Master musician

Paying tribute to Joe Viola

by Ed Hazell

In a city as dense with colleges and universities as Boston, there is no shortage of good teachers. Yet there are probably few as revered as Joe Viola, the chair emeritus of the woodwind department at the Berklee College of Music. An impressive roster of Viola's former students and colleagues -- among them Javon Jackson, Donald Harrison, Jane Ira Bloom, John LaPorta, Richie Cole, Donny McCaslin, and Gary Burton -- will pay tribute to the recently retired saxophone teacher at the Berklee Performance Center on April 12. They will be celebrating a remarkable career, one that despite its huge influence on music of all kinds is largely unacknowledged outside musicians' circles.

In the relatively young field of jazz education, Viola literally wrote the book on saxophone technique for jazz. His highly regarded and widely used instruction volumes are the basis for the woodwind-department curriculum. Yet as a teacher and administrator, he never wore the blinders of a jazz snob. He built the Berklee saxophone department without regard to stylistic boundaries, and it continues to build on the stylistically diverse precedent he set.

"He could teach the instrument across the styles," attests dean of the professional performance division Matt Marvuglio, who headed the woodwind department from 1985, when Viola stepped down, until this year, when Billy Pierce took over. "That's what made the woodwind department unique. He could keep diverse people together and focused on teaching and offering students choices."

If Viola is respected for his influence on music education and his immense knowledge of his many instruments, he is loved as a teacher. A list of his more illustrious former students includes Charlie Mariano, Sadao Watanabe, Booker Ervin, Branford Marsalis, Antonio Hart, Joe Lovano, George Garzone, and Billy Pierce, in addition to the previously mentioned Bloom, Harrison, and Jackson. "Students would come to him and they'd have all these issues and he could reduce them to one or two things," Marvuglio says. "He could talk about them in very simple, common terms. And I think that's one thing that made him so popular among his students."

Viola is indeed plainspoken. In a 1995 interview he told me that the secret to his success was simple. "I focus on the individual person. I genuinely care about my students. To me, that's my job in a nutshell."

From Mariano, a student in the '50s, to Jackson, a student in the '80s, Viola's former charges consistently credit him with helping them find themselves. "He imparts to you what it means to have your own voice," says soprano-saxophonist Bloom, "He helped you find a sound, then find your own sound."

Although he is relaxed and informal -- students and fellow faculty invariably call him Joe -- Viola has a keen ear. "When you walk in the room, you're an open book," Bloom says. "He knows everything there is to know about how to make sound on these instruments. And if there is a problem you're having, he knows exactly what's going on."

"As gentle as he was in a lesson, you could not fool him," Marvuglio agrees. "It was comical to watch him give an exam. After the student finished playing a piece, Joe would say, `Okay, that's good, now play me something you like.' He didn't do it maliciously, but he could tell whether the student was playing with conviction or simply trying to please him. `You mean to tell me you like that?' he'd say. `Why do you like that?' It was mind-boggling to students, but it made them think about things."

His kindly, unpretentious manner also inspired absolute trust. "It's like Abraham Lincoln said, `With charity toward all, malice toward none.' Not to be corny, but that's what he's all about," Javon Jackson says. "No matter how much you had to work on, he always had something positive to say. He made you feel like mastery of the instrument was something you could attain."

Viola grew up in Malden and made his professional debut in 1934, at age 13, when he played second alto in a band led by a local variety-store owner. His pay for the gig: a bag of peanuts. He worked in several Boston orchestras during high school, then went on the road; eventually he moved to New York. Soon afterward he was drafted and spent WW2 in an Army band at Camp Croft in South Carolina.

After the war, Viola planned to re-establish himself, so he headed for New York. He began oboe lessons with the BSO's Fernand Gillet. He also started learning the Schillinger System for composition with a local pianist and arranger named Larry Berk, who had studied with Schillinger in New York in the '30s. Schillinger's complex, mathematical composition technique was in vogue then (Glenn Miller composed "Moonlight Serenade" as an exercise for a Schillinger lesson) but is largely forgotten today. For Berk's students, the system promised a fast and efficient way to compose for a radio industry hungry for jingles and popular songs. Just after the outgoing Berk moved his studio to 284 Newbury Street and founded the Schillinger House in 1946, he asked Viola to join his staff.

As the school that would eventually become the Berklee College of Music established itself in its first years, there were no formal departments. In addition to lessons in saxophone, clarinet, and flute, Viola taught theory and composition. He also handled the bulk of the ensemble classes for more than a decade. The hours were long and the schedule grueling by today's academic standards, but Viola's extraordinary dedication and skill made him one of the school's most popular teachers.

In the late '50s, Viola began work on a series of technique books that are among his most significant contributions to music education. "They are technique books that really give you the vocabulary you need to be an improviser," Marvuglio explains. "Pretty much everything in the Berklee woodwind department's final exams is based on them. They were developed from Joe's observations and experiences with students. I remember when he was writing one of them, he was sketching things and trying them out on students. And when he had enough material that worked, he came out with a book."

Joe Viola's books, lucid and systematic, are important cornerstones of jazz education, but his greatest legacy resonates in Berklee's practice rooms and offices. That's where information and wisdom were passed on aurally from one player to another for half a century.

Viola retired from teaching last year. Today he lives at home in Stoneham with his wife, Alice. It's impossible for him to leave music completely; students still drop by or call. Bloom, whose family remains in the Boston area, is a frequent visitor.

"Joe never liked the idea that students were under his power," Bloom says. "He gave you the ability to teach yourself. That's a great teacher. They only happen once a century, and if you're lucky enough to meet the man, you can sense this."

The Joe Viola Tribute Concert is at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, April 12, at the Berklee Performance Center. Tickets are $25, to benefit the Joe Viola Scholarship Fund. For more information, call 747-2261.