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Father and son musicians enroll at Mason Gross School of the Arts
It’s no coincidence that two talented musicians with the same last name are beginning gigs in New Brunswick this semester.
Mike Christianson has recorded with Ray Charles and Queen Latifah. He’s played in Broadway shows – Young Frankenstein is his current venue – and wins raves for artistry on his beloved trombone and tuba during appearances nationwide.
Now Christianson’s life is moving into accelerando mode. At 45, the Fair Lawn resident is hitting the books to earn a doctorate of musical arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. And he’s doing it at the same time that his oldest son, Joe, is entering Mason Gross as a first-year student, with an eye on his own bachelor of music in trumpet performance.
The Christiansons are links in a musical dynasty reaching back six generations, to patriarch Christian Jensen in Norway. “Everyone in my family on both sides – every cousin, every aunt and uncle – has been musical,” Mike Christianson says. His grandmothers were talented piano players, and his father retired as a high school band director after 38 years.
He’ll tell you he loves jazz and classical in equal measure – but jazz ultimately edges out all other genres. Christianson formed his first jazz band when he was 13 or 14, back in his native Fargo, North Dakota. He has been making his living as a musician ever since. The road to Rutgers has been as full of twists and turns as the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s classic, “Take Five.”
While studying trombone at the University of Northern Colorado, Christianson got the call to tour with Ray Charles and his orchestra. He left school at 22 and hit the road: Brazil, Turkey, Switzerland, Japan. After two years, Christianson returned stateside to finish his degree at Moorhead State University in Minnesota.
The young artist then lit out for New York, where he won a performance scholarship to complete his master’s at the Manhattan School of Music, studying trombone with Hal Janks of the Metropolitan Opera and composition with the famed Ludmilla Ulehla.
Christianson claimed that degree 17 years ago, about the time that the next generation of music-makers was coming into the world. His son, Joe, a 2008 Fair Lawn High School graduate, has a passion for the trumpet and an abiding love of – what else? – jazz. He also is devoted to classical composition, particularly the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. “There’s lots of things going on in Bach’s music all at once – to me, there’s never a dull moment in his music,” he notes.
Day or night, a visitor to the Christiansons’ Cape Cod-style home is likely to hear the sounds of family members practicing – often on different floors, usually on different instruments.
Mom Cindy Christianson, a math teacher, sings and plays French horn. Joe plays trumpet and piano – and sings as well. Younger siblings Michelle and Aaron play half a dozen instruments between them. Mike? He could just as easily be riffing on the tenor trombone, the bass trombone, the tuba, the euphonium, the electric bass or a little piano.
“The most pleasant feeling I probably have is making music with my family,” Mike Christianson says. “It is really, really moving.”
Joe says that being part of his family’s in-house band, informally dubbed the Fourth Street Chamber Players, adds a dimension to life most of his friends don’t have. “Last night, when we were rehearsing one song -- ‘Down in the River to Pray,’ from ‘O, Brother, Where Art Thou?’ – it was really cool to hear how all our voices come together and know that we have the capability to make such good sounds together,” he says.
Waving a conductor’s baton may be hardwired into Mike Christianson’s soul, but he admits he “kind of stumbled into” that aspect of the profession. “I’ve been conducting maybe a dozen years now, but I never thought I would wind up doing it,” says Christianson, who formed and leads both the Fair Lawn Diamond Jubilee Band and the Gotham Wind Symphony. “And it seems the more I did (in the conducting world), the more I realized how much I didn’t know.” That realization, plus the relative flexibility of his job in a Broadway pit orchestra, drove him to pursue his latest advanced degree. Taking classes four days a week, he hopes to finish in three years, ultimately landing a position as a college band director.
Joe’s cool with his father’s decision to enroll as a graduate student while he’s making his way as a freshman. Well, mostly cool. “I never thought my dad would be at the same school as I was, but I can get rides back and forth with him when I want to go home, and he can bring me stuff I need,” Joe says. “But he can also keep an eye on me, so I have to make sure I behave.”