:

And of course you’ve heard this from me before. Music’s really fun when you know what you’re doing. And unfortunately, there’s not a secret formula to, “Gee, how do I get to play the drums at great?”

Well, time spent. We won’t call it practice. Time spent.

JIM DONOVAN:

Sit with them for a little while.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. If you spend each day, put some time in… It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Yeah. I still play every day. I am playing in church. I still play in church every Sunday. So part of the weeks involved, working on church stuff, making sure that’s ready for every Sunday.

But yeah, I do play every day and as I said, I try to play more than I practice.

JIM DONOVAN:

I know that you also write because we recorded some music for the podcast. Some of the songs that you’re hearing. Some are standards and some are Rich’s originals.

When you are writing, do you set aside special time for that or is it all mixed in with all practice time?

Rich Kingera:

I think it’s all mixed in and that’s a whole, you know… How many books have been written about the idea of composition?

I have found that I basically start with the harmonic structure… with the chords. That’s the roadmap I would say that I use and where do I want to go harmonically. And then from there, okay—am I trying to write a ballad, a slow song? And you know, there are things that matter. As you know… You are a writer of how many albums?

JIM DONOVAN:

And yet I feel like when I watch you play, I feel like such a complete novice.

Rich Kingera:

Wow. I don’t know about… and the answer to that is time spent.

JIM DONOVAN:

Time spent. Yeah.

Rich Kingera:

Time spent each day.

JIM DONOVAN:

When we were getting ready for the podcast, I was sitting next to the piano with Rich and I’m watching him play and I’m thinking, “Man, I messed this all up. I should have studied piano with him.”

JIM DONOVAN:

So when you’re in “creative mode,” which for me, anyway, feels different than “practice mode” and it feels different than “performance mode.” Is there a different part of you that emerges during “creative mode?”

Rich Kingera:

From what I understand of this, in the sports world—not that they said it first—we probably, musicians, said it first. Suddenly you’re in “the zone.” And I’ve had this happen playing and my explanation—and a friend and I, we had talked about this… He called it, you transcend the technique…

You’re spending each day—you’re working on certain things, scales or chord or whatever. And you’re working on this all the time. And when you go out to play, you hope… I always say a little prayer, cross my fingers right when I start… I think, “Okay, let’s hope that my mind is clear for the next two, three hours.” And I’m just thinking about what I’m going to play and I can channel this and I’m not thinking about what scale to use and all that.

And find that with the writing…

I met an author—his name escapes me at the moment—he had written four or five books. And I said to him, “Okay, tell me about the process, what’s going on?”

And he said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, tell me what’s going on. You write a whole book. How does this happen?”

Now from his standpoint, he said, “Well, each day at 8:30, I go over there and close the door. And I will say, maybe if I’m trying to force myself to write.

For me writing, I’ll go and sit down. And—I don’t know if I will say most of the time—but a lot of the time nothing’s happening. I’m trying to make something happen. I’m trying to think of something and it’s not happening. I have read interviews of Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and neither one of them has an explanation as to, “How did this happen? How does this happen?” They really can’t explain the creative process.

JIM DONOVAN:

It’s a mystery and yet these guys can tap into it. And it shows up. I noticed that in my own process that anytime I try to make it happen, it’s garbage. It’s just not even close.

Rich Kingera:

And Paul McCartney was on Colbert here a while back and Colbert really kept pressing him. “How did this happen? How did you become Paul McCartney and write all these songs?”

This goes back to what we were speaking of before. Paul said, “From the time when I was little that I can remember, my aunts and uncles would come over once a week to the house and my father would get on the piano. And he would play the piano and they would sing songs.”

And Paul said, “From the time I was little, this was my weekly exposure. I had this going on.” Now he got to hear it live.

We have, now—gee—we have records, CDs and the streaming services. You could have music playing for your children at home anytime you like.

JIM DONOVAN:

It’s true. That immersion for him—young—and the constant exposure and maybe even… “Here’s how it’s done. Here’s how we do it. Here’s what it looks like. Here’s what it feels like.” That’s a huge thing.

And I know for you as a teacher, that’s what you brought to kids. “Look, here’s how it’s done. All this magic that you hear on the radio. Here’s what that chord looks like. Here’s how you make your hands, here’s how you can play the rhythm.”

Rich Kingera:

And I was really lucky when I first got my bachelor’s degree and started teaching. We had to go in and get additional credits.

So I went to Kent State and there was a gentleman there from Eastman’s Core Music and he was talking about musical sequence in music. And I thought, okay.

Well, that led me to his teacher who was Dr. Edwin Gordon. And Dr. Gordon worked out of Temple.

What they attempted to do… Dr. Gordon worked on this for many years and he’d have a different graduate assistant each year and they worked on this… He wanted to find out, “Is there a sequence that humans learn how to function rhythmically… musically? Is there a sequence in that human beings learn the melodic part of this?”

Well, I met him and had dinner with him and read his book quite a few times. Then shortly thereafter, all this happened…I found a gentleman from Michigan—Robert Frozeth was his name—He studied with Gordon and he created an entire band lesson book.

JIM DONOVAN:

Like concert band.

Rich Kingera:

Yes. And so I started using those and wow! It had a lot to do with the success I had teaching the kids, having the right materials, being able to teach them, we’ll call it “in sequence.” They learned in sequence. You can’t play sixteenth notes until you can play steady quarter notes.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yes.

Rich Kingera:

So at any rate, I was very fortunate to come upon that and to read about it and immerse myself and understood it more and more.

JIM DONOVAN:

I remember experiencing that sequence, those first couple of lessons. There were no drumsticks, there were no practice pads. It was you and us.

And we’re sitting in chairs and we’re playing call-and-response on our laps and I was delighted about this exercise. I just remember like, “I can’t wait until we go into that clapping thing again. That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

Because in rural PA in 1980, whatever, we had three TV stations, we got a couple of radio stations. There wasn’t a whole lot of input. There weren’t places that I could go to see a drummer. And the band room was it. That was the place.

With the exception of Disneyland for a week when I was eight. There was music there.

And I think about all of these places throughout the world, throughout even the United States or even throughout PA, where, even though we’ve got the cell phones and we’ve got the Internet, that’s the only place that some kids get to experience music is through the screen. It’s a good surrogate, but it’s not the same as getting, one-on-one attention from someone who cares and who knows.

Rich Kingera:

It’s hard to beat live.

JIM DONOVAN:

It’s hard to beat live and it’s also, there’s no feedback. There’s this whole surge of kids who are YouTube taught. And I know a few of them where they can shred and they can play the notes… But playing with other people is challenging and sometimes their time isn’t so hot.

Rich Kingera:

We’re going to talk about this in a little while, but I found, well, when I first retired, I got some materials from Berklee college in Boston and…

JIM DONOVAN:

So, you retired.

First of all, let’s just set the freaking record straight here. So you retire and then you go back to school.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. All right. Tell us about this.

JIM DONOVAN:

It was a professional certificate. It was nine credits. And I started in January and finished up in September. It was straight through. I thought there might be a break, but there was no break.

Rich Kingera:

Where was it?

JIM DONOVAN:

It was through the Berklee School of Music out of Boston and it was online.

Rich Kingera:

So, you already went to college, you go through your whole career and now you’re going back to Berklee.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah.

Rich Kingera:

I love that.

JIM DONOVAN:

I want to be you when I grow up.

Rich Kingera:

I just always wanted to go there.

But prior to like officially attending there and taking classes, I had books from Berklee. I had a piano book and I had a guitar book and I had a bass book. And well, it comes with a CD and you can go online and look at things…

But I don’t know how many times over the years I’d be playing something and then I’d stop and my wife would say, “All right. Go ahead and say it,” and I’d say, “I need a teacher right here—like right at this moment.”

JIM DONOVAN:

This is the spot right now.

Rich Kingera:

To show me this. Yeah, the Internet. And as I said, I went online. It was all online. And, I obviously wasn’t going to move to Boston and live in the dorm for nine months. So this was an opportunity for me to go there. And a lot of friends ask me about it and I’d said it was a fabulous experience. I would not have wanted to be learning something from scratch online.

JIM DONOVAN:

You had contexts, you had read decades.

Rich Kingera:

And so there were a lot of things I already knew, placed in a different context. I’m really glad I knew I had a lot of information already when I started on this journey. As I said, I wouldn’t have want to be trying to learn something scratch online.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yes. It seems like the discouragement rate would go up because you don’t have that one person going, “Oh no, just here—look—try this.” “Oh, okay.” Like solve it in five seconds instead of trying to search all the different videos. I can see that.

JIM DONOVAN:

When you went there, what kinds of things were you studying? Geez, you know so much already.

Rich Kingera:

Well, the first course was, we’ll call it a keyboard skills and what was involved there was things that I had done and played the techniques that I had done for years.

However, they were all presented and lined up in a sequential…”Okay, do this.”

So you take a blues tune, so, you play the melody. Okay. So now your first solo course, you accompany yourself using one note.

JIM DONOVAN:

Oh, wow. Okay.

Rich Kingera:

Then the second course you use two notes, then a third course you use three notes, et cetera. You start down this road and I’m reminded pretty quickly, “Gee, there’s a lot of things to learn yet, there’s a lot of things to practice and there’s lot to work.”

JIM DONOVAN:

That’s great.

Rich Kingera:

So that was the first class. The second one was blues and rock piano techniques. Okay. And that also included like Dr. John kind of style playing. Professor Long Hair,  et cetera, et cetera. So that was great, great fun.

And of course, “Okay, here’s the exercise for this week…” And we had to record that and send it in. And someone in the class said something, “Do we have to go play this entire exercise?” And the instructor said, “Well, you know, if you were here on campus, you’d have to play in all 12 keys.” So I did try, I made it about eight weeks through that, and I practiced all these exercises in all 12 keys.

So anyway, I made it through that. So the last course was labeled incorrectly. It was called “Basic Improvisation.” There was nothing basic about it, but I managed to get through that. So it was a fabulous experience.

This whole age thing… My health is pretty good. So I don’t consider myself “old.” I don’t feel like am old. I don’t have those thoughts that I’m old.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. that’s good.

Rich Kingera:

And I thought this would be such a fabulous opportunity to do this and I may not be done here yet. There’s obviously other courses. We’ll see what the future holds with that.

JIM DONOVAN:

See, that’s exciting because I think… I don’t know how everybody thinks about retirement. I’m watching you. I have another friend who’s an artist named Chuck, who is quote unquote retired and you two are the busiest men I know in my life.

I know that you’re playing gigs, you’re out there playing more shows than ever and you go to rest homes and perform for the folks there.

Rich Kingera:

We were just there today.

JIM DONOVAN:

Oh, how’d that go?

Rich Kingera:

Fabulous.

I joined this group. It was called Doc Hayes Boys. It started back, I think in the late fifties, and they were playing a straight, like Dixieland thing and now, with the passage of time—I joined in 2013—and now there is one other professional in this group. Plays trombone. All the other gentleman, this is a hobby for them. Well, we go every other week.

We go to a different nursing home. There’s two in Somerset that we go to and we go to Berlin and play. We play at the Senior Center in Somerset. And this is happening every other week. I’m happy to be with these gentlemen.

In my estimation, their heart’s in the right place. They could be out doing, who knows what. They’re here, they’re all retired. All but one. I think we’re all retired except for one. There’s a lot of other things they could be doing and so I’m really proud to be with them and doing this. And well, that’s a whole other subject too, about the music in nursing home and what they’ve created… a music therapy degree. That’s been around for a while.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah, it’s true. When you’re there, what are some things that you notice in the people that are listening to you?

Rich Kingera:

There was a lady, we saw her today. This has made me one of the nicest comments I’ve heard at, at a nursing home.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah.

Rich Kingera:

We’re done. And she’ll say to all of us, “That’s the fastest hour that I’ve ever spent in here.” And she’s been in there for years. She’s been resident there. And I thought, “Wow, that’s pretty good. That’s a pretty nice compliment.”

JIM DONOVAN:

I’d say. So do they ever sing along with you?

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. And tapping the feet. They interact with the music, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of times, a lot of them, they’ll know the songs that we’re playing. We’re playing… It’s The Great American Songbook, Gershwin, Cole Porter, et cetera.

JIM DONOVAN:

All of their music.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. They know those songs.

JIM DONOVAN:

There’s just so much good research coming out about how that helps to wake up parts of the brain that aren’t gone, that are still fully intact. Have you seen some of those? Some of the videos, there’s this movie called Alive Inside?

Rich Kingera:

No.

JIM DONOVAN:

So they take this man, who doesn’t speak—African American gentleman—and they put headphones on him and they put on music from his era and you see in the video he opens his eyes and he starts to hum and sing along.

And then after the song is over, he’s talking. Now, this is a guy with severe dementia and he’s talking and he’s remembering when he heard the song and who he was with and they’re seeing this in dementia patients where they can bring them back for a little while. Then they go back in into the dementia.

But it’s a doorway to help everyone that’s involved with that person, to remember that they’re a real person. That even though they are afflicted with this horrible thing, that there’s someone in there and it helps the family to remember that, “Oh, that person I love, there’s part of them still there.”

Rich Kingera:

Well, my wife will tell you privately this story sometime, but I get to tell it here.

She taught grades K through six, elementary music. One, particular year, his young man came to school and he was autistic and never spoke. Completely non-verbal. None, zero. Okay.

So, she had him in kindergarten. Had him in first grade, and this was, I think, possibly halfway through second grade. He was in the class with all the other kids. And they always let him go like five minutes earlier. He had a person that helped them and they would take him back shortly after this class.

So this particular day, my wife said she was doing her usual singing and rhythm activity and marching around and listening and playing this certain song and drawing some things.

Well, now again, this boy was non-verbal… never said a word. It was his time to leave and he and the handler were leaving the room and he stopped at the door and turned around to her and waved and said, “Bye.”

JIM DONOVAN:

Oh wow.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. How’s that happen? I guess it has something to do with the music.

JIM DONOVAN:

I keep saying it over and over again…

I feel like even though music’s been with us forever, that we’re at the very beginning of understanding what it can do and its potential.

I think it’s just so important for people out there to understand the cuts in music education that happen… They happen to our cultures detriment… That where if we don’t have the ability to develop the creative capacity of a kid… The thing that you need to think about is that who will be the one that is creating solutions to the unsolvable problems? Who are those people? Where are they getting trained? How do they learn to think that way? The arts are already built to help us do this.

Rich Kingera:

That’s right.

JIM DONOVAN:

When you’re teaching, just like any place, there’s always challenges to getting it done. What I’m wondering is, on the flip side of all the challenges that happen, who were the advocates? I don’t mean that you need to name names, but generally speaking, who are the people that helped you keep things going even when things could be tough?

Rich Kingera:

There were small numbers of faculty members. My fellow faculty members who were helpful, I will call it “behind-the-scenes” or whatever. We had a county band each year and there you get to be with your other colleagues, other music teachers. So that helps. We had district band, we had regional band, we had a district jazz band. So you were at those times, you were around other musicians, other teachers who had the same problems and struggles that you did.

JIM DONOVAN:

Right. You don’t feel alone in the that.

Rich Kingera:

Right.

JIM DONOVAN:

One thing I’m hoping is that as time goes on and the research improves, that we start to see just as a culture that we’re missing the boat and this is a blip in time that we went, “Oh, we need to backtrack and not only fix it, but fund it so that it can grow into the next thing it’s to become.”

Because when I was coming up, when you were coming up, we didn’t know a whole lot about the health implications of what music does for us.

We didn’t know how it helps people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

We didn’t really realize how it can help people with different disabilities.

Now we do, we have all kinds of information about this and I just wonder if that gives us an opportunity—again, I’m thinking big picture—to rethink how we teach some of these things in the schools. To integrate that into the beginning parts of the knowledge base so it goes beyond scales and learning charts. But here’s how you can use this to make you make yourself feel better when you’re having a stressful day.

Rich Kingera:

And we’re talking about how listening to music helps your mood, et cetera. It’s a two prong thing. I would have people ask me, “Can you explain this jazz thing to me?” I would say, “Nah, we don’t have enough time.” I said, “However, start here.” I said, “Go out and search out some Louis Armstrong.” And I said, “It can be the start out with him singing.” I said, “And then you need to work to hear him play that trumpet.” And I said, “That’s really good place to start and I don’t have to use a lot of words. You just listen to this for a while and then come back and we’ll talk in a month. You tell me.” “I listened to Louis Armstrong every day.” I said, “Okay, so let’s now we can talk about this. What do you think is going on here?”

And I think I saw this in the documentary, and not only that—I’ve read this—there are a lot of people walking around saying, “Well, God sent us Louis Armstrong to show us the way forward. God sent us a Mozart. He organized the tempered scale, et cetera, et cetera, and wrote this beautiful music.” And there are a lot of people that believe that and say that, that they were sent here to show us all the way.

JIM DONOVAN:

I wouldn’t be surprised. Personally, I think back, there was one day, I was always asking you for hall passes to come in. Some of the days I’d sit in the practice room with my friend Matt and we would just talk, sometimes he would play his electric guitar. You remember that?

Rich Kingera:

Oh yeah.

JIM DONOVAN:

I remember you coming in, “Hey, I don’t hear any practicing in here.”

But meanwhile, we were talking about Def Leppard, and we were talking about the show he had just seen at his mother’s house in Harrisburg, and I was developing a whole new appreciation for music that I’d never heard before.

And then there were other days where you would leave the room, and anytime you would leave, I would go up on that kit. I knew that was the time and so I’d get up there. And I remember you coming back one time I’m thinking, “Oh man, I’m suck here. He’s going to get mad,” and you weren’t.

You actually brought the record player up to me. I don’t know if you remember this, you put on some jazz record. Maybe it was a Miles Davis record or something. And you said, “Here, see if you can play along to this.” And I remember saying, “What the heck do I play?” And you said, “Just try something, just make it up.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” And I kept time with it.

But years later, in retrospect, I realized this was a major deal for me… that someone cared enough to let me come to the place, and provided the spot, because I didn’t have a spot there. There was no instrument… there weren’t any places to go, but the band room and you opened that door. And you were kind. You actually cared, which there were a lot of teachers that I had that did, and there were some that didn’t. Just like anywhere.

So I just got to thank you for that. That sticks with me to this day. I try to do that for the people that I work with.

Rich Kingera:

I appreciate that.

JIM DONOVAN:

Yeah. Well, Rich, it’s been an honor to have you here. Maybe we can do this again sometime.

Rich Kingera:

That be fabulous.

JIM DONOVAN:

We were talking right before the show that maybe you’ll come here and do some recording.

Rich Kingera:

Yeah. I may do that. I’m working with a gentleman. His name is Bob Bretz. He’s the Dean of guitar teaching and playing up on the other side of the mountain, Cambria County, Somerset County. We’ve been together over three years now. So yeah, I think it’d be really exciting to get Bob down here and we could record a little bit.

JIM DONOVAN:

And what kind of music you guys doing here.

Rich Kingera:

Well, with Bob and I, we’re doing The Great American Songbook and we’re doing a lot of blues tunes—probably about 20 some blues tunes, going at it from the jazz perspective. We play a good many bossa novas and samba tunes and I think we play about six or seven originals that I’ve done.

JIM DONOVAN:

Wonderful.

Rich Kingera:

And now even more contemporary stuff, like George Benson stuff, David Sanborn things, Spira Jarrah, so, yeah, we’re busy.

JIM DONOVAN:

That’s fantastic. And you’re still learning new pieces too.

Rich Kingera:

All the time.

JIM DONOVAN:

All the time. You just add to the giant database in your head and your hands. That’s great. Hey all. Thank you again. This has been great. And I can’t wait for you to hear this and I can’t wait for my audience to hear this. I think they’re going to love hearing about this.

Rich Kingera:

Fabulous. My great pleasure. Thank you.

JIM DONOVAN:

Take care.

Rich Kingera:

Uh-huh

JIM DONOVAN:

Well, that’s it for today. I appreciate you tuning in. Remember to come see us on our social media channels, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Just search “Jim Donovan Sound Health.”

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