Ron on teaching: "I should have a rearview mirror, one of those bicycle ones, to keep track of you all."

Ron on posture: "Trumpets, raise your stands. You look like you’re drilling for oil. You look like 95-year-old trumpet players. Not that I have anything against old men. I am one."

Ron on paying attention: "I have a brick wall at home that listens better sometimes."

Ron on breathing: "Breathe!"

Ron on all things good: "Excellent!"

Ron Black stands with his hands poised in the air above a music stand. He leans forward slightly and breathes in as he lifts his arms to conduct the first beat of a song called "Serengeti." Members of the middle school band watch and wait for the cue. They keep waiting. Ron, in mid-gesture, shoots a glance at a fidgety clarinet player to his right. The boy is bent down, fussing with something near the floor. Ron’s got him.
"Your shoes aren’t as important as the music. You can live without shoes—you can’t live without music." The corners of Ron’s mouth curve at his own joke as he brings his hands a notch higher and then lets them fall. Beat one, "Serengeti."

Ron claims that he can often guess what instrument an adult played while in school just by the way a person looks or acts. As for Ron, he looks like the tuba player he was and is: tall and broad across the shoulders with a little thickening through the middle. And he acts like a tuba player too. Tuba players aren’t intimidated by much.

Ron has perfected a penetrating stare that gains the notice of even the most distracted trombonist. It’s a stare that settles in on its target and waits. The noise level in the crowded band room drops until the offender realizes something is going on, looks up, sees Ron’s stare and stops in mid-sentence. Ron stares just a second longer than he needs to, just to drive the point home.

This stare is born of years of experience. Ron has been teaching band to kids for more than twenty years. Each weekday for the past twelve years, he has started his day at South Eugene High School, where he leads the concert band and wind ensemble. About 11 a.m., he jumps in his car and drives over to Spencer Butte Middle School, where he teaches classes in beginning, intermediate and advanced band. Some of his students have never picked up an instrument before they come to Ron’s class. Others have been taking private lessons since they were six.

When he gets to the middle school band room, he switches on the lights and watches them click on section by section. They illuminate the almost fifty empty chairs that curve in rows facing the battered music stand in front from which he holds court and conducts. The band room’s mottled carpet is patterned just right to hide stains, and the sound proofing tiles in the ceiling have thousands of little holes for absorbing middle school musicianship. Ron is whistling.