Passing the baton: After 37 years, Jan Tweed steps down from the Waunakee Community Band conductor's podium

Her tireless and steadfast commitment to the band over nearly four decades left big shoes to fill, so big that it will take two people to fill them—Toby Shucha as head conductor and artistic director and Michael Wathen as associate conductor and administrative director.

Shucha grew up in Waunakee and joined the WCB in high school. After time away for college and his first teaching job, he moved back here in 1999 and has been playing with the band ever since.

In the years since, Shucha was primed by Tweed to become her replacement. She started him off conducting one piece a season, then one piece a concert, finally moving him into an assistant conductor role. As such, him taking over always seemed like the succession plan.

So with her stepping down, Shucha felt ready to step up, but he knew that while he shared Tweed’s passion for the band, he couldn’t provide the same time commitment she had.

For most of the time she was in charge of the band, Tweed was retired from her longtime job as a music instructor for the Waunakee Community School District. Shucha, on the other hand, is still a professor of music at Ripon College and spends several nights a week there during the school year.

Shucha said he was sort of both groomed for the position and also volunteered. Tweed had been talking about retiring for the last six or seven years and so every year was a “is this the year or isn’t it?” situation for the board.

“I was prepared for it; the only question was what would my work schedule look like when the time came?” Shucha said.

In fact, had Shucha not been given those guest conducting opportunities over the years, he might have moved on from the band, he said. While he enjoys playing, he has appreciated the chance to work on his leadership of an ensemble. Conducting the WCB also offered a reprieve from the pressure and anxiety he faced having to conduct under observation for his doctorate.

His gratitude for those opportunities played into his decision to take on the director role.

“I was beginning to feel like this is an organization I owed something to,” he said. “Not begrudgingly, I just felt it’d given so much to me, I should give back what I could, and in this case it’s an expertise that I happen to have.”

Tweed not only did most of the conducting, but also the bulk of the administrative work.

It’s the latter part that would be too much for Shucha to shoulder on top of his full-time job, and where Wathen will assist.

“I told the board from the get-go that there was no way for me to take over all that. With a full time job, I can’t take all that on,” Shucha said. “That is where the roles are kind of changing and will shift a little bit. Mike as another director is important. He’s capable of running rehearsals without me there.”

Wathen moved to Middleton from Illinois in 2016. He sought out a local group to play the bass trombone with and discovered WCB, which he joined in 2017.

In 2018, Tweed asked him to conduct one piece, and in 2019, he took on an assistant conducting role.

“I think the point of us taking a dual role is that Jan used to do everything, she had the time to do everything,” he said. “I think with Toby actively teaching, the band is kind of best served by breaking-up that responsibility a little bit. Toby’s role will be to select songs for concerts, decide soloists, and do the bulk of conducting. In my role, I will still conduct maybe two or three songs a concert, and I will be taking on an administrative role behind the scenes with scheduling rehearsals and reserving space. I don’t think handling paperwork is something anyone ever looks forward to doing, but it will certainly be helping the band. Jan had a vision and keeping it going is something I’ll be glad to be doing.”

He said he’s not sure what the time commitment will be, but feels the biggest challenge will simply be getting used to Jan not being the conductor.

Like Shucha, Wathen is grateful that Tweed offered him chances to conduct. While Wathen also earned a degree in music education, he never went into it as a career like Shucha did.

“I don’t know what prompted Jan to keep giving me chances to get up on the podium, but I appreciated the chance. It’s given me skills I wanted to have,” he said. “It was a new thing for me to be learning, which really energized me. I don’t know if I would have gotten that opportunity with another group. The members are supportive of me and I appreciate that. I am learning from them, I hope they learn from me.”

Conducting a family

The full band roster is close to 100 members, with around 60-70 players per concert on average. There are high school students up through octogenarians.

“It seemed like Jan tried to create a family atmosphere within the band,” Wathen said. “That’s commendable, that doesn’t necessarily come easy to me. I hope we can build on that and keep that going forward.”

A WCB season typically consists of five summer concerts, held on Thursdays, scheduled around Independence Day, plus playing in the WaunaFest parade. Rehearsals usually are only held April through July.

Occasionally there are trips to other communities, as well, such as DeForest, Madison, Marshall and Waupaca. While international travel was paused for COVID-19, in the past there were also overseas excursions over the years to countries including Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and Norway.

While some day he may seek to put his own stamp on the band, for now Shucha said he plans to keep things basically the same as they’ve been.

“In terms of changes, there’s nothing imminent,” he said. “As I explained to the board, something I learned through my work as an educator is when coming into a new position, always always approach it that you are change enough. I’m not Jan and that change is big enough for the organization. Unless something is screaming for change, you should spend a year doing things the way your predecessor did, then consider changes. Sometimes you come to understand why your predecessor did things the way they did, which you couldn’t see before, and you realize that change is not necessary.”

So while he says the board is providing him quite a bit of autonomy in terms of selecting the concert pieces, Shucha said he will stick to Tweed’s formula for now—a mix of marches, polkas, and movie and broadway show tunes—concert band-oriented pieces.

Though, he’s also looking forward to bringing back into the fold some pieces that were in the repertoire in the past but had fallen out of rotation, as well as introducing brand new pieces.

“I like a variety of styles and genres during a concert, I have no intention of changing that,” he said.

Though, he knows he can’t stay the course forever.

“If you’re dead set on doing what’s always been done, that’s a sure route to failure,” he said. “We’re adapting to the loss of Jan, but it’ll be exciting to see where that goes. Overall this is a chance for me to maintain the legacy that Jan has built, but eventually take things in new directions. I’m not thinking about changing things yet, but the band will evolve over time. I’ll be making choices as I steer the ship, seeing where we go.”

Tweed has now been given the title director emeritus. Shucha doesn’t know how much she plans to be involved from now on, but assures that “she’s definitely still going to be involved.”

“She’s still attending board meetings at this point, she’s just stepping down from the day-to-day of running the organization and taking on the bulk of conducting,” he said.

While he’s sure there will be challenges ahead, he currently isn’t feeling any worries or anxieties. The band already knows him from years of assistant conducting, so “they know what they’re getting, they know how I do things,” he said.

“This is a group that has been a part of the fabric of Waunakee for over 35 years,” Shucha said. “I think it’s important that people in the community are aware it’s something we do for free. This is a community service organization, but we’re happy and pleased to do it. None of this would have happened without Jan, the group wouldn’t be here without Jan. She started it, grew it over the years, steered it, led it, and built it up to a point it’s a mature organization that can continue to operate even as she steps back from it. As she steps down, we will honor her by continuing to move this group forward.”