Sharing the Sound: Eastwood looks to bring music education to others

Oct. 25—When Island native Pamela Eastwood was 9 years old, she received a gift that would pave the start of her career in music and education.

"I don't remember me asking for it; I just remember at Christmas, 'Santa' brought me an electric keyboard ... and I thought that was so awesome," Eastwood, 44, said. "...And then that became, 'Oh, we're going to take piano lessons.'

"Looking back, I asked my mom, 'How did I get into this?' and she's like, 'Oh, you asked for music lessons'."

While Eastwood didn't recall the conversation, she began taking lessons in March 1988 with Florence Stodghill in Livermore until her sophomore year of high school.

As a student at McLean County High School, Eastwood played trumpet in the marching band, and also was involved in concert and pep bands.

She found playing the trumpet "a lot of fun" and started getting into the musicians like jazz trumpeter Doc Severinsen, who led the NBC Orchestra on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and even saw Severinsen perform live at Madisonville Community College.

"To me, that was just awe inspiring and I'm just like, 'I want to play like Doc Severinsen'," Eastwood said. "...So, I hit the ground practicing more and more and more. I would spend hours a day practicing ...."

Years later in 2004, Eastwood met Severinsen at a trumpet conference in Denver where they took pictures together and she was able to share with him how much of an influence he was on her career.

"He was just honored," she said, "and ... he was like, 'Do you mind if I get my picture taken with you?' ...I felt privileged at that point."

Eastwood didn't major in music when she enrolled at the University of New Mexico in 1996, though she had the opportunity to play with the pep band for then-President Bill Clinton during a reelection campaign in Albuquerque in the late 90s.

"...I first started out as a biology major, and just wasn't feeling it," she said. "I was a music minor and I just didn't know (what to do) so I was taking a lot of classes that I couldn't get here ... like archeology classes, a lot of history about Ancient Mesoamerica — all that stuff.

After about a year and a half to two years, Eastwood came back home and took courses at Owensboro Community College (now Owensboro Community & Technical College) to finish out her associate's degree.

It was a conversation with her mother that helped Eastwood see what she should pursue.

"It was during that semester off that my mom said, 'You ever thought about being a music major?' she said. "She's like, 'You keep talking about these other careers, but you keep (going back) to music?'

"...I always thought about keeping music in my life; I just didn't know it was going to become my life."

Eastwood went on to study music and education at the University of Kentucky before the program changed to be more focused on the performance aspect and transferred to Eastern Kentucky University, which seemed to be a better fit for her overall goal.

"I really (wanted) that education part," she said. "...My junior year of high school, I auditioned for the Governor's School for the Arts and I had been taking lessons and we've been working on different things."

During her lessons, Eastwood said that the emphasis was more on technique rather than music theory. When she arrived at the audition, Eastwood was able to play two scales before a judge asked her to play a scale that was foreign to her.

Though she got it right after some guidance from the judge, Eastwood recalls how she felt after leaving.

"I walked out and thought, 'There are more scales? What am I missing?' " she said. "...I just felt like I was missing stuff, so as I went along and went to college and learned about theory ... I would begin to go, 'How could I take what I learned in college as far as what I thought I should have learned earlier and start blending that in?' "

After graduating from EKU in 2004, Eastwood made her way out to Indiana to teach music in school systems, first starting out in Marion before moving onto the Fort Wayne Community Schools district for eight years.

"I love working with kids; I love teaching them music," she said. "That mesh there — I love."

She eventually moved closer to her hometown, teaching in Hardin County for about three years before returning to Island last year.

Eastwood began teaching private lessons in 2018 with focuses on piano, guitar, trumpet, ukulele, vocal and more, which soon became more of a full-time endeavor.

"The next thing I know, I got 43 lessons a week," she said.

And while Eastwood said COVID caused a small hiccup, she still keeps busy with students both locally and those that have families in the military in Alaska and Texas she's able to instruct over Zoom.

Eastwood finds being able to be part of a student's introduction to learning an instrument a "heartwarming" experience and enjoys seeing them grow throughout the process.

"To me, those are the big moments when kids can go 'oops' and fix (the mistakes) themselves," she said. "As I would always tell my kids, my job here is to get you to where you don't need me. I love that (they) need me, but I want to be the one that sits here and goes, 'You did it. You did it all by yourself.' ...I love it when they can take their knowledge and run with it."

For Eastwood, her main goal is to be able to educate people on something that she's come to love.

"...I know that I don't want to get paid to play as a performer so much as I love teaching," Eastwood said. "Making sure everybody knows something about music is more of my passion. ...To me, it's all about sharing information.

"Music is everywhere — and I just feel like everybody should have a chance to learn. ...I just have this dream that everybody gets music somehow in their life."

If interested in talking to Eastwood about lessons, contact facebook.com/pamela.e.seidl.