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How one retiring professor encourages students to follow their musical passions

Gary Speck conducts the Miami University Wind Ensemble. Under his leadership, the ensemble has been invited to the Ohio Music Education Association 10 times and has made seven appearances at the College Band Directors National Association.
Gary Speck conducts the Miami University Wind Ensemble. Under his leadership, the ensemble has been invited to the Ohio Music Education Association 10 times and has made seven appearances at the College Band Directors National Association.

For the past 36 years, Gary Speck taught courses in music education and conducted the melodic sounds of clarinets, flutes, trumpets, trombones and different percussion instruments. The melodies floated through the walls of Presser Hall, permanently staining the ears of anyone passing by. However, Speck’s time conducting the Miami University Wind Ensemble is coming to a close.

Under Speck's tutelage, the wind ensemble was invited to the Ohio Music Education Association 10 times and made seven appearances at the College Band Directors National Association.

However, these were not his proudest accomplishments.

Spanning more than three decades, he orchestrated four wind ensemble reunion concerts, the most recent one being in the summer of ’23, with about 140 people in attendance.

“I suppose I'm proud of the fact that I've been connected to all these people all this time and it continues to have meaning for all of us,” Speck said. “... and when students, after they graduate, continue to have a relationship with you. That's powerful.”

Although Speck has spent most of his career in higher education, he didn’t start at a collegiate level.

He started as a high school teacher in Houston, where he conducted the school band. However, after four years, he decided doctoral school was calling his name, so he pursued a Master of Music degree at the University of Michigan, followed by a year at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).

A friend of Speck’s from their undergrad years at Michigan worked at Miami while Speck was studying at CCM. He referred him to the music department chair for a teaching position. Speck then became a visiting assistant professor for a year and then director of bands.

“[It’s] a term of art in my profession,” Speck said, “the person in this position conducts one of the flagship ensembles of the group and I conduct a wind ensemble. And I mean, it's one of the important ensembles in the music department and the wind ensemble is a concert band, essentially, wind percussion instruments, harp, piano, that kind of thing.”

Speck is retiring after the Ohio Music Education Association awarded him the Outstanding Music Educator for 2024. This award requires nominations by colleagues and recommendation letters. Over the years, his friends have told him when it’s time to retire he’ll know, and he feels that the right time is now.

“Something like that is nice to receive [at] anytime,” Speck said. “I won't lie, it's a nice cap to go out on.”

Even though Speck said he’s happy with his decision to leave, he will miss directing and making music with his students, such as Isaac Yoby, a music education major with an instrumental concentration. Yoby has been in Speck’s wind ensemble for seven semesters, a position everyone has to audition for.

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Yoby said that after auditions, Speck encouraged students to go to his office to talk about their performance and to receive notes from index cards he had for each student.

“Every semester after that, I would just go ask him about my audition [and] every time we would never talk about the audition for more than five to 10 minutes, and then the rest of however long I was there would just be life discussions and things just about music,” Yoby said. “We would talk about all sorts of stuff and I looked forward to it all the time. That will stick with me, those conversations.”

That’s not the only impact Speck has made. Yoby said it’s important to know that Speck doesn’t limit himself to music, but that his interests span different fields.

“It's really cool to see a professor that genuinely [cares] about all sorts of things,” Yoby said.

stumbata@miamioh.edu 


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