After hearing the news of Ike passing away on December 1, my heart completely sank and I felt physically sick. How could this happen? He was just in the hospital, and everything was okay. But our Lord felt the need to bring him home, and I am left feeling thankful for the years I was able to share with him.
I first met Ike in 1976, when I was in the 7th grade at La Cumbre Junior High School. We all called him Mr. Jenkins back then. He was the band teacher, and I was a pudgy kid who played the trombone. During the next three years, I started playing the electric bass, and by 9th grade, I was fortunate enough to play in his Jazz Band. Those years at La Cumbre were a foundation that shaped my life as a musician. It was Mr. Jenkins’s intelligence and patience as a band instructor that kept me interested in playing music.
There are so many unique stories about his music classes. One of the things he did was really encourage us to “listen” to the music we were going to perform. Usually a band director will present a group with sheet music, and we’d just start playing it down. Mr. Jenkins would find recordings of the music, and we’d listen to it first, talking about what instruments stood out to us, how the dynamics worked, and what kind of emotions we felt. This was an amazing approach, and I treasure the memory of how he showed us the importance of interpreting music in this way.