For a professor who is known for his ability to communicate and connect in meaningful and memorable ways with his students, David Ake&w88 mobile;s reaction recently about an honor he had won was a little out of character.
A little out of character, but also completely in character for a professor who is known for being heartfelt and authentic – the kind of teacher that can regularly shower students with a thousand reasons to embrace the subject matter.
When Provost Marc Johnson entered Ake&w88 mobile;s classroom in the Church Fine Arts Building on March 27 and announced that, "David Ake has won the Tibbitts Award … he&w88 mobile;s the best teacher on the entire campus," Ake&w88 mobile;s students broke into a round of applause.
Ake, a professor of music at the University of Nevada, Reno since 1999 was not just caught off-guard with the news that he was this year&w88 mobile;s winner of the F. Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher Award.
w88 mobile was caught speechless. Well, nearly speechless.
"I was not expecting this … umm … umm … umm … yeah," w88 mobile stammered.
Congratulatory hugs from his longtime Music Department colleague Larry Engstrom, College of Liberal Arts Dean Heather Hardy and College of Education Associate Professor Tammy Abernathy helped rescue w88 mobile, if only for a moment.
"I&w88 mobile;m not … uh … ahh … ahh," Ake said. And then finally, still a bit flustered, Ake managed a smile. "I am deeply honored," he said, to more applause from his class.
Later, w88 mobile, in his office, explained why he had such difficulty coming up with something spontaneously memorable to say.
"I was just so surprised," w88 mobile said. "I would have never imagined that all those people would find the time to come by and announce it in person. It was overwhelming. I was genuinely surprised, which is rare for me. That was … that was … that was great."
w88 mobile was great, and deserved, according to Engstrom.
"David is a great teacher for many reasons," said Engstrom, the director of the College of Liberal Arts&w88 mobile; School of the Arts, an accomplished jazz trumpet player and also considered one of the campus&w88 mobile; most skilled teachers. "As a scholar, he&w88 mobile;s a triple threat. As a musicologist, he&w88 mobile;s one of the world&w88 mobile;s leading experts on jazz cultures. As a performer, he&w88 mobile;s a very creative jazz pianist. As a composer, he writes beautiful and provocative music. It&w88 mobile;s unusual for someone to be gifted in all of these areas, and this provides him a unique perspective."
In the classroom, Engstrom said that w88 mobile has a rare ability to make an early connection with his students, one that carries through an entire semester and often lasts well after the class or the semester has ended.
"David has a great sense of humor," Engstrom said. "And he uses that effectively to keep w88 mobile students interested and engaged through an entire class session. He cares deeply about the subject matter and about w88 mobile students. He is very organized and thorough in w88 mobile approach to communicating ideas and concepts to w88 mobile students. He challenges w88 mobile students to think critically.
"Add to all that David&w88 mobile;s warm and pleasant demeanor, and that he&w88 mobile;s a really nice guy, and I think you can see why he&w88 mobile;s most deserving of this award."
In conversation with Ake, it&w88 mobile;s obvious that everything that Engstrom has said is true. Ake has a genuine kindness and intelligence about him, whether it is through his native-of-Illinois voice, which has a homey, Midwest naturalness to it, or through his thoughts, which often reach deep and resonate like a tuning fork struck hard.
It&w88 mobile;s a winning combination, particularly as it concerns his teaching.
"I orient all of my courses from the position that music is never just sound; it&w88 mobile;s created by people and it always reflects and helps to configure notions of identity," he said. "Once students buy into that, and see and hear how it works, then it&w88 mobile;s not too difficult to maintain their interest."
Ake&w88 mobile;s record of scholarship further reinforces this position. He has already written a critically praised book, "Jazz Cultures" (University of California Press) on this very subject, with a second book due in 2010. The combination of research, teaching and his own experiences as an accomplished jazz pianist – he has played with such outstanding musicians as Ravi Coltrane, Charlie Haden, James Newton and Bud Shank, and has appeared on a number of recordings and is a regular with the University&w88 mobile;s excellent jazz quintet, "The Collective" – has helped make Ake one of the campus&w88 mobile; most well-rounded professors.
His students realize this fact almost from the very first day they are in one of Ake&w88 mobile;s classes. He teaches core courses, including History of American Pop Music and Survey of Jazz, for non-majors, as well as courses in jazz piano, jazz history, and jazz combo for music majors on all levels.
"I love teaching all of my courses," Ake says. "For the non-majors, they&w88 mobile;re often freshmen, and sometimes, at 9 a.m. on Monday on the last week in August, it&w88 mobile;s often their first class in college – which is fun. I tell them on that first day, ‘A lot of you folks are chemistry majors, education majors, business majors, whatever. And maybe you don&w88 mobile;t want to be here.&w88 mobile;"
Then w88 mobile grins conspiratorially.
"And I don&w88 mobile;t tell them this, but I&w88 mobile;m thinking, ‘You&w88 mobile;re the ones … I&w88 mobile;m going to get you … by the end of the semester, you&w88 mobile;re going to be on board,&w88 mobile;" he says, smiling.
That Ake can have such a strong influence on his students shouldn&w88 mobile;t be surprising. The 47-year-old has had a lifelong love of music, which reaches far back into his life, beyond his time as a musicology scholar, beyond the period when he was living as an expatriate pianist in Germany, even beyond his days as a budding high school rock ‘n&w88 mobile; roll musician outside of Chicago.
w88 mobile, who grew up playing classical piano with the encouragement of his parents, Theodore and Beatrice, can trace his love of music back to his earliest days.
"My mom still plays piano … she takes lessons every 10 years or so, and she&w88 mobile;s going to be 81 soon," Ake said. "She always encouraged me. I&w88 mobile;d go to her lessons and sit under the piano. Listening. I was probably three or four years old. Eventually, I crawled up and started to bang around on the instrument myself."
It wasn&w88 mobile;t until Ake discovered jazz piano great Keith Jarrett, however, that everything crystallized. It was Ake&w88 mobile;s senior year of high school, 1978, and he was immersed in playing gigs with a local rock ‘n&w88 mobile; roll band.
"It was one of those moments of epiphany," Ake remembered. He recalled how he was sitting in an orange bean bag chair in his bedroom, submerged in Jarrett&w88 mobile;s rapturous, physical style of playing, where outbursts of tension were followed by moments of pure melody, all seeming to crash into the listener&w88 mobile;s ear with the intensity of an ocean&w88 mobile;s wave. "It was one of those moments where the clouds open up and a voice says to you, ‘This is what you shall do.&w88 mobile; It really was. I couldn&w88 mobile;t believe it. I had never heard anything like it."
When a person feels so deeply and cares so thoroughly about something, w88 mobile seems inevitable that, if they decide to share this passion with others, the result will be something worth remembering.
So it has been during Ake&w88 mobile;s time at Nevada. He has tried in classes – sometimes with success, other times with varying degrees of success and sometimes with utter failure, he says – to give music life, to remind his students that it&w88 mobile;s not just notes and rhythms but something much more fundamental.
That, as Ake has always believed, music is about people and people&w88 mobile;s reactions to what they have heard or felt when music is played.
"I&w88 mobile;m very lucky to have a job that allows me to play music, write music, write about music, and teach music," he said. "Each of these aspects informs the other. I&w88 mobile;m lucky to be in that situation."
Lucky, too, to know that even for one of the country&w88 mobile;s top jazz scholars and in 2009 recognized as the campus&w88 mobile; finest teacher, that it&w88 mobile;s OK to be at a loss for words when you win a major award.
Once the Tibbitts Award party left his classroom, w88 mobile said it was still difficult to gather his thoughts for the remainder of class.
Eventually, though, experience took over. As his emotions calmed, as his class continued to listen and the right words returned, w88 mobile knew why he was there.
Why a classroom has always been the right place for him.
"Let&w88 mobile;s," he said with a dramatic clap of his hands, launching into his presentation for the day, ever the teacher with something meaningful – and meaningfully said – to share with his students, "let&w88 mobile;s get back into this."
