Making music matter Lawrence known locally as director, teacher, musician

Don Lawrence has been blowing his own horn nearly all his life. Literally.

It began when he was 8. His mother insisted each of her three children learn to play a musical instrument, so Lawrence picked up the baritone horn.

With his brother on trombone, his mother on piano and his sister and father on saxophone, they formed a family band. They rehearsed at home in the living room and played each week at the Church of the Nazarene in Kalispell.

It was the first of Lawrence's many bands. Today, he plays big band music in the Don Lawrence Orchestra, German polka music in the Bavarian Echoes and "everything from Bach to Basie" in BrassWerks. He teaches music at Swan River School three afternoons a week and directs the Spirit of Youth band for local middle school students.

Music has been his life for seven decades now. He has seen it inspire and motivate students. He has witnessed it cross language and cultural barriers.

Music, Lawrence said, has created incredible opportunities in his life.

From his family's living room, Lawrence moved to the Flathead High School band, where he played whatever the band director needed at the time. Usually, that meant the tuba - actually a 60-pound sousaphone the 104-pound teen struggled to hold up.

After graduation, he "bummed around Kalispell" for a couple of years and began playing and writing big band music. He loved its versatility and endless arrangement possibilities.

"Big bands play anything. They play it all," he said. "Just about anything you can play in any other band, you can play in a big band."

In the early 1950s, Lawrence put his musical talents to work as a bandsman with the U.S. Air Force. It was on bases in Texas that he first began to consider a musical career.

It was also where he met his future wife, Barbara, who was in nurses' training in Dallas. They've been married now for nearly 55 years.

"She has been the most encouraging factor in my life to pursue music," Lawrence said.

Barbara did, however, tell him he had to use his G.I. Bill, so Lawrence enrolled at the University of Montana to pursue a music education degree. In 1959, he graduated cum laude - a fact that still surprises him, considering one bad grade on his transcript.

He met his Waterloo in piano class. He often used the piano to write music and lay out chords, but he'd never learned to play correctly - a fact that exasperated his teacher.

"She wanted me to do it her way," he said. "Finally I told her, 'Just give me a D so I don't have to come in here any more.'"

Even with the D, Lawrence had no trouble finding work after graduation. He took a job teaching band in Columbia Falls, a position he held for the next 25 years.

His high school bands consistently scored well at state music festivals, and his high school jazz band, the Columbians, twice won the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Idaho, defeating bands from all around the Pacific Northwest.

In 1970, Lawrence, his wife, his 87-member high school band and a handful of chaperones took a three-week trip to Europe. They had a tight schedule that left no time for superfluous sightseeing - a fact that frustrated the Lawrences as they watched fascinating-looking places flash by on the Autobahn.

"Barbara and I knew we had to go back without the encumbrance of all those kids and chaperones," he said.

They got their chance in 1977, when they spent Oktoberfest in Munich with Lawrence's brother and sister-in-law. A few years later, Lawrence signed up to teach music at a G.I. school in Bamberg, Germany.

It was at Trosdorf, a nearby village, that he first encountered a local band. While watching them perform, Lawrence nudged an American boy standing next to him.

"Think there's a chance they'd let me play with that band?" Lawrence asked him.

When the boy asked the band, the manager graciously agreed to let Lawrence come to a rehearsal.

"I was afraid to go to the first rehearsal," Lawrence remembered. "I had excuses the first two weeks."

Finally, when the manager threatened to rescind the invitation, Lawrence went. From that first practice on, he was a full-fledged, lifetime member of the Trosdorf band.

The G.I. school principal was amazed, Lawrence said.

"She told me, 'I've never seen anyone taken in so readily,'" he said. "Because of music, you can just assimilate into the band."

When his year at the G.I. school was up, Lawrence returned to the Flathead Valley. He retired from Columbia Falls in 1984 and thought his teaching career was over. Then, two years later, he was asked to finish the school year as the band instructor in Bigfork.

That job included teaching band at Swan River School, which Lawrence loved. He taught at the rural school for several years after that, and then quit when he was eligible to collect Social Security.

After that, his involvement in local schools was minimal until David Barr, at the time the Flathead High School band director and a fellow Don Lawrence Orchestra member, asked him to write a fight song for Glacier High School. (Barr currently is band director at Glacier.)

"I asked him, 'Do you just want the rattly bang thing, or do you want it to have a little substance?'" Lawrence said. "He said, 'I want it to sound like Don Lawrence.'"

The result, "Go Glacier," was immediately embraced by district staff.

"Everybody seems to like it, and I feel good about that," he said.

His school involvement increased even further when he was asked to return to Swan River School.

"It was a little bit of my ego," Lawrence confessed. "I thought, 'I'm 77. Maybe I still got some stuff I can teach these young kids.' …

"They flattered me pretty bad, and I got sucked into it."

The job isn't as easy as it was before, though. The kids are different. Lawrence is different.

"It'd been 13 years since I'd done that," he said. "I don't have the stamina I had 13 years ago, physically. And I'm not one of those guys who can sit on a stool and teach band."

"I'm not the great motivator I once was," he added. "I found out it's not the same."

He hopes he'll be able to teach the fifth- and sixth-grade students the discipline and cohesiveness they'll need to be a "neat little band." Those who want to play after school can audition for Lawrence's Spirit of Youth band, which is sponsored by the Methodist churches in Bigfork and Columbia Falls.

More than anything, he wants to inspire kids to play more than notes.

"A computer can play notes, but there's no soul, no nothing to back it up," he said. "If there's nothing happening, put it away."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com