well Nancy uh as as i was talking
my brother uh his name is Ainsley and he was a conductor in New York City of a Goldman band and they did park concerts at the Lincoln Center
oh
uh during the summer season uh they were free concerts but he was with that group for like twenty one years and uh did both very traditional marches a lot of you know John Phillips Sousa and
uh all of and Franco Goldman in fact the name of the uh the band was because
one of the famous uh march composers of all time uh Richard Franco Goldman and his son Edwin actually i may may have those reversed father and son
started the band like seventy years ago i think so it's the oldest organization really of it's type in the country
and uh my brother became involved with them over twenty years ago as a manager and then ended up being both manager and conductor for quite a number of years
oh that that must have been wonderful were you able to hear
so
well i was able to uh to hear him about three years ago for the first time at a a concert there and uh it was quite enjoyable um
yeah sometimes
in that uh he also had one of the composers well actually there were two of the composers that he used were actually there at the performance also
oh
so i got to meet them and in particular i got to go to the rehearsal before hand
and that was when i realized how good he really was was at a rehearsal as opposed to an actually performance of uh working with the musicians
and and one of his biggest struggles uh with the band was that this was all union musicians
oh
which didn't give him a lot of leeway once they were in the band
uh he had a very difficult time replacing them no matter how they were performing at that particular season
and uh he ended up with some very unusual characters in that that organization it was easy to tell that just from the rehearsal time
but uh anyway what were you going to tell me about your dad
well um actually that lead into a couple different things um my dad worked with unions um
for placing so he could really relate to what you were saying but um
my dad enjoyed opera and classical music and ballets and so um even as a child i got to go
to a lot of different um
kinds of musical events
um i grew up in Detroit and so we had opportunities for a wide range of things um one of the
regrets i have is that i grew up with a house filled with classical music and music that i really loved but i never took the time to
find out um who the composers were or it it was just always there and there were certain things that um
i liked so much but i still have trouble to this day sometimes i will recognize a passage but i'll have no idea what it's from or whose it is and um over the last few years
oh
and when my father lived with us um i made more of an effort to learn but um that's something that i
regretted but um when you mentioned the band music my
uh-huh
son just started high school this year and has been in band since middle school but this was the first year
uh-huh
with marching band and i really enjoy band music um it
oh yeah i i was in the band in high school and that
oh what instrument did you play
i played the clarinet
oh i like that a
and uh so i i did that my all through high school and then i guess my first year in college i played but it wasn't a marching band it was just a it was a symphonic band
and uh ironically in college the marching band was part of the athletic department rather than the music department
oh
and i was i was in the symphonic band that was actually part of the music department and i thought that was pretty unusual
yeah
what uh my husband Tim played a trombone in high school and he also played in a a band in college not marching band but
oh
symphonic and that was
really the first time that i got to hear a lot of the um
band music and some of the wonderful composers other than the traditional Sousa and things that everybody knows and
right
so i've
enjoyed this so much um with our son now doing that and he plays tuba so i don't don't get to see him when he's doing um
uh-huh
a tuba tuba
concerts we just see the top of the bell at the back but in marching season he's easy to pick out
right well does he bring the tuba home to
yes uh
oh my goodness
we uh
laughed when they're in sixth grade and they try them out on instruments and try to find the appropriate instruments we thought of suggesting that they ought to also find out what vehicles the parents drive because
uh the tuba and the sousaphone don't fit in in every kind of uh car
yeah just anything i have a niece that plays the harp
oh
and she found the same thing that uh she had i think what they call a troubadour harp for a while and that she learned on and trained on but then uh
uh a harp became available which there are just not very many instruments uh and a used harp became available in Colorado and they lived in in uh Missouri at the time
and they actually drove to Colorado to buy this instrument but they first had to go and buy a full sized
station wagon
uh so they'd have room to bring it home
and that's dictated their cars every since then just having one large enough for a full you know concert harp
yes
that she plays
uh
well i uh because of my brother's uh work with music for a long time he was a
uh a critic for the Music Journal
and as a result of that he
well that was part of the reason he ended up with this incredible classical album uh library or collection which i have now inherited
and um
oh
i i don't listen to in nearly enough it's the same sort of thing there's so much music that i recognize but don't who is yeah who is the composer
but i've
based on just measuring number of inches or in this case feet of albums that i think i have about a a uh two thousand album classical record collection now
oh gosh
so i figured that uh i could probably listen to a different album every day of the year for about seven years
God
if i wanted to at this point
but then it's hard to find a place to stack that much music
yes
most of it is still in boxes stacked quite high in a back room
but uh
anyway
um
well he must have collected that over a period of years
well he really did uh i know that he was a critic probably in the early sixties in New York City he had um
we were thirteen and a half years apart i think and he left home at like sixteen to go to Westminster Choir College
hum
and you know he did not finish high school he just went straight straight to Westminster s o i never really remember having lived at home with him
and after he did get out of college it was not long he
before he uh just moved to New York City knowing that that's where he had to live to quote unquote make it in the music world
and um became a music critic and that probably puts us somewhere around the early sixties uh when he was doing that
i've seen that date a good bit on the uh on some of the albums because he would typically uh sign and date everything that
i think everything that he owned he did that with but certainly all of his albums and all of the music uh he had signed and dated
i was going to ask you and it seemed that there must have been a big gap um i also have a brother who's thirteen years older and one who's nineteen years older you you don't run into that very often
my goodness
you have one that's nineteen years older
uh-huh
my goodness
that is a wide spread
well we were at the opposite ends there were two sisters in between
but uh because he left home so early i think there was one summer i can remember him living at home and i was maybe six years old
yeah
i mean other than that uh i don't even ever remember living in in the same house with him at all
oh i'm glad you got to go and hear him in New York though that um that must have been
very special
well it was it was thrilling
um my mother was with me at the time and it was ironically it was the first time that we'd seen him conduct that particular group which he'd been with so long
she had seen him fact she had seen him conduct in Carnegie Hall before
oh
um and i'm not sure it was probably the American Symphony Orchestra when Leopold Stokowlski was
uh in New York City that was Stokowlski's orchestra and Ainsley was an associate conductor with him for quite a while and it at one point did in fact uh
uh conduct there at Carnegie Hall so she got to see him there and i i didn't
