Teachers, engineers and retirees by day, Heisey Wind Ensemble musicians by night
The group will kick off its 40th year with a Christmas concert on Dec. 14 at Newark High School
Musicians trickle into the auditorium for their Monday night rehearsal, just days before their final holiday performance of the year.
Members of the Heisey Wind Ensemble practice individually at first to warm up, their fingers flying across their flutes, tubas, bassoons, clarinets, oboes and other wind instruments, filling the Reese Center at the Ohio State University Newark Campus with a riot of sounds.
But when the conductor raises his baton, they become one and produce a symphony of harmonious, sweet music.
In the following audio story, Selah Griffin introduces you to several members of the Heisey Wind Ensemble as they prepare for their holiday performance on Saturday, Dec. 14 at Newark High School.
This year, the Heisey Wind Ensemble is preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
Since the ensemble of more than 60 musicians was formed in 1985, its members have become more advanced in their abilities, and the audiences have grown larger. Heisey continues to fill auditoriums across central Ohio, and at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14, the ensemble will do it again at Newark High School for its annual Christmas concert, “A Home Town Christmas.”
The Heisey Wind Ensemble – which takes its name from the A.H. Heisey Glass Co., a prominent glassware manufacturer in Newark from 1896-1957 – is a community band. But it is no small thing to be invited to join.
While many members are products of school music programs, others are current and former music teachers and professors. The ensemble has a waiting list of people who want to audition for the group. But the ensemble can take only a certain number of people playing each instrument to maintain a balanced sound.
Russel Mikkelson, the conductor, sits at his podium at the start of rehearsals and looks down at the full music score for the upcoming concert.
Up goes his baton, and the musicians snap into playing position.
Mikkelson has been the conductor since 2002. In his day job, he is a professor and director of band at The Ohio State University. He found Heisey because a colleague, Richard Blatti, was once the director. Just before a performance years ago, Blatti tore his achilles tendon, and he asked Mikkelson to step in for him. Shortly after, Blatti stepped down and Mikkelson has been the director ever since.
“I thought, ‘I will do this and make some money to help put my children through college.’ And then they got through college, and the group kept getting better. Our audience got bigger. I fell in love with the people, and 22-plus years later, I’m still here,” Mikkelson said.
Mikkelson is a trumpet player, but he loves to conduct because it allows him to teach and be in the room when the musicians are playing.
“It’s [the music] right there to be handled and manipulated and massaged and encouraged and changed,” he said.
Ruthanne Isenhart is a retired music teacher who has been playing the clarinet with the ensemble since it started. She said Heisey gives people an outlet to play and perform at a high level.
“When you leave college and you get your first job, and there’s a certain ability that you attain through all those years of practicing that all of a sudden, you don’t have a place to play and make music,” Isenhart said.
Heisey played its first concert at Founders Hall at Ohio State University Newark campus. George Hunter, head of the Music Department at Denison University at the time, offered Swasey Chapel and Burke Hall at Denison as performance halls, and one of Isenhart’s favorite memories was soloing with her husband, Bill, at Swasey.
“I’ve seen the numbers grow. I’ve seen the quality of players grow. I’ve seen the difficulty of music has grown,” she said
David Wolford has been playing with the Heisey Wind Ensemble since it started. He was the principal trumpet player at Ohio State, but after he graduated, he did not find time to play his trumpet seriously for 13 years. He was excited when Don Workman and JM Day, former band directors for Newark City Schools, and co-founders of the Heisey Wind Ensemble, asked him to be a part of the group.
“They wanted to start up a serious group of musicians to play good concert band music,” Wolford said. “And then, to not play for 13 years was killing me. So, yeah, I really wanted to play again.”
Wolford said each director has challenged the musicians in different ways. With Mikkelson as the director, Wolford learns something new in every rehearsal, based on how he directs and interprets music.
The ensemble rehearsed a Christmas classic, “Carol of the Bells,” that to an amateur sounded perfect. But once they finished, Mikkelson reminded them to make sure they kept their music moving and not let the eighth notes become sticky.
Bill Thacker has been playing in the ensemble for about 30 years. He quit music before college and studied engineering instead. But he started playing the euphonium, a brass instrument, in the ensemble. Thacker said he feels lucky to be a part of a group with such talented musicians.
“I always tell high-school kids, ‘You can go out for the football team and play all you want, but you’re not going to be playing football when you’re 60. But you can still be playing in the band when you’re 60,’” Thacker said.
Wolford and Thacker agreed that their audience is amazing.
“That’s why we keep coming back,” Thacker said. “We do get great feedback from our audience.”
“It’s really heart-warming,” Wolford said.
Caroline Zollinger, Selah Griffin and Daniela Gomez write for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.
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