Going to Midwest!
- Jeremy Earnhart
- Dec 14, 2025
- 4 min read
This week, I’m heading to the Midwest Clinic in Chicago beginning on Wednesday, December 16.
It will be the first time in many years that I attend primarily for professional growth, listening, and recalibration.
I’ve been to Midwest at many points in my career, and in many different capacities. This one feels different.
Not lighter. More intentional.
Midwest, 1999: Inside the Sound
My first Midwest Clinic was in 1999, as a performer with the L.D. Bell High School Band. I was an assistant band director and played trumpet on the program.
We performed Prayer of St. Gregory by Alan Hovhaness.
The reason I played trumpet that year is simple and instructive: We had run out of conductor positions.
Joe Grzybowski was the head band director and had assembled an extraordinary group of people:
Harry Begian, whom Joe knew from his time at Wayne State University in Michigan
John Pollard, percussion specialist and assistant band director at L.D. Bell, conducting the percussion ensemble
John Whitwell, Abaline Christian/Michigan State, who had hired Joe in MI, then to TX
Nikki Grzybowski, piccolo soloist under Begian
A program carrying deep Midwest and Detroit lineage, including Begian’s historic association with Cass Technical High School—a program that remains storied and discussed to this day
Cathy Grzybowski, a flutist of Begian’s at Cass Tech, part of that same lineage
How to include me? Joe had to make real-time leadership decisions with limited podium space and a very public stage.
So he made one.
I performed.
Not as a consolation prize. Not as an afterthought.
As part of the sound.
Looking back now, I understand how elegant that solution actually was. Hovhaness doesn’t reward ego. Prayer of St. Gregory requires restraint, breath, patience, and trust. It’s a piece about presence, not prominence.
That placement shaped me more than any podium would have.
A Brief Meeting, and How Memory Works
Our concert took place at the Hilton, which was where the Midwest Clinic was held at the time.
After the performance, Gwen recalls that we briefly met with someone connected to Trinity High School—an associate of hers named Tony Storer. We likely shook hands, exchanged a few words, and moved on.
What’s interesting is how memory holds these moments.
My memory places the first time Gwen and I truly met in the L.D. Bell band hall in August of 2000.
Her memory places it at Midwest, after she watched me perform a solo in December of 1999.
Both things can be true.
Sometimes we remember the first conversation. Sometimes we remember the first recognition.
Either way, Midwest was already quietly doing what it often does best: creating intersections whose significance only becomes clear later.
Before Midwest: TMEA, 1996
There’s another moment that’s been sitting with me as I prepare to go to Chicago.
In 1996, I performed under Eugene Miglioro Corporon’s baton at TMEA.
It was a combined performance of the UNT Wind Symphony and Symphonic Band, and we played big music. We closed with Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis.
I was playing first trumpet, alongside Ray Vazquez, both in Dr. Leonard Candelaria's Trumpet Studio, and it remains one of the biggest, fullest ensemble experiences of my life.
The floor was literally shaking. Not metaphorically. Physically.
There was weight, velocity, clarity, and trust in that sound—an ensemble completely committed to something larger than itself. It was overwhelming in the best possible way.
It was special.
And I can’t help but think about that as I head to Chicago to hear the UNT Wind Symphony again—this time for Gene Corporon’s final Midwest performance.
Midwest, 2014: Too Much to Say, Not Enough Time
In 2014, I returned to The Midwest Clinic as a presenter.
The room was packed. I was humbled by the response.
I also made a familiar mistake: I had too much information and not enough time. The session was full of ideas, data, systems thinking, and advocacy language. There was no Q&A because there simply wasn’t space.
Lesson learned.
At the time, many of those ideas felt ahead of where the profession was. Today, they feel less radical and more operational—which is its own quiet validation.
Gwen and Kierstyn came with me and Dear old Dad showed up for this one (he had his own concerts to deal with when I played in 1999). Not a lot of photos taken, but here are some.
Midwest, 2025: Returning With Intention
This year, I’m returning with intention.
I’m there to listen, to learn, and to recalibrate—not to manage, not to host, and not to perform beyond being an engaged music educator.
That distinction matters.
Hearing the University of North Texas Wind Symphony—and hearing it in this moment—feels like more than just attending a concert. It feels like revisiting a language I learned early, one that still shapes how I understand sound, leadership, and community.
This feels like a moment of both continuity and closure.
For me, this is what professional growth looks like right now: showing up, listening carefully, and letting the music teach again.
Can't wait to see YOU in Chicago!
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