Neither musician nor teacher, retired Navy chemist Norm Johnson might seem an unlikely candidate to head the Island Music Teachers Guild.
But Johnson, who learned about IMTG through his daughter’s music lessons, lessons, has found a connection that has enriched both his own life and the organization he now leads.
“We’ve been consumers of their product – both my daughter and myself; they have great teachers and skilled musicians,” Johnson said. “Last fall I was invited to be on the board of directors. I felt greatly honored, as this was exactly the kind of thing I had hoped to do in my retirement.
In January, he was elected IMTG president, which he describes as “a great surprise.”
But guitar teacher and former IMTG president Alan Simcoe says Johnson has the right qualifications to head the group.
“We are not very good administrators,” Simcoe said. “We were kind of looking at each other and not getting things done. We needed someone like Norm – with managerials skills from outside our group of teachers. We’re very happy to have him.”
Johnson’s background is in math and science. The only child of a teacher mother and carpenter father, Johnson grew up in Occidental a tiny rural town in Northern California.
“None of my friends took music lessons,” Johnson said. “The things that were important skills were knowing how to fix the tractor. That and modifying cars to be drag racers.”
Encouraged by his mother to attend college, Johnson enrolled at University of California at Davis and majored in biology, with his eye on a career in forest services or national parks.
Johnson didn’t land a forestry job, however; instead he was offered a position as physical sciences technician for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, so he became a chemist for the Navy.
Examining, through an electron microscope, the jagged edges of a metal tear to determine whether stress or corrosion had caused the break was detective work Johnson found especially interesting.
Retiring in his early 50s after a 32-year career – the last 20 as a supervisor of the science lab at Bangor submarine base – Johnson had time and energy to get involved in his young daughter’s education.
It was Johnson who hired piano teacher Barbara Deering to teach 6-year-old Melissa, and Johnson who sat through the lessons.
Eavesdropping became music instruction by osmosis, Johnson says.
“In the very first piano lessons, I couldn’t help but hear what Barbara was teaching and it started to sink in,” Johnson said. “This was an awakening, as I always thought that if you were a scientist then you couldn’t be an artist. But when I heard Barbara explain the theory, it just suddenly jelled.”
Johnson started helping his daughter with her music homework, writing out sheet-music on the computer.
Then he began to study, himself, taking alto recorder lessons with IMTG teacher Nancy Bergman to accompany his daughter’s soprano recorder.
“For the first time in my life, at the age of 52, I began making music,” Johnson said. “I was always convinced that I was tone deaf or somehow not born with the necessary tools, but here I was doing it.”
Today, Johnson says, he plays his favorite Irish, Scottish and English folk tunes on the ferry, in the park, and even in the old ammunition batteries at Fort Worden.
Although heading Island Teachers Music Guild will keep him busy for the next year, Johnson has a long-term, music-related dream.
“One of my personal goals is to help adults like me, who thought they could never learn music,” Johnson said. “I would like to eventually teach some basic classes…I believe it is never too late to learn.”
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The guild
Island Music Teachers Guild was founded in fall 1999 as a network of professional music educators. Guild members offer classes across a wide spectrum of music idioms for students beginning to advanced. IMTG also gathers students for ensemble performance; books concerts; sponsors community music and dance events, and offers workshops, clinics and summer camps. Call 842-5485.
