Published: September 05, 2008 10:52 pm      

TONAWANDA SCHOOLS: New hire embarks on his life’s ambition

Six years ago, Kevin Kazmierczak was the principal at Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts while Christopher Rudroff was a student there. Now, the two are back together, but this time they are colleagues.

Kazmierczak was named principal of Tonawanda High School over the summer. Two weeks ago, the district hired Rudroff, 24, to be the high school’s new band teacher.

“It’s great. It’s a little scary because it makes me think I’m getting a little older seeing my students in these responsible positions,” Kazmierczak said. “But I’m proud of him.”

More than 100 people applied for the job and a committee narrowed the field down to three candidates before selecting Rudroff. Kazmierczak recused himself from the voting.

“I think it’s very cool to now work with my former principal,” Rudroff said. “It’s definitely encouraging because he has always been very supportive of me. It’s also comforting to work with someone who I am familiar with and have had a past with.”

As part of the selection process, a student member of the hiring panel called more than two-dozen Tonawanda band members and asked them what they would be looking for in a new band director. The student relayed that Rudroff “hits every one of the different criteria the students spelled out,” Kazmierczak recalled.

“He’s really earned his right to teach,” the principal said. “He distinguished himself as a musician and a student leader at Performing Arts.”

Rudroff will be directing approximately 60 high school students in jazz and wind ensembles, plus another 30 sixth-graders in his general music class that starts up next week.

Just two weeks ago, he was working as an overnight supervisor at UPS, where he worked throughout college.

“I’m excited, because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” said Rudroff, who graduated from Buffalo State College in May 2007 with a degree in music education.

“It’s very overwhelming, but I’m very calm about it, because I don’t want to freak myself out,” Rudroff said about his thoughts on being a new teacher. “I’m just taking things as they come.”

He received two honors at Buffalo State, including the Lenore Rollett Wright Award for Achievement in Music, which is presented annually to a music senior who is nominated by a faculty member for his or her achievement in the music program.

Rudroff’s primary instrument is saxophone, which he’s been playing since he was 10. He played with the Sugar and Jazz Orchestra as a youth. Currently, Rudroff performs with two bands — a jazz quartet that recently performed during the Lewiston Jazz Festival, and a 10-piece merengue band called “La Krema,” which plays periodically at La Luna, in Buffalo’s Chippewa entertainment district.

Although he’s had a passion for music his whole life, Rudroff owes his current position largely to his father, who swayed him from joining the Marines after high school. “My dad pushed me toward college. I listened to him and I’m glad I did,” Rudroff said.

It worked out in more ways than one. Rudroff met his fiancee, Liza Bateman, at Buffalo State. She, too, is a rookie educator, teaching English at Hamburg High School.

While his students were out in recent weeks buying book bags and No. 2 pencils and cool new notebooks, Rudroff was picking up some supplies of his own for his new classroom.

He purchased about $100 worth of posters of Bob Marley, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis, among others. “I just didn’t want them coming in to old classical guys they might not recognize,” Rudroff said of the thinking behind his band room decor.

It also forms an immediate connection with the students, many of whom listen to Hendrix and the Beatles and Bob Marley. Rudroff said he listens to a wide range of musical genres, which his students also enjoy.

When his students saw the Bob Marley poster Wednesday they told Rudroff, “You listen to Bob Marley? We listen to him too,” Rudroff said. “They’re excited that I enjoy the same type of music that they enjoy.”

While he hopes that commonality will endear his students to him, Rudroff said he’s also aware of the fact that, as a teacher, he doesn’t want the kids to feel they can walk all over him.

Kazmierczak said he has high hopes for the Tonawanda music program, starting with the return of the marching band in time for this year’s Tonawanda-North Tonawanda football game — the 99th installment — on the Warriors’ home field.

With his woodwind instrument expertise, Rudroff complements the percussion prowess of Chris Taylor, who recently joined the middle school’s music faculty. “Tonawanda has this great history of excellent music, and we’ve got to just resurrect that,” Kazmierczak said.

Rudroff is looking forward to playing a big role in that. “I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with it,” he said. “I’m definitely going to learn a lot...”

Contact reporter David J. Hill at 693-1000, ext. 115.