By Mary Frances McCarthy
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 5/20/04)

When he entered The Julliard School in New York, Dr. Garwood Whaley never dreamed his career path would lead to a Catholic high school outside of Washington, D.C.

Whaley, band director at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, retired Jan. 30 after spending half the year working together with Dr. Randall Eyles, his successor.

"For me to leave in June and someone else start in September would be a disaster," Whaley said. "I didn’t want to see anything happen to my baby. It’s easy for something to break down. It takes a long time to build it."

After Whaley graduated as a professional percussionist from Julliard in the 1960s, he was drafted, with conflict rising in Vietnam. He auditioned for the West Point Band, but they did not have an opening. The Army Band accepted Whaley, and he spent the next six years in Washington.

While in Washington, Whaley began working on a master’s degree at Catholic University and offered private music lessons at Ireton. At the end of his six years with the Army, Whaley had a wife, two children and half a master’s degree. Traveling around the country and trying to find a job performing wasn’t as appealing as it was before he had a family.

Whaley admits that "the idea of (conducting) a high school band is not a very appealing one." He took a job directing the band program at Bishop Ireton in 1970, thinking that the job would last until he found a job with a symphony. Whaley said his first year with the all-boys band was "so bad, I couldn’t leave and be a failure."

Whaley decided to stay and make the band "work." He felt an all boys band wouldn’t cut it because, for reasons he can’t explain, boys play certain instruments and girls tend to play others. He approached St. Mary Academy in Alexandria, and his band classes became the first co-ed classes at Ireton.

Out of "30 kids who couldn’t play" in 1970, "I created a monster," Whaley said.

The Ireton band has "developed into an unbelievable, nationally renowned program."

Bishop Ireton dedicated its 800-seat concert hall, in honor of Whaley, in 1998 after spending 20 years of performances in a gymnasium. Whaley said it was an "unbelievable honor" to have the hall named after him.

Under his tutelage, the Ireton Band Program has performed international concert tours every year since 1974 to Canada, Europe and Scandinavia. This was the first spring that Whaley did accompany the band on its tour.

For the last 25 years, Ireton has performed a combined concert every year with a university or professional band. They also work with composers on works commissioned by Ireton. Through this program, the composer often comes to the school to work with the students, and the students are part of the creative process of writing a musical arrangement. By commissioning the piece, the band has first performance rights.

Whaley has produced two recordings of Ireton’s Commissioned Works with the Washington Winds. In a recent review in The Instrumentalist magazine a reviewer wrote, "Bravo to the Washington Winds, Garwood Whaley, and the band boosters at Bishop Ireton High School for creating and sponsoring such a worthwhile fine arts project."

Whaley is known nationally for implementing a "comprehensive musicianship" curriculum at Ireton. The curriculum does not simply teach students how to play music; it is academic, aesthetic and artistic.

Students learn about the composer, the piece of music, historical style, formal structure and melodic devices. Students are asked to write music in a similar style, so that they know not only how to dissect a piece, but how to rebuild it again. Whaley considers this style of teaching music to be very similar to teaching literature. This is his answer to the push for music programs to become more academic.

But music is not purely academic; it’s also an art form.

"People in this field, many of them are so driven," Whaley said. "This is not football. It’s an art form and should be taught as an art form." Whaley said music is not about winning a trophy at a competition, but about reproducing a work of art, and reproducing it well.

"My job is not to please Mom and Dad," Whaley said. "My job is to educate John and Mary so they can grow up with an aesthetic sense of values."

Whaley hopes to spread the concept of comprehensive musicianship to more schools. In his retirement, he will continue to be a guest lecturer for high schools and universities.

"Mr. Whaley’s innovations in the field of music have not only provided international recognition for the band program at Bishop Ireton, but has also benefited the instrumental music program in over 25 elementary schools in the Diocese of Arlington," said Diocesan Superintendent of Schools Dr. Timothy McNiff.

Whaley will continue to work with the diocese, coordinating the instrumental music program he created 26 years ago for elementary schools.

Through the program, lessons are offered during school hours once a week. Currently, 28 schools and more than 1,500 students participate in the program.

Whaley also created the honor band in 1976 to challenge the more talented members of the elementary school bands who might otherwise get bored with the pace of classes.

The honor band performs a combined concert with the Bishop Ireton Band every spring.

Whaley said his closeness to students is what he will miss most in his retirement.

"That’s a very hurtful part of this change in my life," he said. "In the last 12 years, it’s been a really wonderful, loving relationship and I’m really going to miss that."

Since his retirement four months ago, Whaley has served as guest conductor for a high school honor band and a university festival band, adjudicator for band festivals in Baltimore, Rhode Island and Kentucky, guest speaker and clinician at the Capitol University Band Directors Clinic in Columbus, Ohio, and as professor for a Virginia Commonwealth University graduate course in comprehensive musicianship.

Aside from continuing his work with the diocesan instrumental music program, Whaley will also continue to run Meredith Music Publications. Founded in 1979, the publishing company follows the same guidelines of Whaley’s comprehensive musicianship philosophy. Its publications are "both instructive and musically rewarding."

Whaley has been involved in writing more then 20 books. "Working outside the school and with the school complemented each other," he said. "The fact that my name was out there brought credit to me here at the school and with students."

Whaley’s honors include being chosen as Outstanding Secondary Educators of America Award, Outstanding National Catholic Bandmaster, The National Band Association’s Citation of Excellence, the National Federation Interscholastic Music Association’s Outstanding Music Educator Award, the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s Legion of Honor Award. He received the distinguished alumni award from Catholic University in 1996 for his achievements in music education. Every year from 1998 to 2003, Whaley received The Washington Post’s Grant in the Arts for his Commissioned Work and Composer-in-the-School Project.

"It’s been an incredible career that evolved, and we built something out of nothing," Whaley said.

He passed the baton to Eyles in January, having full confidence that Eyles will take care of his "baby." Whaley personally chose Eyles to assume the role of band director at Ireton. He is a former superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Band and former executive director of the Percussive Arts Society. He composed "Freckles Rag," Ireton’s commission work in 1982.

Thirty-four years after Whaley took a job he thought would last a year, although under new direction, the band plays on at Bishop Ireton.