Making the music possible

 

Chris Banner may appear to be at the beck and call of every student with a seized trombone slide or a missing clarinet swab, but being indispensable suits him just fine.

"It's a very varied existence, and that's what makes it such a good job," Banner said from his perch at the back of the music department's instrument storage area in McCain Auditorium. "I don't get stuck doing the same thing every day.

"When I walk in in the morning, I may have plans, but they may get shot down." Any conversation with Banner takes place between visits from students and staff asking about a new trumpet case, a locker that might accommodate a trombone, or metal fatigue in an oft-repaired sousaphone.

Banner spends his mornings fielding such inquiries, particularly about instrument rental. Every music education major is required to become competent on a broad range of instruments, and that means a lot of black cases going out the door and coming back. Some will have sustained injuries.

That doesn't faze Banner. At his home workshop in the afternoon, he'll rub out the inevitable dents and creases, reglue a violin or install new pads in the many, many keys of an English horn. He's also responsible for tuning the pianos in McCain's practice rooms and offices, a job he inherited when another man quit in 1993. And he considers himself "the first line of defense" when departmental electronics act up, from amplifiers to computers.

He credits his work philosophy to advice he received from Warren Walker, a longtime professor of cello at K-State who died in 2006: "What you really want to do is get people thinking, if they need something, 'Let's go see Chris.'" That willingness to tackle new tasks helped Banner coax his job from a two-tenths position when he began in 1975 to its current eight-tenths.

"Chris is like a Renaissance man; he does an amazing range of things for us here," said Gary Mortenson, chair of the department of music. "You look at all he does and you say, 'How could we ever replace him?'"

Mortenson recalls a faculty project this summer to repaint hallways in a two-tone scheme separated by a chair rail. "It doesn't sound that complicated, but in a building this size, you're talking about 1,400 feet of chair rail, and hundreds of angle cuts to go around corners," Mortenson said. "I put up about 1,200 feet with Chris.

"Once we got into a routine, we were zipping down those halls, putting up 200 to 400 feet a day." Mortenson enjoyed the hands-on work and the opportunity to witness Banner's skill.

"As an administrator, I get to the end of the day and I'm sometimes not sure what I've really gotten done," Mortenson said. "A lot of what Chris does makes a tangible impact on our program, and he doesn't always get the recognition he deserves."

Banner's patter with his stream of visitors suggests that he's a people person. He's anything but.

"I can walk into a room and tell if a machine is malfunctioning, but I can't walk into a room and tell that two people hate each other," he said. "I do not have this intuitive understanding of how to deal with people."

For years that complicated his life and his career, which started in the 1960s as a symphony musician in Honolulu. A few years ago he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which is often characterized by monotone speech, inflexibility, narrow interests and an inability to empathize with others. The realization that he wasn't just a cranky misfit came as a relief.

"It opened up a whole new world for me," Banner said. "When you're surrounded by social types, and you're not one, it's a constant struggle to say to yourself that you're all right."

At McCain, he said he's developed "scripts" for dealing with common situations like renting out an instrument. He's also collected a repertoire of opening lines for people he hasn't seen in a while. "So if it's the middle of July, I'll ask, 'What brings you out on a cold winter's day?'"

And if the freedom and variety of his McCain duties suit him, so too do his colleagues, most of the time.

"Like any human being, he has things he's good at and things he struggles with," Mortenson said.

"We have people here who are smart and tolerant," Banner said. "It's so nice not to have to hide, not to have to worry that someone's going to make your life miserable for being different."

Now 65, Banner is contemplating retirement but not rushing toward it. He and his wife, Betty, have several home-improvement projects to finish. And there's that 1994 Ford Ranger in the basement that Banner plans to turn into a replica of a 1912 roadster, complete with brass radiator and aluminum body panels.

"Obviously, I can read and write," he said; he has master's degrees in musicology and geography. "But I come alive when I go into my shop."

 

Photos: (Top) Chris Banner rubs out the dents in a trombone. He is responsible for maintaining hundreds of instruments for K-State's music department. (Bottom) Tools of the trade in Banner's workshop. Photos by Dan Donnert, K-State photographic services.