{"id":6510,"date":"2016-08-11T04:02:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T11:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/kenai-native-playing-with-navy-fleet-band-performs-in-visit\/"},"modified":"2016-08-11T04:02:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T11:02:18","slug":"kenai-native-playing-with-navy-fleet-band-performs-in-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/kenai-native-playing-with-navy-fleet-band-performs-in-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenai native, playing with Navy Fleet Band, performs in visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

KENAI<\/strong> \u2014 In some respects, Sterling Strickler followed in his father\u2019s footsteps; in other ways, he found his own path. Like his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Unlike his father, he carries a bassoon, tuba or guitar instead of a weapon.<\/p>\n

However, the service eventually found them both across the Pacific Ocean in Yokosuka, Japan \u2014 Strickler\u2019s father in the 1940s and Strickler himself on his own tour about 50 years later. Strickler played with the Navy Fleet Band there as well as in a variety of other countries scattered around the Pacific Rim during his time in the Navy.<\/p>\n

His father had always told stories about the Navy and what he\u2019d seen during his time in Japan, so it was neat to see what he had heard so much about, Strickler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe used to tell stories about the caves, when he went down and explored them as part of his duties,\u201d Strickler said. \u201cI was really psyched to be stationed in the same place he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strickler, who grew up in Kenai before leaving for college in 1986, is a professional musician with the Navy Fleet Band. This week, he has been with the group visiting Kenai for the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra\u2019s annual Summer Music Festival, playing free concerts around town. The last free concert will be held at noon Wednesday at the Kenai Visitor and Cultural Center in Kenai.<\/p>\n

The band has 13 official groups throughout the contiguous U.S., Hawaii, Italy and Japan, and the players tour the world playing arrangements for dignitaries as well. Strickler said he has played events from courthouse openings to birthday parties for foreign royalty, with a concert setlist ranging from big band jazz on a tuba to marching as a drum major.<\/p>\n

He plays a variety of instruments from the tuba to electric bass, but he said he really began with bassoon between the sixth and seventh grades. He\u2019d started on the clarinet, but when his younger brother also wanted to play the clarinet, his mother and music teacher suggested he try the bassoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got the bassoon home and tried to figure it out,\u201d Strickler said. \u201cI practiced really hard in the summer of sixth grade. I was more or less caught up with the other kids by the time seventh grade rolled around.\u201d<\/p>\n

A variety of music camps followed, from a fine arts camp in Alaska to the world-renowned Interlochen Center for the Arts music camp in Michigan, which Strickler said \u201cwas a wake-up call\u201d because of the skill level many of the other students exhibited. When he graduated high school in 1986, he attended Washington University in St. Louis for a bachelor\u2019s degree in music. After he graduated from Valparaiso University in Indiana with a master\u2019s degree, he chose to enlist in the Navy and try out for the band.<\/p>\n

The auditions for the Navy Fleet Band are notoriously high-level and rigorous. An additional requirement stipulated that many of the players be multi-skilled \u2014 for instance, if a bassoon player wanted to be accepted into the band, there not only had to be space for him, but he\u2019d also have to know how to play saxophone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to audition for them (with) a mixture of prepared pieces, show your versatility and you have to know a lot of scales,\u201d Strickler said. \u201cYou have to be good at sight reading. You can\u2019t just walk in there and say, \u2018I want to play\u2019 and they\u2019ll train you. We hire a lot of people from conservatories (who have music degrees).\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he didn\u2019t know saxophone but did know tuba and bass guitar, Strickler was able to audition on those two instruments and made it in on his two secondary instruments, he said. After a boot camp and training in Virginia, players are sent out to their band assignments. He was sent to Newport, Rhode Island to play in his first band. Strickler played there for 6\u00bd years, often playing tuba and bass guitar.<\/p>\n

Over the years, he\u2019s expanded his skills, picking up drum majoring \u2014 he learned the moves both from the Navy and from videos of college bands, he said \u2014 and even re-engineering and learning a contrabassoon himself specifically for an all-state band when he was later stationed in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

Contrabassoon, also known as double bassoon, plays an octave lower than ordinary bassoon and the technique is slightly different.<\/p>\n

Strickler\u2019s also had the opportunity to play with a number of different types of groups with varying types of music. He started playing with a woodwind quintet, like the one he has been playing with in Kenai, when he was stationed in Japan. The skill level of the players in the Navy bands allows the group to play very complicated pieces, he said.<\/p>\n

Playing all over the world is a chance for the Navy to build relationships with other countries over music, Strickler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a low-pressure way of creating ties with other countries,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re just out there talking to them, getting to know them.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 23 years with the Navy, Strickler said he is planning to retire and return to Kenai in May 2017. Although unsure of what he plans to do, he said he doesn\u2019t expect it to take long to plug into the music community.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to stay passionate about music in a long career of it if one remembers what it\u2019s like to be away from music, Strickler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the office jobs I used to do before the band, after you have to sit at a desk for the year and be off your horn, you\u2019re desperate to play,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you remember that. Sometimes you show up to a rehearsal and it\u2019s a bad photocopy and there\u2019s multiple clef changes, stuff like that used to make me really annoyed \u2026 but you have to take a step back, look at it, learn it. And you go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Elizabeth Earl is a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion. She can be reached at elizabeth.earl@peninsulaclarion.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KENAI \u2014 In some respects, Sterling Strickler followed in his father\u2019s footsteps; in other ways, he found his own path. Like his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Unlike his father, he carries a bassoon, tuba or guitar instead of a weapon. However, the service eventually found them both across the Pacific Ocean in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":434,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/434"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6510"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}