New band director set for first Clark College Jazz Festival

Strangely enough, the very moment when Doug Harris knew his mission in life would be music education was a miserable one.

It wasn’t when he was a child, realizing his “early affinity for the trumpet” while happily dancing around the house to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, he said. Nor was it when he heard his brothers blowing trombones and clarinets.

It was a dark, sleeting, frigid Florida morning in October 1978. Harris, a 10th-grader, was steeling himself to go stagger around a field with his trumpet and the rest of the Gainesville High School marching band. He knew it would be “approximately two hours of hell on Earth,” he said — and he loved it.

Why? Because he was confident the hard work and dedication would pay off for him and the whole ensemble. “I love to practice, and I love the positive results and feedback,” he said. A sophomore in high school, he was already taking the long view of the professional educator.

Since then, Harris has performed with jazz bands, brass ensembles and orchestras — but “I never really thought of becoming a pro trumpet player. I am a musician, but music really is a vehicle for teaching,” he said during an interview in his office at Clark College, where he is the new director of bands — replacing Michael Inouye, who retired last spring.

“You can spend years studying music in college, but the least important part of it is the music,” Harris said. What’s really important, he said, is group cooperation, sensitivity to dynamics, discipline, personal ethics.

A quality music education is like a quality anything education, he said; the real lesson is “how to be a successful person.”

Clark love

Harris holds a doctorate in music from the University of Northern Colorado (as does Inouye) and has taught at numerous colleges and high schools. College teaching is a highly competitive field, he said — so he’s glad to say that he and Clark feel made for one another.

His faculty colleagues here are friendly and supportive, not cutthroat as he has found at some other schools, he said. His music students are “outstanding,” Harris said, and he’s now making the rounds of the high school music directors who send them his way. Both Clark College in general and its music department in particular seem to be solid, beloved anchors for the whole Vancouver community, he said.

“It’s such an affirming place to work,” he said. “Clark College is a focal point.”

Plus, he said, living in Vancouver lets you go hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest just as often as you can find the time. Harris intended to make it three times a week when he arrived here last summer, he said, but a broken big toe squashed that plan for the year. He vows to get back to hiking this spring, he said.

57th festival

Harris hasn’t presided over one of Clark’s busy and celebrated annual jazz festivals before, he said, but he’s looking forward to lots of great music — and lots of networking. He said he means to listen carefully and take names while no fewer than 60 middle and high school bands cycle across the stage at Gaiser Hall and give it their all.

As festival director, Harris’ main job “is to hire four adjudicators and then stand back,” he said, letting them do the hard part — the judging of first-, second- and third-place bands in several different divisions. Meanwhile, Harris can do the fun stuff, he said: hobknobbing with high school band directors and their top players.

Clark’s band program is robust, but students cycle through it quickly, he said — two or three years, usually — so he’s already eager to recruit fresh talent.