The People's Voice: How to strike a chord

Performances don’t lie. Matt Eaton is a prodigious talent as a percussionist.

But in order to hone his skills to stunning levels and, in turn, help students follow suit, he’s used just about everything he’s encountered on his way to this little place we call today.

Love. Like that with which he was surrounded in his house growing up, where his father didn’t boast the sort of chops his son would, but still gleefully plunked on the folk guitar and shared every record with his boy. A Kiss fan was born.

“I’d dress up in makeup and start playing like Peter Criss,” Eaton said, somehow managing not to laugh. “I found out later that Peter Criss wasn’t the best drummer in the world. But if you can play all his stuff at 12 or 13, you’re doing pretty well.”

[ Click here to listen to the podcast of the interview with Matt Eaton. ]

Pain. Like the brand of jilted agony he felt when his high school band was relegated to early bird, non-credit status.

“I took it personally,” Eaton said. “And I still do.”

Inspiration. He’d like to thank Kathy Mekeel for the passion and personable manner with which she approached educating. Oh, and then there’s the inspiration he took from the rich, suburban kids in college, who introduced him to such mind-opening artists as Frank Zappa.

But mostly Mekeel, in terms of sheer inspiration.

“She was wonderful, and I would do anything for her,” Eaton said. “My teachers and staff really motivated me to be the best musician I could ever be. Watching them work, and seeing how passionate they were, I knew I had to be a band director.”

The key, he said, was the interpersonal connection that forged a creative conduit between educator and student.

“A personality is probably the most important,” Eaton said. “It has to be personality driven. You have to be personal and human with them.”

Let’s not forget tools. And Eaton has kept a very open mind about those, too, scouring YouTube for tricks of the trade, as well as tricks that have nothing to do with the trade of music.

Offline, he took to heart a conversation on the golf course with the conductor of the president’s Air Force band, who likened the importance of timing in a golf swing to that in music.

Among other revelations Eaton has borrowed (OK, stolen. But any great educator loves it when others steal, for the sake of unlocking potential.) is a breathing technique he learned from a colleague in New Jersey who was working with an adult band.

How about camaraderie? Eaton wasted no time forging bonds everywhere he has taught. A fresh-faced graduate out of Western Illinois University, he offered to scout for the Milledgeville football team. It made sense, after all. Not so long before that, Eaton was pulling double-duty – as a 4-year quarterback at Dixon High School and as its drum major. There’s even legend of games in which he stood at midfield in his mud-drenched uniform to perform in the halftime show.

Eaton says if he hadn’t gone into music, he would have striven to be a scout. The Missiles’ coaches found out why when they took him up on his offer and sent him to Huntley, a contemplative 2.5 hours away.

Eaton returned with a book full of insider points.

“When I’m teaching, I do relate football to music a lot,” Eaton said.

There. That quote right there. That’s the one that speaks to why Eaton has broken through with so many students. Why, after 10 years at Milledgeville, he went to Meridian Junior High School in the Stillman Valley district and won one of five prestigious Mr. Holland’s Opus awards. They’re given to educators who best invoke the spirit and dedication of “Mr. Holland,” portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss in the film that invariably reduced all of its viewers to tears.

He won the award by impressing a former colleague who covertly spied on how Eaton was putting a grant to use. Clearly, Eaton and his students impressed, and they were awarded $10,000.

But that doesn’t even take into account the myriad breakthroughs he’s achieved with private students. With the wealth of tricks and tools he has amassed, he is always learning how to get more out of students, how to raise their ceilings and unlock unforeseen potential.

However, no tool can trump the effectiveness of simply connecting with a student. Just ask Jeremy Van Drew, a 27-year-old Milledgeville graduate who became the first autistic to be named all-state by the Illinois Music Educators Association.

“Matt made my boy what he is today,” Jeremy’s mom, Melissa, said during an interview Tuesday.

The two began working together about 20 years ago and, while the private lessons stopped about 4 years ago, when Matt and his wife, Lisa, moved to Oregon, they remain close friends.

“We pretty much grew up together,” Eaton said.

“It was kind of like a father-son relationship, in a way,” Van Drew said. “He urged me to keep going. If I made a mistake, he let me know to fix it. It was not easy. It was tough love at times. But, hey, that’s what makes us so good today.”

“That’s the satisfaction of my life, basically,” Eaton said. “When I’m teaching, and something clicks with a student and their eyes light up? That’s why we do what we’re doing.”

They’re kindred spirits, and you just can’t miss it when you watch recordings of the Sterling and Dixon municipal bands. While the rest of the band is dialed in and still, aside from the kinetics required to play their instrument, Eaton and Van Drew are swaying and dancing, quite often in sync. In that vein, when Van Drew arrives for a performance, Eaton can tell just what type of day he’s had. If it was a bad one, no one but Matt can bring Jeremy “out of that dark place and back into the light,” as Melissa Van Drew puts it.

The fact that Eaton isn’t teaching music in a school is a travesty. If you’d like more on how and why that’s the case, check out my column from last weekend. I’m no longer going to bemoan the cruel fate that so many fine arts educators have met.

Instead, let’s celebrate the fact that Eaton continues to affect youngsters every day, and that Van Drew is only one of hundreds he equipped with the tools to be great musicians. Perhaps great educators, if they’re brave enough to pay it forward.