A Name in the News – El Cerrito High's Band Director

El Cerrito High School's director of bands (and alum), Keith Johnson, has been appearing in the local press lately. 

Our on the cherry-tree planting at El Cerrito High included a prominent mention of Johnson directing the student band performing the national anthems of the United States and of Japan at a ceremony that included several dignitaries, including Japan's top diplomat for Northern California and Nevada.

And Chris Treadway's column the previous Friday in the weekly Journal newspaper noted Johnson's role also as director of award-winning studio bands from the Berkeley Jazzschool.

And on March 13, he was the subject of a nice profile in the Spartan Daily, campus paper at his alma mater, San Jose State University.

We were happy to receive permission to reprint the Spartan Daily feature here:

By Nina Tabios

El Cerrito High School's music room is heavily soundproofed, and with good reason.

Backpacks and instrument cases are thrown to the side of the room as the noise, from students of different sections practicing recital pieces,fills the space with an array of tones in a smattering of octaves.

Once Keith Johnson steps into the room, all that noise transforms into music, starting off with scales and then perfecting performance pieces with each section.

"Flutes, you're sounding flat," Johnson exclaimed. "Flutes only, let's sing it so you get the pitch right."

Johnson, an SJSU alumnus, said he teaches at El Cerrito High School (ECHS) as well as the Jazz School in Berkeley, where his Monday Night Studio Band recently won an award from DownBeat Magazine for "Outstanding Large Jazz Ensemble" in the Performing Arts High School category.

"I knew they had a shot at it, but it was still a surprise when we got it," he said.

Johnson has directed many groups and has brought his bands to perform in competitions and venues, including Yoshi's Jazz Club, Victoria Jazz Festival and the Next Generation Monterey Jazz Festival, according to the ECHS band website.

For his ECHS band, Johnson said that his focus is to teach the kids how to appreciate and expose themselves to music.

"I really enjoy watching kids progress," he said. "They're really like a blank canvas. There's a big responsibility as a music teacher. You're training them, however way you present the information to them and however you're teaching them to appreciate music, that's the way they'll probably carry for the rest of their lives."

Johnson's focus for his Jazz School band is a little different, where he said he's "teaching them the music," as opposed to having to teach technique and theory.

"My goal with them is a little different in that what I try to do with them is really push them beyond what they'd normally be doing in their high school band," he said. "I try to make it as different as possible so its supplementary to what they're doing in their school program."

Johnson's interest in jazz peaked while teaching at Portola, but he said he took an interest in music education while at ECHS and chose to study music at SJSU due to his high school music director, Jesse Leyva.

"I knew I wanted to be a music major from my junior year here," he said. "He was the reason I got into it."

Johnson's explains that while studying music, there are two focuses: Jazz or classical.

He said that while classical is more traditional, he favored jazz because of its "organic" qualities.

"Jazz is more spontaneous," he said. "You can perform the same piece of music three nights in a row and each night it can sound completely different."

While at SJSU, Johnson studied under music professor Aaron Lington, Edward Harris and Kathryn Adduci on trumpet.

In an email about Johnson, Lington stated that he remembers Johnson mostly for his intuitive curiosity about "techniques and repertoire."

Johnson, on the other hand, remembers Lington mostly for his teaching methods.

"Initially I didn't really like the music we played in that band," he said. "But once I started to get into the music he was picking, I liked how he taught it to us. I feel that anyone that was paying attention in his class that was going to be a teacher was going to be really prepared to go out there and teach a jazz ensemble."

"In the jazz world, he's probably been my biggest mentor in just learning how to do it," he said.

Johnson's own teaching style involves "high standards," as said by David Whitenack, an elementary education professor, as well as a parent of one of Johnson's students.

"He's very demanding of his students in a supportive way," Whitenack said. "He's very particular in how he wants them to play."

According to Whitenack, Johnson frequently invites his colleagues and mentors to teach his kids and to work with the different sections.

"Teaching is his passion," Whitenack said. "He's not teaching music to just pay the bills, he wants to teach."

When asked what he'd be doing if he wasn't teaching, Johnson said: "To be honest I don't know. I'd probably still be working at Safeway. I honestly I had no interest in anything else."