The dueling tales (and horns) of Louisa & Louise

My daughter, Louisa, is in Red Wing today – with her French horn – as one of 1,000 Minnesota high school students attending the 2013 Missota Conference fine arts festival. Her band will give a performance, attend a clinic, and participate in a grand finale concert tonight at the Red Wing High School with the other bands and choirs. Then, she and other members of the Northfield High School concert band will return to Northfield briefly before reloading the buses and hitting the road around 10:30 p.m. for an 18-hour bus trip to New York City!

No, I am not chaperoning. Just in case you were wondering.

Music-related features of the NYC tour will include dinner and entertainment at the Blue Note Jazz Club, a tour of Lincoln Center, a clinic with Michael L. Breux of New York University, and an exchange with the North Bergen (New Jersey) High School Band. The Northfield musicians will also attend a performance of the Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theater and will have time for other sightseeing.

Louisa won’t have much time for sightseeing today in Red Wing, which is too bad. Although the Minnesota town doesn’t compare to NYC in terms of excitement and ethnic cuisine, it does have a long history of high-quality music ensembles, and it is home to the beautifully restored Sheldon Theatre, which hosts year-round music, theater and other performances.

Historic photo of the Sheldon, from the theater website.

The Sheldon began its life in 1904 as the T.B. Sheldon Memorial Auditorium. Mr. Sheldon, who died in 1900, had given the city of Red Wing $83,000 in trust to be used to develop a public institution. Described as a “jewel box” because of its interior decorative elements, the auditorium was used for traveling shows and local concerts, including concerts in the early 1920s by the Red Wing Boys’ Band.

One of the band’s most notable musicians was not a boy at all; she was a girl named Louise. Born on Feb. 26, 1918, she was the youngest child of the band’s director, H. Ernest Schmidt.

Schmidt’s claim to fame, besides being the father of Louise, is that he is known as the father of the Minnesota Bandmasters Association. He organized the group in March of 1924 and was elected its first president. One topic of discussion at that first meeting in Red Wing was “Boys Bands.” The following year, the group scheduled its spring meeting in St. Cloud specifically because the members were eager to learn more about the success my great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, was having with his St. Cloud Municipal Boys’ Band. And Louise came along on the trip with her dad.

The entertainment highlight of the convention in St. Cloud was supposed to be an evening concert by the Third U.S. Infantry Band of Fort Snelling, directed by Carl Dillon. But the surprise hit of the evening appears to have been the intermission performance by Louise Schmidt on the flugelhorn.

According to an May 22 article in the St. Cloud Daily Times, seven-year-old Louise “electrified” the audience with two solos, including “Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny,” and two encores. “It turned out to be no intermission at all because everyone stayed in the theatre to hear the little girl play,” the article noted.

I was curious to learn more about Louise. So when I was in Red Wing at the end of February on a writing retreat, I spent an hour in the public library doing some research on Schmidt and his daughter. I found a Red Wing Republican newspaper article from April 20, 1925, that mentioned the newly organized boys’ band. The article was complimentary of the band’s first concert, which was to be the first in a series of free concerts. It noted that hundreds of people were turned away because the Sheldon auditorium was filled to capacity to hear the band and its “assisting artists.” (Maybe that’s what the girls were called?)

The article also said: “Louise Schmidt, seven-year-old daughter of Director and Mrs. Schmidt, scored a tremendous hit with her flugelhorn solos, ‘Dreaming Alone in the Twilight’ and ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,’ the latter being played with jazz orchestra accompaniment. Louise’s horn is almost as big as she is but she plays it in faultless style.’”

Louise’s dad continued to serve on the Minnesota Bandmasters Association board for several years, and the family lived in Red Wing until 1930, when Schmidt took a job as a public school music teacher in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. According to the MBA archives, Schmidt organized and directed several bands in Wisconsin communities, working in a different city each day of the week. He left Minnesota in 1943, and from 1943-1960 he taught at the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary, before retiring to Venice, California.

As for Louise? I don’t know where she ended up – maybe New York City? Wherever she went, I hope she kept playing. It sounds like she had a gift.