PORT ANGELES — One early morning in the summer of 1968, Ron Jones and his rock ’n’ roll band were about to cross over.
Headed out of Idaho and toward Spokane on U.S. Highway 95, they ascended. As did the sun.
As the band drove from the mountain time zone into the Pacific’s, a DJ’s voice came on the car radio.
“We have a new record,” the announcer proclaimed, “from the Beatles.”
And out poured “Hey Jude,” chorus swelling as the car crested the hill. The Fab Four sang, as Jones, with his own band of four lads from Pasco, drove on.
That was one of many musical high points in Jones’ young life. He’s still a self-described “dyed in the wool, hard-core Beatles fan,” who considers the group’s music to be “art music,” just like Beethoven.
In the years since, Jones has played, taught and arranged all manner of art music. He’s been teaching at Port Angeles High School for nearly four decades now, and after his seventh trip to New York City’s Carnegie Hall this spring, Jones’ devotion to music shows no sign of flagging.
Though he turns 63 this year, Jones clearly has no problem recalling what it feels like to be an adolescent. Back when he was a teen, he was the youngest member of a Pasco band called the Pastels; they traveled around the Northwest, going to concerts and playing gigs with Jones’ father as their manager.
It was one of those gigs, in a Boise nightclub, that led to the “Hey Jude” moment in 1968.
Afterward, they decided to set out for home — though they knew they didn’t quite have enough gas to get to the station they knew of near the Idaho-Washington line.
Being young guys, “we left anyway,” Jones said.
They arrived at the station at Riggins, Idaho, where the pumps were indeed shut down for the night. There was a little shop, though, where they could get coffee.
“We were four long-haired hippie freaks,” walking in, Jones remembered. Everybody turned to look.
To their surprise, not only did the proprietor pour them coffee, but he also opened up the gas station so they could fill up and get back on the road.
Jones went from rock ’n’ roll music into jazz and classical — and, as music director at Port Angeles High, he has taken hundreds of students to perform at one of the American temples of music.
Every four years since 1989 — most recently this March — Jones has conducted the Roughrider Orchestra in concert at Carnegie Hall, the 122-year-old venue in Manhattan.
This past Easter Sunday, Jones led his orchestra — 26 cellists, 56 violinists, 23 violists, five string bassists — through pieces he had chosen: Beethoven’s Allegretto, Dvorak’s “American Rondo,” Wiren’s Serenade for Strings and, for good measure, Hans Zimmer’s “At World’s End” from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Jones and the Roughriders bowed to a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall; then they all went on a dinner cruise around New York Harbor. You might think this was plenty for one day, but somehow the musicians had energy left over for a karaoke party that night. One of its highlights: Jones, with gusto, singing “Proud Mary” while his students belted out the “Rollin!’” chorus.
All of this could be traced back to late 1988 when Jones received a generic “Dear colleague” letter from MidAmerica Productions, which presents Carnegie Hall concerts by high school orchestras from across the country.
When Jones responded to the letter, asking for details, MidAmerica told him to overnight-mail a tape. That tape got Port Angeles High an invitation to New York City, for a concert date only about four months away.
“I had never organized anything like that,” said Jones, who at the time was a mere 14 years into his tenure at Port Angeles High School.
“It was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
But Jones and about 75 young musicians, the full Roughrider Orchestra, did play Carnegie Hall in 1989. Maestro Jones, as he’s now known on Twitter, has returned with his orchestra in 1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013.
Each time, Jones’ wife Debbie, who also works in student support at Port Angeles High, accompanies the large group of students and chaperones. This spring, the Port Angeles contingent numbered about 160 people, with Debbie and Ron Jones shepherding them through subway trains and museums, Grand Central Terminal, Broadway and a dozen other Big Apple sights.
On the three mornings before the Carnegie Hall concert, Jones led rehearsals. An unrelenting taskmaster, he went over the finer points of each piece, as every musician wore a dead-serious expression.
“Of course, we are nervous,” 15-year-old violinist Leah Marsh said the day before the Carnegie concert. “But as an orchestra, I think we are really good.”
Jones vividly recalls his own music teachers. And perhaps this story should be traced back further, to those earliest inspirations.
He points to a pivotal moment that came when he was just short of 8 years old. His first guitar lesson, on April 9, 1958, Jones recalled.
In the ensuing years, he grew as a musician — and developed his abilities as a collaborator. When his music teacher at Pasco High School, Bob Herbig, formed a stage band, Jones’ best friend was tapped as the guitarist. So Jones might have been shut out. Instead, he agreed to play bass. After that, Herbig, knowing Jones was also playing in a rock ’n’ roll band, would ask for his student’s input on orchestral music.
Jones’ career as a music educator began too while he was still in high school. Four days a week, from 4 p.m. till 8 p.m., he taught half-hour guitar lessons to kids who were just a bit younger. Jones himself was 15.
Jones went on to study with John LaChapelle, the teacher known as the Tri-Cities’ godfather of jazz guitar. LaChapelle, who also counted the renowned jazzman Larry Coryell among his students, died last month at age 91.
Jones knew early that he wanted to make music, and teaching, his life. After earning a music degree at Eastern Washington University, he came to Port Angeles in 1975. Since then he’s taught students at all grade levels, conducted honor orchestras in both Washington and Oregon and served as an adjudicator at numerous competitions.
Today, Jones is chairman of Port Angeles High School’s Fine Arts Department as well as the District Music Coordinator. He has received a long list of awards including Washington state Music Educator of the Year in 2002 and induction into the Washington Music Educators Association Hall of Fame.
And Jones knows how to have fun. He’s been known to ride a skateboard in class — and to fall off of it. And last month, when the Roughrider Orchestra traveled to the Northwest Orchestra Festival in Gresham, Ore., the maestro danced the Harlem Shake — in suit and tie with video cameras rolling. The resulting clip on YouTube has some 6,400 hits and counting.
Jones reached the 30-year mark at Port Angeles High — a milestone at which many teachers retire — back in 2005. But then, as now, Jones isn’t interested in leaving school.
“I’m having too much fun,” he said. “I’m energized by the kids.”
To watch Jones in the trenches — rehearsing his students — is to see a man fully inside the music. Conducting 110 teenagers in a hotel ballroom in New York City, he seems to hear everyone. And he is no softy.
“Louder, louder!” he commanded early in one New York rehearsal.
“Too loud!” he said later.
“That was really good,” came still later, as the students laughed.
When the time finally comes for Port Angeles’ orchestra to enter that curvaceous place called Carnegie Hall, Maestro Jones is a calm presence. In white tie and tails, he is the picture of grace, leading his students as they fill the hall with delicious sound.
Dewey Ehling, a fellow conductor and teacher who lives in Port Angeles, hailed Jones on the occasion of his seventh trip to New York City. “Ron Jones is a marvelous musician who is a real educator,” said Ehling.
“An important part of learning is to provide incentives, and Ron has done that through these trips to the nation’s iconic venue. He deserves all the praise we as a community can give him.
“Debbie, his wife, also deserves much credit, as I know she supports Ron in all they’ve been able to achieve.”
Jones isn’t sitting around congratulating himself, however. He’s preparing for the Washington Music Educators Association-Interscholastic Activities Association Solo & Ensemble Contest in Ellensburg on April 26 and 27.
Through it all, Jones seeks to teach something beyond what’s on that music stand.
He keeps an old photograph of the first Port Angeles High School orchestra — just 10 students, circa 1919 — on his classroom wall.
“I like the kids to know they’re part of something bigger,” he said.
During one of the last rehearsals before Carnegie Hall, Jones kept up a refrain: Don’t bury your head in your sheet music. Lift your eyes to the conductor, so we are all playing together.
“Look up,” Jones said, again and again. “Don’t rush.”
With those words he gives the teenagers guidelines for making music — and for living life.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.