It’s been 38 years, and the fingerprints are still high on the wall in the corner of his office.
Dan Bukvich recalls the day they were put there. He had just ascended the back stairs of the Lionel Hampton School of Music and reached the main landing for the first time. Bukvich was a graduate student, fresh out of the University of Montana’s music program. It was 1976.
As he looked for the main offices, he noticed a single office door open invitingly. Bukvich stopped to introduce himself. The occupants of the office were trumpet professor Rich Werner and a pair of maintenance workers fixing the ceiling.
“You see those fingerprints?” Werner asked, gesturing to the prints the maintenance workers were leaving on the wall. “Those will still be here in 40 years.”
Little has changed in the cramped office during the years. It’s harder to notice the fingerprints now, with boxes of compositions and notes stacked floor-to-ceiling.
Students camp outside the door, waiting to ask a question to the professor who has neither phone nor email. Werner left the university decades ago, and Dan Bukvich’s name hangs on the door.
A love of music and teaching turned a year-long teaching assistantship into a 40-year teaching career. Bukvich has turned down a number of job offers in administration, and cultivated his fair share of notoriety, both as an internationally renowned composer and an eccentric professor with sky-high standards. His merciless grading and rapid-fire lectures are legendary among music students for their ability to weed out the weak and drive the dedicated — don’t let his reputation precede him, though.
“He’s actually a lot more normal than I thought he would be,” freshman music student Sam Gentzler said. “He’s kind of intense, and he’s really serious about what he does, but he’s really just an approachable, normal guy.”
Students — or “younger colleagues,” as he calls them — are diligent and inquisitive, and Bukvich is open, unpretentious and accommodating of every learning style.
“I consider myself a student of music,” he said. “I just like to study music. I never think of myself as a professor. It’s dangerous — it might lead you to believe that you know something.”
In coming years, Bukvich fears students’ love of music may not be reflected in class enrollment.
“People are afraid to follow their passion,” Bukvich said. “I think it’s sad. Often I wonder if most of (students) aren’t in one way or another in the wrong major. I just sometimes wonder how many undergrads have seriously thought about what their real passion might be — maybe that’s your job as an undergrad.”
This is, perhaps, why Bukvich is so dedicated to sending uncommitted students on their way. His freshman students, especially, are bombarded with questions to affirm their dedication — do they love playing music, or do they love being watched playing music? When they fail an exam, do they admit they didn’t work hard enough, or do they promise to work harder in the future?
In an ideal world, Bukvich said, all required classes would be removed from the music program, so only students who were committed to music would attend.
Bukvich expects to see increased numbers of music minors and double majors, instead of sole music majors in the near future. For now though, Bukvich plans to continue nurturing his students’ love of music as well as his own.
As a lifelong student, Bukvich likes to reflect upon where he’s come from. He wishes he’d applied himself and studied harder as an undergraduate, and that his mentors whose pictures hang on the wall of the Lionel Hampton were still around to answer his questions — Bukvich said he strives to learn something every day.
Looking back on his career as a musician and professor, he offers one piece of advice to students.
“Listen to yourself,” he said. “What other well-meaning people wanted from me was not what I wanted, and I think that’s a hard place to be in life, because you have to respect people, respect your elders and your teachers — but make your own decisions.”