Donn Schaefer with his trombone in Red Butte Gardens. (Photo: University Marketing & Communications)

WRITTEN BY JULIA LYON

As the news of 2020 grew ever worse and racial injustice seemed to be revealed every day, one University of Utah School of Music Trombone Professor wondered how he could make a difference.

The coronavirus pandemic made performing challenging, but Donn Schaefer thought there must be some way he could help improve America and society in general.

His thoughts turned to something new, something free that he could give away: trombone music with a message that could travel around the world.

“The goal was that each time someone programmed this piece of music or reads about this piece of music, this might cause them to reflect about racial injustice,” he said.

Schaefer reached out to a Puerto Rican composer who had studied trombone with him at the U several years before. William Pagan-Perez immediately jumped onboard the project and composed “Justice Fanfare: A music piece to unite people in a good cause” for trombone octet.

The score contains eight of Schaefer’s words (in English and Spanish), words he hopes inspire everyone who hears and plays it.

“Love each other. Celebrate each other. Learn together.”

Within weeks, the piece was performed by some of the top trombone students in the country. The Eastman School of Music premiered “Justice Fanfare” as did the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Now “Justice Fanfare” is the beginning of an initiative that Schaefer calls Harmonic Revolution: Music for Change. As of January, he was seeking grants to support new compositions with a social justice focus for other instrument families.

“A bunch of people coming together for a common cause — that’s what music is about,” he said. “Maybe music is the right place to address some of the things that are happening in society.”

Having hosted the International Trombone Festival at the U in 2008, Schaefer has contacts around the world. By early 2021, he had sent “Justice Fanfare” to more than 1,000 trombonists all over the globe.

Though composers do not normally give away their music for free, Pagan-Perez hopes his piece is accessible and inspiring to the audience and performers.

“I hope they play and honor the intention of the music,” he said. “Everyone needs justice. Everyone needs to be heard.”

The piece has a blend of influences. The Latin percussion rhythms have Afro-Caribbean roots. The melody is his own but has a chord progression influenced by The Beatles.

Now living in Buffalo, New York, Pagan-Perez teaches music to pre-K through eighth grade public school students who are almost entirely of Puerto Rican descent. The others are a melting pot including African-American, African, and Asian students.

“We are a very diverse community,” he said. “We know our students sometimes suffer discrimination.”

His first time living outside Puerto Rico was as a U student several years ago. When Schaefer, his trombone teacher, asked Pagan-Perez to perform a bass trombone piece composed by a Puerto Rican, Pagan-Perez explained that no such thing existed.

So, Schaefer encouraged him to write his own music.

“I don’t have a composing degree,” Pagan-Perez recalls saying. Schaefer was not deterred.

“Mozart didn’t have one either,” the professor said.

A native of Vancouver, Canada, Schaefer had a window into America’s race relations when he worked as a professor in Tennessee and Mississippi prior to coming to the U. Early on a Sunday morning, he and a colleague, a black trumpet player, were driving to a church gig in a wealthy neighborhood of Nashville.

The police pulled their car over.

His black colleague, the driver, hadn’t done anything wrong.

“At the time, I don’t think I’d ever heard the phrase ‘driving while Black,’” Schaefer said. “I felt bad for my colleague and I didn’t know what to say — I was stunned into silence when I realized why we were being bothered.”

His next job at the University of Mississippi opened his eyes to even more racial tension and the inherent problems with the uneven public education system in the state.

He recruited some top black music students who struggled academically after attending severely underfunded high schools.

“The educational climate in the state was frustrating,” said Schaefer who worked in Mississippi for six years. “And the open racism was hard to take.”

The next piece to be commissioned by the Harmonic Revolution won’t necessarily be called “Justice Fanfare.” It will have a message.

Because even if he didn’t grow up in the United States, Schaefer is taking action.

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to do this project,” he said. “But I felt like — enough — I want to do something about what I see is going on.” ■

Together, we move.

The School of Music responded to the social injustice exposed in 2020 with a message of inclusivity and a rejection of racism. But School Director Miguel Chuaqui wanted to make sure the school took real steps toward significant change. 

As a result, the school is reviewing its hiring practices with an eye toward encouraging a greater diversity of applicants. It is reviewing its programs to look for ways to broaden students’ musical education and increase their understanding of “anti-racist perspectives in music.” 

Diversifying the faculty and student body has been a focus for several years. Retirements have led to more hires from underrepresented communities, and domestic students of color now make up 25% of the undergraduate student body.

“Recruitment has been proactive — trying to find students who bring diversity into the School of Music,” he said. “To do that, we have to work on the curriculum to make it more attractive to students with a diversity of backgrounds.” 

Some of those changes are already apparent in events programming. A September talk focused “On White Supremacy and Antiracism in Music Theory.” Last November, a panel discussion on diversity in the arts, titled “Who is Heard, and Who is Listening?” included artists and scholars focusing on African-American art song.

Chuaqui believes musicians must continue to ask these kinds of questions: 

“Any initiatives that lead us to examine why we’re teaching what we’re teaching will lead us towards teaching that is relevant and that values an engagement with larger social concerns,” he said.