Editor's Abstract (Click to Hide)

Milt Stevens died sometime in the early morning of July 30^th in a hotel room in Denver. He was the Principal Trombonist in the National Symphony, but he was in Denver attending the Summit Brass Conference, where he was going to be playing, teaching, even conducting. He had chest pains on his right side the weekend prior during a concert (he kept on playing anyway), but after researching his specific symptoms on the Internet, he concluded it was not a heart ailment. His symptoms returned the next day upon his arrival in Denver, and he was taken to the hospital, where it was discovered that he had had a serious heart attack. He had an angioplasty and, after a few days of observation, was released on the 29^th; he was to travel back to DC the next day for more procedures back home. Always a team player, Milt attended the final concert of the conference that night, looking good and saying that he “felt fine.” He missed a doctor’s appointment scheduled for the next morning prior to his departure, and was subsequently discovered in his hotel room, still in bed. He had died peacefully in his sleep.

When Matt Guilford, the bass trombonist in the NSO, called me a few weeks later and honored me by asking if I would speak at Milt’s Memorial Service on Labor Day in Washington, D.C., he said that the intent was to have speakers from every phase of Milt’s professional life: someone who had been his student, someone who had been in one of the premier Military Bands stationed in the nation’s capital, where Milt mentored countless young professionals at the beginnings of their careers, and someone who was a peer in the orchestral world. As it turned out, I fell into all three categories.The most important role Milt played in my life was as a teacher, and while my first lesson with him was about twenty-five years ago, my last lesson---and the last I saw Milt--- was just in April of this year in his Virginia home, when I had the opportunity to see both Milt and his wife Priscilla, whose partnership had as much honesty, integrity, and simple joy as any I have ever known.Milt, as always, was a careful, astute, and trustworthy listener.But it is also my good fortune that I saw Milt the month before in Lawrence, Kansas, on one of the NSO residencies, and it was there that I got to experience Milt in a fourth capacity: that of friend. For the first time in years, I had the opportunity to hear him play with the orchestra, and then take him to a nice local bistro and ply him with a number of martinis, all with unusual names and exotic colors not usually found in nature. This was a special pleasure; those of us who knew Milt well knew that a sort of Swiss-watch-like exactitude characterized his public persona and personal demeanor.And while one of Milt’s more admirable qualities was how at ease he was with himself, the great comfort he had in just being Milt, I must admit that drinking with Milt was quite fun, for the experience of seeing those impressive intellectual tolerances become…hyper lubricated, should I say?

I first began studying with Milt in the early eighties.As we all know, a private teacher is an absolute necessity to achieving success, the best teachers being part personal trainer, part artistic mentor, part life coach. My personal case was all the more unique because I didn’t play the trombone when I started studying with him; I played the Euphonium in the United States Marine Band. Sometimes called the “tenor tuba”, a good analogy for the euphonium’s stature in the classical music world would be “the lonely girl with the ‘great personality’ who never gets asked to the prom.” (And sometimes grows up to become the “crazy aunt” that gets locked in a basement somewhere.) I was unhappy with my career path, and started studying with Milt in hopes of changing jobs, maybe becoming a university professor, perhaps playing trombone professionally someday in some capacity.

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