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 Steve Tyler, musician, educator and occasional conductor for
FSJ, recently returned to his boyhood home of Mountain View after a 25-year
absence from the Bay Area. In the 1970s he attended De Anza College in Cupertino,
where he played for Dr. Herb Patnoe’s great jazz bands, and worked for two
summers as a musician at Santa Clara’s Great America amusement park. He
subsequently moved to Southern California to finish his Bachelor’s degree at
California State University, Northridge.
After graduation he remained in L.A. to pursue work as a
freelance musician in the Hollywood music scene. He toured as the lead
trombonist with the orchestras of Harry James, Bill Watrous, and Mel Torme, performed with the big bands of Louis Bellson, Bill Holman, Tex Beneke, and Ray
Anthony, and played professionally for entertainers such as Tony Bennett, Marvin Hamlisch, Barbara McNair, and Peter Nero. He also did studio work and was on call
for symphony orchestras such as the Ventura County Symphony and West Valley
Symphony, not to mention various brass chamber ensembles, dance bands, R&B
bands, Salsa bands, Dixieland and traditional jazz groups, Renaissance
ensembles, Polka bands—everything up to and including the L.A. Raiders Band!
As a composer and arranger, he wrote charts for many singers
and performing acts, arrangements for his Brass Quartet, and charts for college
and high school marching bands and jazz ensembles. He has big band charts
published by UNC Jazz Press, marching band arrangements by Almo Publications, trombone choir arrangements by Touch of Brass Music, and score transcriptions (Yellowjackets,
Sting, Blood, Sweat and Tears) done for the Hal Leonard Corporation.
As an educator, he taught a class at Los Angeles City College,
and later served on the front office staff and taught for several years at the
Dick Grove School of Music, a well-known professional school in L.A. In the
mid-1990s, he returned to school and earned a Master of Music degree in Jazz
Studies from the University of Southern California. Upon graduation, he was
offered his first full-time collegiate professorship: running the instrumental
program for the School for Music Vocations at Southwestern Community College in
Creston, Iowa. While in Iowa, he honed his teaching skills, adjudicated and did
clinics for music contests and jazz festivals, and, while braving the cold, icy
winters, humid summers, and long drives through the cornfields, met many
wonderful colleagues and students and gained a great deal of appreciation for a
much simpler life.
Once his wife and children had experienced
enough of the wilds of Iowa, he brought his family back to the Bay Area in 1999.
His teaching schedule rapidly filled up, and he has since taught classes at West
Valley and Foothill College, served as grades 4-8 band instructor at three local
Catholic schools, and been a faculty member for the San Jose Jazz Society's
"Jazz Goes to College" summer camp. He directs the Daddios evening
jazz band at De Anza College (his alma mater) and the jazz band at his daughter's
school, Blach Intermediate, and teaches private students at West Valley Music in
Mountain View (http://www.westvalleymusic.com/).
And he's become in demand as a trombonist again, performing recently for artists
such as Robert Goulet, Johnny Mathis, and The Temptations, as well as with local
dance bands, jazz groups and as an occasional sub for FSJ. With all this,
somehow he carves out the time for his most important jobs: husband to his wife
Carolyn, a wonderful pianist and composer in her own right, and dad to his two
children, Allison and Brian.
You can send email to: Steve
Tyler
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