
This one hurts.
J. Jerome Amend, husband of Jackie Novotny Amend and father to Jack Amend, and musical father to hundreds, passed peacefully last night (September 3, 2024) after a nearly yearlong battle with cancer.
I met Jerry in the fall of 1992. I was a high school freshman and had managed to get myself into the band at the Youth Performing Arts School – YPAS basically self taught, but quickly realized self taught wasn’t going to get me much further. Dennis Robinson gave me Jerry’s name and I started lessons shortly thereafter.
The first thing Jerry said after hearing me play was something along the lines of, “very good, now let’s fix your embouchure.” Much like a sports movie, he spent the next year tearing apart every aspect of how I played and remaking it. Except unlike a sports movie, it took a year. “Eye of the Tiger” wasn’t going to be long enough for that montage. It was work, but he set me up for a lifetime of playing. That self taught kid ended up winning the school’s Concerto Competition and sat principle for most of my senior year, reaching the Kentucky All-State ensemble the only time I tried out for it, and then followed up with making the Missouri All-Collegiate band the following year.
I joined the Commonwealth Brass Band in the summer of 1997 or 1998, I can’t remember, at Jerry’s invite (and urging). The ensemble was then, and continues to this day to be the most dynamic group I’ve ever played with. I’ve played with All-State and All-collegiate groups and even some professional ensembles, and none of them can match the diversity of repertoire and sheer power of a Brass Band.
Moving forward to college, I was one of “Jerry’s Kids” at U of L for a few semesters. The transition from a high school student taking a half hour lesson once a week to spending three hours a week in his studio was staggering. I have a pile of music nearly two feet tall from those few semesters. The onslaught of music was relentless. While I observed the students of other instruments concentrating on one or two pieces for an entire semester, we covered an entire semesters’ worth of work in each lesson. I think he handed me the pieces I ended up playing on my juries two weeks before the performances. The pace was just insane.
The brutality had a purpose: He wanted his students to be ready to play anything at any time, in any key.
Interspersed between my work with him and seeing him perform with the Louisville Orchestra for decades, I’d catch glimpses of what that man could really do on a trumpet: Walking in for a lesson while he was still going through an exercise for himself as he waited for me to show up; Having him pick up his horn and, stone cold, play something I was struggling with perfectly… except he wouldn’t use the valves. He was easily the best player I’ve ever seen in person. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he was quite possibly was the best trumpet player alive on the planet.
Then there was his encyclopedic knowledge of music and brass instruments, and his never ending quest to learn more. The four inch thick copy of his book I got from him at U of L back in the late 1990s has now expanded to something akin to an entire multi-volume encyclopedia.
As an adult, I continued playing in the CBB. Every now and then I’d get a call for a church gig and find out they’d gotten my name from Jerry. Sometimes a few years would go by, but then the phone would ring again. He was still handing out my name, years after I’d switched from music as a career to IT and business.
On my way to rehearsal tonight – the first ever rehearsal of the CBB without its founder alive – I thought about Jerry and how I’ve had the benefit of learning from a titan of music for over three decades. The only man I have or ever will have learned more from than Jerry is my own father. That is what this man meant to me, and as much time as I had with him, many others spent even more. He was a gift to all of us.
Maestro Amend will be missed, but he’s left a legacy. He’s touched the lives of thousands and that legacy will be passed on. He’ll be missed, but also celebrated. The show must go on. And it will.
I’ll post up arrangements when they’re finalized, and you can keep an eye on the Commonwealth Brass Band page as well.
Godspeed, Mr. Amend.