It was David Maxwell’s guitar that gave him away—at least to a few people.
The president of Drake University had planned to surprise the seniors and their families with a blues-guitar performance at undergraduate commencement last week. But as he walked in for the ceremony, a couple of the students and at least one faculty member pointed to the Gibson Les Paul resting on the stage and whispered, “Isn’t that your guitar?”
It was, but for most of the graduates and their friends and parents, his performance came as a pleasant surprise.
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It was David Maxwell’s guitar that gave him away—at least to a few people.
The president of Drake University had planned to surprise the seniors and their families with a blues-guitar performance at undergraduate commencement last week. But as he walked in for the ceremony, a couple of the students and at least one faculty member pointed to the Gibson Les Paul resting on the stage and whispered, “Isn’t that your guitar?”
It was, but for most of the graduates and their friends and parents, his performance came as a pleasant surprise.
The son of the jazz musician Jimmy Maxwell—that’s his trumpet solo in the theme for The Godfather—President Maxwell has a love of music in his blood, though he says he inherited neither his father’s talent nor his discipline. Now a scholar of Russian literature, David Maxwell met Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 when his father toured the Soviet Union with the Benny Goodman Band. The younger Maxwell served as a band boy on the trip, which ultimately led to his interest in studying Russia.
Ahead of commencement, several graduating seniors had written the president asking that he talk about how he maintains a healthy work-life balance. When not working, says Mr. Maxwell, “I read fiction, I listen to music, and I play guitar.” That led to the idea for the graduation-day gig.
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Joining the president in last week’s six-minute performance was the saxophonist Dick Oatts, whom the university had just awarded an honorary doctor-of-music degree. Rehearsal had consisted of little more than a brief sound check in the morning and an agreement that the band would be playing a 12-bar blues number in A, slow. “It was a terrific amount of fun,” says Mr. Maxwell.
Four days earlier, at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, President Mark D. Gearan’s concert for graduating seniors came as no surprise but was no less enjoyable for that. In fact, says Catherine Williams, director of communications for the colleges, President Gearan’s “garage band” performance at the annual senior dinner has become a highly anticipated part of the lead-up to commencement. Mr. Gearan, who plays keyboards, is accompanied by faculty and staff members, who rehearse for the show days ahead of it.
“The students are ecstatic,” says Ms. Williams. “It’s fun for them to see some of their most difficult professors onstage having a great time.”
The concerts began five or six years ago as a surprise, and President Gearan—who got his keyboard chops playing the organ in church as a boy in Gardner, Mass.—has maintained the tradition. Mr. Gearan first raises a toast to the graduates, then leads his band of professors and administrators through a raucous (and sometimes off-key) lineup of rock ‘n’ roll classics: “Sweet Caroline” (the anthem of Red Sox fans like himself), “Twist and Shout,” and "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” to name a few.
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By the last song, when Mr. Gearan has dropped his jacket and tie in a pool of sweat, Ms. Williams says, he brings out a new vocalist, Betty Walther, a beloved staff member whose job is collecting students’ meal tickets in the cafeteria.