Pursuing his vision
Instructor races blindness to create studios that teach music.
March 4, 2005
Byline:THERESA WALKER The Orange County Register
Steve Strombeck's sight is closing in on him like the final scene of a
silent movie. His peripheral vision constricts the world he sees in an ever- tightening
circle. Someone sitting three feet away is no more than a head floating in
space. If he drops a pen on the floor, it stays there. He can't see it to pick it
- He's done embarrassing things like sit on someone's lap in a darkened
theater.
Strombeck was diagnosed with the degenerative genetic disease retinitis
pigmentosa in his early 20s. At 32, he is legally blind, with just 10
percent of his vision remaining. Someday, Strombeck expects to be completely blind. He may have to stop teaching music when that happens. So he's working hard to create a network of music studios to bring low-cost music lessons to children and adults through his nonprofit Performing Arts Guild of Orange County.
He's a kind man, boyish in voice and appearance -- except for the pointy
little soul patch beneath his lower lip. It gives him a cool look as he
tunes the red Fender guitar Sarah Coffee, 10, got for Christmas. Sarah has taken lessons from Strombeck since August. He demonstrates the different sounds she can get with distortion and reverb, strumming the opening chords to "Smoke on the Water." Later in the lesson, Sarah works
on sight reading -- a skill that the classically trained Strombeck stresses along with other basic techniques, despite his own struggles with it. He tells her it's like playing a video game and not looking at the controller. Trust your fingers.
Strombeck is at his most relaxed when he plays a piece of classical music
like Modest Mussorgsky's "The Old Castle." Head and shoulders sway behind
his Russian-made guitar, blue eyes half closed, his breathing in sync with
the slow, steady piece.
Back when doctors first told him he would go blind, they said it might
happen in five years, 10 years, 15 years. They couldn't be certain. The news depressed him. Then it motivated him.
Realizing a dream
The knowledge that he would go blind made him determined to master a
discipline he could continue even after he lost his sight. He wanted to
play classical guitar. So what if he had never taken a formal music lesson in his life? He did
play rock guitar in high school -- hair down to his waist and able to
imitate bands like Guns N' Roses. "Most people would look at his eyes as a bad thing," says his wife, Thu, his sweetheart since ninth grade. "But I guess it is kind of in a way a
good thing because it made him realize what his dream is."Losing his sight gave him a vision. He found out, too, that you are never too old to have a teacher change your life. "I'm never going to be the great performer that some people are," Strombeck says. "I wanted to do something that would offer hope. I had to find something. And I was so lucky that the teachers I found took me under
their wing." His worsening eyesight forced him to quit his part- time job as a stock
clerk about a year after his diagnosis. But he managed to save money to
take private lessons from one of the best teachers around, David Grimes,
director of guitar studies at Cal State Fullerton. Five months after starting $60-an-hour lessons, he ran out of money. Grimes didn't want to turn Strombeck away. He told him he'd keep giving
him lessons and accept payment if and when possible. Grimes saw how hard Strombeck worked at it. Sight reading plays such a huge role in learning classical music, Grimes says, and Strombeck could
only see a few notes at a time. He couldn't go from the end of one line to
the beginning of the next. He couldn't look away from a sheet of music and
find his place again. Grimes had taught blind students before. What they couldn't see, they
could hear -- and immediately know where to be on their instruments. He
never had a student in the process of losing his sight. "It might take him five minutes to work through a line of music," Grimes says, "where normally he should be able to read that at sight." Strombeck learned with painstaking dedication -- asking a lot of questions, thinking hard about what Grimes told him, coming back the next week with more questions. He'd practice in the kitchen late at night after his baby son fell asleep. Other times, when neighbors in their apartment building complained,
Strombeck went down to his truck in the parking garage and sat on the
tailgate to play. "He was clearly very sincere and dedicated," Grimes says. "It was very
important in his life. You can't just turn away someone like that." Grimes thinks of the free lessons he gave Strombeck for seven years as a scholarship and calls himself just a teacher. To Strombeck, Grimes is much more than that -- a mentor who inspired his decision to teach music.
New calling
As he grew more proficient, Strombeck began offering his time as a
teacher's assistant to Les Merrill's beginning guitar class at Santa Ana
College. He was working toward an associate of arts degree in music and
met Merrill when they played together in a guitar ensemble. For three years, Strombeck arrived early at Merrill's Saturday workshop. He could still see well enough to dart about the room, tuning guitars and showing students how to sit and hold their instruments correctly. Merrill
often turned the class over to Strombeck, recognizing his expertise.
Strombeck earned a scholarship to the Cal State Fullerton guitar studies
program but was too overwhelmed to continue. His family has grown to four
children, ages 8 years to 5 months, the two oldest home-schooled. He
teaches guitar six days a week and spends the rest of his time seeking
grants and donated space for studios -- ideally in old movie theaters
because of the acoustics and to get a place to hold the OnStage rock shows
that kids with the Performing Arts Guild do for fun. Building up the Performing Arts Guild has been a slow process. He found a place, Planet Sound in Santa Ana, that supports his effort with subsidized
space. Instructors teach private lessons in piano, guitar, voice, strings,
brass, woodwinds and drums. Strombeck looks for teachers who have compassion to go along with their abilities. He wants them to pay attention to an individual student's
needs, the way Grimes did. One instructor, professional drummer and Berklee School of Music graduate Melissa West, has known Strombeck since junior high. West was born with
one leg. Having instructors like her and Strombeck can show students
what's possible, she says. "It lets them know that just because somebody might have something
different about them doesn't mean that they aren't able to achieve the
same goals," West says. "I think it kind of pushes them a little more." Sometimes, the student inspired by a teacher becomes a teacher inspired by
a student. Last year Strombeck gave lessons to Daniel Cruz, a teenage boy with a
brain injury that compromises his ability to remember things. Daniel, who
is from Hawaii but attended a special school in Orange County, had once
played ukulele and guitar. Strombeck didn't push him to memorize notes from a music sheet. He'd get
him to visualize his fingers on the neck of a guitar instead. If Daniel
wasn't up to a regular lesson, they would play hangman with music terms on
a whiteboard. He was scared to teach Daniel at first, he admits. But it turned out to be
the most pure teaching experience he's had. "That kid made it all worthwhile. He was the one I could give something back to."
To find out more about the Performing Arts Guild of Orange County, call (714) 604-6851.
(714) 796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com
THE MORNING READ
Steve Strombeck
Copyright 2005 The Orange County Register
