UA professor breathes music

SELF PORTRAIT Date and place of birth: Oct.

11, 1955, Boise, Idaho Family: husband Bob, daughters Shawnna, Deseary, Makenzi and Allie Occupation: Chairman of the department of music at the University of Arkansas My favorite place to ride horses is in an arena. I like working on dressage.

A place I’d like to visit is Africa. I would be thrilled to see the wildlife there.

I’d like to know more about astronomy, horse nutrition and all the native wildlife and plants in Arkansas.

To relieve stress, I ride horses, garden and make stained glass projects.

The thing about my office is I have so much respect for my colleagues - the faculty, staff and students. They are truly dedicated to what they do.

The best advice I ever received was from my dad.

“Don’t let other people’s opinions shape your actions.

You ultimately live with the consequences of [those] actions.” Something people would be surprised to learn about me is I haven’t been to a movie theater since Titanic was playing. Also, my choice of music at home and in the car is jazz.

The chore I liked doing least as a child was weeding the garden. Now I love doing that.

My best tip: Make the most of every minute. Time is limited.

If I had an extra hour in the day I’d learn to play jazz well.

A word to sum me up: determinedRonda Mains sat quietly on a royal red padded seat in the concert hall, even though her feet didn’t yet touch the floor and she had to lean to and fro to see the musicians of the Boise Philharmonic press the keys and move the bows.

As the last note of the song died away slowly, she closed her eyes and thought “this is magical,” and wished that the concert would never end.

Mains grew up in a household that appreciated music. Her father was an amateur musician and she went to sleep listening to her mother playing piano.Her days were filled with farm chores, riding horses and playing with her two younger brothers and the neighborhood kids. Many of her growing up years were lived without TV, leaving plenty of time for music to pique her interest and take precedence as preferred entertainment.

Her first inclination to play music came in the fourth grade, when she declared that she wanted to learn the harp. Her parents were enthusiastic until they saw what harps cost, then tactfully directed her to another instrument. Like many budding musicians, Mains began on the piano.

She took lessons from a number of instructors, from whom she learned a range of teaching and performing styles. Her first piano instructor was strict and adamant about reading music; the next was casual, coming to her parents’ home and teaching her how to be more creative and spontaneous. Yet another would really make things click for Mains.

“Fern Coonrod was the most musical person I think I’ve ever met,” Mains says.

Coonrod was an English horn player for the Boise Philharmonic who lived deep in the Idaho countryside in a double-wide trailer and taught music lessons in what Mains could only describe as a little shack.

“I think my lesson was like 7:30 on Saturday morning, and sometimes I wouldn’t leave until 10,” Mains says. “We’d talk about music, we’d listen to music … I think that’s where I really started to appreciate music.

She had the sort of infectious love for music that made other people around her love it, too. “It was hard not to be excited about something when you see someone you respect really excited about it,” Mainssays.

Coonrod encouraged Mains to consume music in any way possible, and even let her drop by after school to listen in on her friends’ lessons, a practice that would prepare Mains to become a teacher.

“I learned a lot listening to her through the wall teaching them,” Mains says. “Sometimes when I’ve gone to master classes, I’d learn more just by auditing and listening to the teacher work with students.

“I still like to do that.” IMMERSED IN MUSIC

Working with instructors like Coonrod led to her love for playing music of any style and with any number of musicians. In the fifth grade, Mains joined her first band and picked up the flute. Onceshe began playing, Coonrod encouraged her to bring it to her piano lessons. It was there that she played in her first trio, with Coonrod and another student.

“The flute appealed to me because I thought it was quiet,” Mains says. “But it’s really not.”

The challenge was also a draw for her.

“The first band director that I had said, ‘No, no, you shouldn’t play the flute,’” she says. “I have what’s called a Cupid’s bow,” a shape of lip that makes playing flute more difficult.

“[Making] sound on the flute was not easy for me. Holding it was not easy for me, but I was determined,” she says. “I don’t like anyone telling me I can’t do something.”

In high school, she was in marching band, the orchestra, honors band, and many regional and state bands and orchestras, whose members were selected by competitive audition. Once she got involved, she didn’t stop. She was in color guard, she was a twirler, and then she began to take flute lessons her junior year.

Her first private flute instructor was Susan Norell, principal of the Boise Philharmonic and a faculty member at Boise State University.

“She was a wonderful role model,” Mains says. “She just would tell it like it was and I appreciate that. I don’t need - and didn’t want - things sugar-coated.”

Norell’s mixture of rigidity and structure was just what Mains needed to excel. Over time, the instructor required more and more of her: to not return to her studio until she had mastered all of her scales; to make eight-hour, one-way trips to receive instruction from Dick Hahn, now professor emeritus of flute and former director of the Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho.

Mains gained her competitiveness in high school, to the credit of her band director, a Mr. Simon.

“We had chair tests every week,” she says. The inter-band competition ranked students by their abilities, making the most capable student “first chair” and so on. “The first time I tried out, I ended up third chair and I thought, ‘Well, this will just not do.’”

At the second chair test, Mains took first chair and kept it the remainder of the school year.

“I played constantly before an audition,” Mains says. “I just kept playing and playing and playing and playing. My poor family … they were subjected to whatever my audition material was for weeks.”

While she was a student at Boise State University, music was a way to make an income.Mains was a substitute flute player for the Boise Philharmonic, played with the Boise Symphonette for a summer, played with the Treasure Valley Winds, and received a scholarship to play the calliope, an organ-like instrument that has a keyboard and pipes. She continued picking upjobs as a piano accompanist, but she found that she was in more demand as a flutist.

“I found myself playing flute a lot” for jobs, she said, and the combination of these jobs reflects her strengths as a soloist, accompanist and collaborative musician. It allowed her the luxury to not have to choose between her two instruments, so before she knew it, she was pursuing a double performance major in piano and flute, a pursuit she maintained until shortly before graduation.

The chase for a double degree ended when Mains was awarded a sizable fellowship.

“It meant that I had to finish school,” Mains says. “At the same time I was trying to do two recitals (one for piano, one for flute) and I was just struggling to get the last [piano] piece memorized.

So, “I have a flute performance degree because of onepiece.”

ROAD TO FAYETTEVILLE

At a doctoral seminar at the University of Oregon, Mains had an assignment involving how to find a job that changed the course of her career.

“When we got to the part about interviews and cover letters, our assignment was to go to the ‘job book’ in the office and find a job we thought we were qualified for,” Mains says.

In it was a job for an instructor with flute and music education qualifications.

“I wrote the cover letter and put my CV [curriculum vitae] together, and [my teacher] looked at it, handed it back to me and said, ‘That’s your job. Apply.’”

Before long, Mains got a call from James Greeson, then music department chairman at the University of Arkansas.She looked up Fayetteville on the map, took a quick trip to see the area and soon settled into life in the Ozarks. It was 1987.

“It doesn’t happen that way very often,” Mains says. “I was very lucky.”

“When she arrived, she seemed very collegial,” says Steve Gates, a UA music professor. “She seemed to settle into the job easily and she navigated comfortably what can be difficult things for new people.”

With more than 25 years of teaching and management under her belt, she populates her student pool with musicians whom she feels are up to the task.

“I do hold my students to a high standard. I’m pretty honest … I’m not afraid to tell a student that, you know, ‘If you’re not dedicated enough to this, you might think of picking a different major.’

“I have studied with a couple of teachers who were brutal to the point that it was painful,” she says. “But I don’t think that tearing people down is the way to get better.”

Her strengths in teaching may stem from the ease she has in identifying with students’ musical struggles, since learning flute was a challenge. In fact, she says she truly loves to teach, and students find a convenient role model in her.

“She’s trustworthy, and all of her students know that,” said Jennifer White, who works with her in the music department and was a student of Mains’. “She’s always been in my life. She’s been a big mentor; I can always take her wisdom to heart.”

White described her teaching style as the perfect mix of necessarily tough but also understanding.

“Even though I was having problems [adjusting to the college workload], everyone else was the same way,” White said. “She was very good about distributing her supportiveness.” MUSICAL APPETITE

At any given point of the school year, you can find Mains performing in faculty recitals, Opera in the Ozarks or in The Lyrique Quintet, an ensemble made up of faculty members, soloing for the UA Wind Symphony, or joining the Summer Chamber Music Festival and Arkansas Philharmonic for guest performances.

“She’s done those things that are somewhat expected [of music faculty members] but at the same time, you have to have a certain ability and desire and willingness to do that,” Gates said.

She imparts love for the craft the only way she knows how: by living and breathing music. Gates says that’s part of what makes her such an enjoyable instructor.

“As an adviser, I’ve heard from students how much they like her and appreciate her teaching,” he said. “Students don’t like teachers unless they’re good teachers.”

Though she prefers Bach over most composers, Lieberman over most flute arrangers and chamber music above all else, you would almost never be able to tell because Mains has so many feathers in her musical hat.

This voracious musical appetite might be why Mains was chosen to receive the elite Lucy Cavendish College fellowship to spend a year at Cambridge University in England in 1998. There, she spent hours reading original Bach and Handel manuscripts.

“I was so excited when I saw an actual Bach manuscript,” Mains said of her time in the vault beneath the Fitzwilliam Museum. “I know I sound like a nerd, but it was one of the highlights of my life.”

Mains’ quest for musical knowledge is sustained by her ever-expanding interests. She is working on an addition to the Handel flute sonatas, studying ethnic flute performance techniques and collecting flutes from South America, Cambodia and Thailand.

On an average day, she might drop her four daughters off at school, volunteer for Band Booster Moms and go horseback riding with one of her girls on her retired Yellowstone trail pony.

“I like everything about her,” said Bob Mains, Ronda’s husband of 25 years. “She’s detailed, goal driven, she’s gone from professor and Ph.D. to the first woman chairperson of the music department.

“She’s our kids’ teacher … she helps out a lot and gets them to help out a lot,” he said. “If I need help, she’s always there to help me, without any problems at all.”

If you spot her in the music department, she’s likely lending a hand there too, advising a student, rehearsing with a faculty member or coordinating paperwork, helping the little pieces come together so everyone can shine on their own stage.