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ANDY
SCHIEFELBEIN (bass) — Andy joined the Gateway City Big Band in the Fall of 2004. A 1995 graduate of St. Mary’s High
School, he actually started playing trombone because of a random set of
events. When an art class his
freshman year was cancelled because of a teacher’s retirement, he chose
music for a humanities course. When
the local music store called to ask what instrument he wanted to rent for
the class, he asked for suggestions.
The man on the phone said that music teachers always like having hard-to-find
trombone players, so he became a trombonist. After
high school he played for a few years in the Meramec Community College
Symphony and the UMSL jazz band before having to put the trombone down to
concentrate on his college course work.
In February of 1998 he started working in technology and switched to
night courses so he could work full time.
In December of 1999 he landed a job working for AT&T as a
Systems Engineer, where he’s still employed. How
he came to play bass trombone for the Gateway
City Big Band
was another set of random events. In
early 2000 he had a chance to start playing trombone again with another
local big band (Ambassadors of Swing).
He was finally able to complete his BS in Management and Information
Systems from UMSL in December of 2001 and, as a result, he had new-found
free time and a desire to once again play a more “legitimate” style of
music. He joined the Meramec
Community College Symphonic Band, but was assigned the lowest trombone
part. Since he was playing a
straight small bore tenor (Bach LT16M) which was not conducive to playing
the very low notes that the parts required, he bought a King 6b bass
trombone off eBay. In 2003, one of
his fellow trombone players in the Ambassadors (Dale Bantle, still playing
trombone at age 87!) showed him the GCBB newsletter
announcing that the current bass trombonist, Dan Anglim, was being
transferred to Arizona and they needed a bass trombone player. He contacted Karen Sharp about getting on
with the band, but the position was being filled by another guy at the time
so Andy was added to the sub list. He
remembers that the first rehearsal he played with the GCBB
opened up with Count Basie’s Queen Bee – if you know the chart you know it
opens up with a beautiful lyrical line by the sax section. From that point on he was hooked and even
though he was a sub at the time, he knew that he wanted to be a member of a
band that sounded that good. After
subbing a few times, the bass trombone position once again opened up and he
was asked to join the band. He
started taking lessons which he says “has helped me become a much more
solid musician and has enhanced my enjoyment of music and playing with the GCBB
that much more”. Andy is
presently working on his Masters in Computer Science at Webster University
and continues to take private trombone lessons with Marquita Reef. He is also the secretary of the Board of
Directors of the St. Louis Low Brass Collective, an organization dedicated
to the promotion and education of low brass musicians in the area
(http://stllbc.org). |
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