Trombone led to voyage of discovery in community
Print Edition
When Mindy Ruskovich relocated to Shanghai in the summer of 2008 as a music teacher at Shanghai Community International School, she couldn’t find a community band in the city, so she founded the Shanghai Community Band.
“I’ve studied music since I was 11, and all the time that I was going to school, I was always performing in community bands, with city bands, orchestras and things like that,” she says.
When she came to shanghai, she found an orchestra and a choir — but no community band for everybody.
“I started this band because there were a lot of adults who contacted me and asked where they could play.
“I had a little experience, so I created it,” Ruskovich says.
The Shanghai Community Band now has about 45 members, including woodwind, brass and percussion sections, as well as an electric bass player.
“We were mostly expats, but seven Chinese guys joined, so now I try to conduct with a little bit of Chinese and try my best to keep everything together,” she says.
“There are a lot of people who haven’t played for years, then they see the band and say, ‘I want to join in again’,” Ruskovich says. “There’s a huge mix of people.”
The band rehearses every Sunday from 6 to 8pm in the Hongqiao Cultural Center Theater in Changning District and hosts concerts for the community.
“Changning has been really supportive, they gave us this theater now for two years to rehearse, what we do is we give concerts and they set up a theater for us,” she says.
Sometimes neighborhood residents come to watch rehearsals and the band prides itself on having as repertoire of different styles with which to entertain them and other audiences — including marches, contemporary music, Latin music and movie themes.
“You can really do a lot with the variety of instruments on stage,” she says.
Ruskovich began her music journey in Idaho, the US, when she played the trombone in her school band.
“I didn’t know if I was good or not good,” she admits. “I never heard another trombone for about three years after I started playing. I just tried to keep up with the clarinets and trumpets which play fast,” she recalls.
It was fun
When Ruskovich got to high school, she discovered another trombonist there.
“And I was much better than this other kid. Then I really liked it and I said I wanted to keep doing this,” she says.
On leaving school, she majored in music education at the University of Idaho, and afterward went to Hawaii to teach.
“I taught for four years and I got my master’s degree and then taught for two more years in Hawaii,” she says.
Then in 2008, she took a break from education to play trombone on a cruise ship in the Caribbean on a six-month contract.
“It was fun. My job was just to play two hours a night in the band, so there was a lot of time for diving and exploring Caribbean islands while living on a cruise ship,” she recalls.
“It was a good experience, but I didn’t want to stay doing that forever.”
During her stint on the cruise ship — which often had only five Americans among 1,200 people on board — Ruskovich realized that she loved being overseas.
“I got to meet people from lots of nationalities, so I started thinking about coming overseas and teaching and playing, and that’s when I got the job in Shanghai,” she says.
The first year was difficult, Ruskovich recalls, because she didn’t know anybody. But over time she met musicians in town and started playing with a lot of bands.
“And as soon as I became part of that community, I began to love Shanghai. You meet all these musicians and everybody getting along and really fun to be with, and that’s what made me stay in shanghai for so long,” she says.
Ruskovich taught at Shanghai Community International School for five years as a band teacher, then opened her own company, Dynamix Performing Arts Academy and Echo Arts Live, a music education consulting company.
“I work with people who are looking to open their own music school, or people who need to make their music program better at the school,” she says.
Ruskovich has also run the Shanghai Community Jazz Band since 2013 — a big band with singers.
Just three weeks ago she started the Shanghai Youth Jazz Band, currently featuring Chinese children age 11 to 15.
And just to keep her trombone skills honed, Ruskovich also performs weekly at the JZ Club.
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