Evolution of a Career
by Antonio J. García

Tony García chose his parents carefully and was born in New Orleans. Though you’d think music might’ve been the early draw, he gave up piano lessons at a young age because they were on Saturday mornings: he was missing “The Superman/Batman Hour,” and VCRs hadn’t been invented yet! But some free-form guitar followed.

 

There was no instrumental music program at his elementary school; so he didn’t start on the trombone until age 13, at which point he put the trombone together backwards and attempted to play. Asthma and severe allergies impacted his breathing, something later mostly resolved after a lifetime of medications and three nose operations across three decades. He still looks pretty much the same on the outside, though.

 

Tony began to play pop songs on the piano by reading the melody in the right hand and the guitar-fretboards' notes in the left hand. Despite always hearing jazz and big bands growing up, the jazz-bug didn’t hit him until after sophomore year in high school, when he went to a summer music camp. There was no regular jazz band at his high school until his senior year, but by junior year he was composing a bit and writing out some solos for himself. At the summer camp he'd composed a simple tune for its jazz band: the guy in front of him on lead alto sax was Branford Marsalis; the guy behind him on trumpet was Wynton Marsalis. The next year the guy in front was Donald Harrison; the guy behind was Terence Blanchard.

 

Tony was inspired by those peers and their mentors. But teaching music was not on his radar. His own band director said to him: “Look at my gray hairs; look at my heart attacks. Would you want this?" He entered Loyola University of the South (in New Orleans) as a jazz studies major barely knowing even who Miles Davis or Charlie Parker were; and his trombone-tone for jazz and classical ensemble auditions would not have suited even a crass version of a marching band. When Chicago Symphony Orchestra French Hornist Dale Clevenger visited as a guest artist, he was surprised to discover that Tony could not even exhale into and inhale from a plastic bread-bag repeatedly without the bag growing larger and larger—while his classmates' bags maintained a consistent size. So at age 20, Tony was shocked to learn he couldn't even breathe properly into a bag.

 

He had never studied Music History before; so in preparation for sophomore year, he spent part of the preceding summer recording the required music-tracks rotating across a dozen simultaneous listening-carrels onto his armada of blank cassette tapes so that he could then listen to the music at home and in the car during Fall and Spring semesters (as there was no internet!). Confronted by the Music Librarian as to the legality of his actions, he studied up on copyright law, asked for a meeting with the Librarian and the Dean, and won permission to record for his self-study. Thus began his career of copyright study and teaching.

 

Though he was a dedicated undergrad student, studying and practicing as much as or more than most, Tony's improv wasn’t happening; and he considered quitting after his sophomore and senior years. Mostly he memorized his solos in advance, except when he forgot them—such as happened the final jazz band concert of his undergraduate degree. Since it was being recorded live for album-release, the band director after the concert had to close the curtains, allow the audience to leave, and have the band perform three of the tunes again—because Tony’s half-forgotten solos had been so poor that those tunes couldn’t possibly make the cut for the album; and they needed those tunes to round out the LP.

 

Thus his jazz-major years ended without any reliable soloing, though he'd amassed a considerable freelance career as a tenor and bass trombonist reading written parts behind major international and local artists. His breathing-challenges were far from over, as his allergies continued to rage. At age 21 his eosinophil count (a measure of certain white blood cells in the immune system, typically in double digits) was 528. Yet his sound-production had greatly improved, thanks to his local teachers as well as to some very impactful lessons with one of his teachers' teachers: Chicago Symphony Orchestra tubaist and breathing guru Arnold Jacobs. It was common for Tony to perform 20 or 25 nights a month while in college. His "street" education ranged from extended gigs with Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, and George Shearing to Gladys Knight & The Pips, The Temptations, and The Spinners to New Orleans icons Ronnie Kole, Irma Thomas, Al Hirt, and Pete Fountain—plus years attempting to improvise solos as a trombonist and pianist at small-group jazz venues.

 

After months of further gigging and soul-searching, he decided to apply only to his graduate school of choice: The Eastman School of Music, where a number of his professors had studied. His undergrad jazz trombone/arranging mentor (an Eastman alumnus) said he couldn’t recommend Tony to graduate school as a player but perhaps could as a writer. Tony applied for the Jazz Writing focus of the Masters degree but was declined admission. He opted to study there electively for part of the Summer, which only renewed his interest. Taking lessons in performing and writing at Loyola for an additional year (thanks to the graciousness of his mentors there), Tony applied a second time and got into Eastman.

 

There the previous years of jazz-mentors’ guidance in schools and on the street, the current intense study of composition with peers and mentors, and a decade of persistence led to Tony performing his first truly improvised successful solo at age 24—three years after receiving his undergraduate jazz degree. He felt a huge weight lift off of his shoulders, and his two years at Eastman prompted considerable growth in his writing and soloing abilities. The "street" again reinforced his high standards: when a former Loyola professor who sightread one of Tony's pre-Eastman charts on a New Orleans gig got lost amid some of Tony's "shortcut" notations in the piece, the mentor invited Tony into the alley behind the club for a conversation. There he calmly stated that if Tony ever made him look like a poor reader again on the bandstand due to a "double D.S." or any other non-normative part-copying, the mentor would personally beat the crap out of him. (Though that superb musician never mentioned that incident again, Tony has since thanked him often for his formal and informal mentorship and has annually shared that story with his own Jazz Theory and Jazz Arranging students who might consider notational shortcuts for the bandstand.)

 

Eastman also included Tony's first regular teaching gig. He had always declined his New Orleans mentors’ invitations to teach younger students: he didn’t want to screw up the next generation. But when he accepted a graduate assistantship to direct the fourth jazz band at Eastman, he discovered that he had real “chops” for solving other musicians’ challenges. Whether wind-production, jazz style, improvisation, or many other musical facets, Tony found that he had personally earned a decade of first-hand experience with the worst problems in each category—and thus knew how to rectify them efficiently for his students. His work merited him the Graduate Teaching Award from Eastman, which not only validated his efforts but provided him the $500 he needed to move his belongings and himself back home to New Orleans! He was some $20,000 in debt, but his two years at Eastman had been transformative in every way.

 

From that unexpected discovery on, teaching was Tony's first calling; but it was not for lack of gigging. When he left New Orleans in 1987 for his first full-time university teaching post, he had paid off his student debt and as a freelance performer had amassed 52 different musical employers the preceding year, with well over 300 engagements. He chose a 20 percent pay cut—from his current $25,000 freelance performer-pay to the $19,999 offered him by Northern Illinois University—to become NIU’s first Coordinator of Jazz Studies; and he never looked back. Within weeks of his arrival, a high school teacher in Illinois called him and said, "I hear you just arrived in the state. Excellent! You're the new Secretary of Illinois IAJE." And thus began his career-long efforts to assist jazz education on a larger scale than his own classroom—and finding a lifetime of friends among his fellow educators.

 

Six years at Northern Illinois University as its first Coordinator of Jazz Studies was followed by a move to Northwestern University. Eight years there were followed by twenty-one as Director of Jazz Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. At all three, he was inspired by colleagues, mentors, students, guests, and the community.

 

Though he loves performing, composing, and authoring, Tony is most of all dedicated to assisting musicians towards finding their joy in the performance, composition, and business of music—whether in the schools or on the street. His 35-year full-time teaching career at three different universities and countless outreaches for single- or multi-day residencies in the schools have touched tens of thousands of students in Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, The Middle East, and across the U.S. His collaborations highlighting the intersection between jazz and social justice have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars as an engine of positive change, providing direct education to students regarding social justice as well as financial support to underrepresented and/or minority citizens of his community—including the African American, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and Veterans communities, children’s medical aid, and women in jazz. He assisted Dave Brubeck’s mission of music and civil rights by serving on the advisory board of The Brubeck Institute. His own partnerships with South Africa contributed to the understanding of the issues of racism, inequality, healing, and hope shared by that country and ours, resulting in his performing, by South Africa’s invitation, at the Nelson Mandela National Memorial Service in 2013 at The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He also serves as a Research Faculty Member at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

 

Tony also fundraised $5.5 million in external gift pledges for the VCU Jazz Program, with more than half that already in hand. Along the way he has performed with Doc Severinsen, Louie Bellson, Dave Brubeck, and Phil Collins—and has performed at the Montreux, Nice, North Sea, Pori (Finland), New Orleans, and Chicago Jazz Festivals. His compositions are released through a dozen publishers; his indie-film scores have been screened across the globe. He’s an accomplished trombone soloist and an avid scat-singer. He’s written two books, countless articles, and served for ten years as Managing Editor for the International Association for Jazz Education Journal, followed by twenty years as Jazz Editor for the International Trombone Association Journal.

 

Tony is the only individual to have directed all three genres of Illinois All-State jazz ensembles—combo, vocal jazz choir, and big band—and may be the only individual to have done similarly in the country. Tenured at Northern Illinois, Northwestern, and Virginia Commonwealth universities, he is a 2023 recipient of The Midwest Clinic Medal of Honor), a past nominee for CASE U.S. Professor of the Year, was one of only three professors at NIU to receive its 1992 “Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching” award; and in 2015 he received the VCU School of the Arts’ Faculty Award of Excellence for his teaching, research, and service. He is now Professor Emeritus there, while residing in his native New Orleans, and serves as Secretary for The Midwest Clinic, for whom he has served as a board member for three decades.

 

His move back to New Orleans in 2022 was prompted by the December 2020 move of his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild back to NOLA. He and his wife, Mary (a professor of Counselor Education) missed them too much and knew the kids needed childcare-assistance. So they left their home and jobs in Virginia to move back to New Orleans, where they now have also a second grandchild to enjoy amid their flex-time professional careers there and beyond.

 

While an extremely organized individual, Tony has never planned his career. There was nothing in his childhood that suggested he might become a professional musician; and allergies, asthma, and late learning stood in his way. His road to improv and composition was slow, his path to teaching unexpected. He often says: “I am the poster-child for late development in jazz.”

 

He had auditioned straight into the bottom of the undergraduate trombone studio at Loyola (with poor breathing abilities) and then was not accepted by his chosen graduate school, only to persist and enter Eastman a year later. He was not chosen for NIU’s post his first year of applying, but he merited it a year later when it reopened. He'd declined an invitation to join the educational team of Jazz at Lincoln Center but applied that time to myriad other projects. He'd decided not to pursue a post at Northwestern, only to change his mind when circumstances suddenly warranted, and landed the position, finding his office next to Dale Clevenger (see "bag" tale above), across the hall from Frank Crisafulli (author of the first trombone-technique book Tony had inherited from his own older brother), and down the hall from Vincent Cichowicz. More calls came in, including one from Conn Selmer asking him to join its artist/clinician roster. (Truth be told, CS had only a year previous declined his own request to be affiliated with them.) He’d declined an invitation to become IAJE JEJ Editor, only to accept it months later when circumstances shifted. He’d declined an invitation to become ITA Journal Managing Editor, only to accept its Jazz Editor post. On countless occasions, the pedagogical proposals and compositions he has offered for publication have been declined, only to be accepted later once refined—or once those in the decision-making role had moved elsewhere. In late 2019, due to unintended consequences of a medical procedure, he lost the lower range of his hearing for several months—but did regain it in early 2020. And three times in his career he has elected to leave a tenured, full-time university professorship in order to pursue the path best for him and his family.

 

"Obstacles are a normal part of life. My story is not unique in that regard, though my own obstacles are specific to me. I have only planned how to learn more, how to improve myself and get better at my craft, and how to find the most enjoyment of my musical pursuits. Doing so, some doors open. I go through the best door available and then continue to learn more, improve myself, get better at my craft, and enjoy my pursuits even more. More doors open. I go through the best door...." Rinse and repeat.

 

Read Tony’s tributes to some of his mentors.. And read a bit about the evolution of the careers of nine music-related individuals. You can also see a video interview with Tony regarding his career, done by colleagues Dick Dunscomb and Bob Dingley of Jazz Zone Together.