The school year ended on a sad note for the district music
program when Solorsano band director Creighton Yip retired after 39
years with the district.
Gilroy – The school year ended on a sad note for the district music program when Solorsano band director Creighton Yip retired after 39 years with the district.
The 61-year-old taught music at all levels in the Gilroy Unified School District, including Gilroy High School, where he catalyzed the growth of band, choir and drill team during his 18 years there from 1969 to 1987. Yip also spent more than a decade teaching music to elementary school students and finished up his career as co-band director at South Valley Middle School and Ascencion Solorsano Middle School. He will remain in Gilroy, teaching private lessons, during retirement.
“Creighton has been just devoted to youth in this community and music in this community, not only in the classroom,” said Sal Tomasello, principal of Solorsano and athletic director of the high school when Yip’s daughters were there. “People think very, very highly of him.”
Still energetic at 61, Yip does not appear tired of teaching. Even in his last week at Solorsano, he boasted his customary wide smile and thick shock of white hair and displayed an eager patience with students as he walked them through sheet music. If it were not for his T-shirt – which proclaimed, “I’m retired. Having fun is my job.” – he would have seemed ready to teach his students forever.
“It was time,” he said, chuckling, when asked why he was retiring.
The departure was more spontaneous than planned, he said. This is Yip’s typical approach to life and a theme in his relationship with music. When he first started playing in fourth grade, he wanted to learn the trombone to copy the styles of Tommy Dorsey. Instead, to save his family money, he took up the saxophone that his uncle no longer used.
Likewise, Yip went to junior college prepared to study business. Yet when the University of the Pacific offered him a music scholarship, he pursued that musicianship instead. Once at the school, when his advisor pushed him toward instruction instead of performance, he went with it.
“It was no grand scheme or plans to go into teaching, it was just one of those things that happened,” he said.
Regardless of whether he planned to teach, Yip was good at it, fellow teachers and administrators said.
“He’s always had a great attitude and got along well with the students,” said trustee Pat Midtgaard, who worked with him while she was principal at Rucker Elementary School during the ’90s. “It’s pretty amazing how far he was able to bring them along.”
Yip was also responsible for boosting the high school music program in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Through promoting the program to parents and meeting individually with students, he doubled the size of the band to about 55 members in his first three years.
“A lot of kids, all it takes is someone going up and saying, you can do this, this, this,” Yip said. “They’re waiting for someone to encourage them to do it.”
While Yip has seen parent and student interest in music grow during his tenure in the district, he has also seen time and funding devoted to arts education wane. He points to an increased emphasis on standardized and district testing as reason for this decline.
“When you’ve got somebody breathing down your neck saying, ‘Test scores, test scores, test scores,’ I understand why you’d say, ‘OK, we don’t have time for music,’ ” he said.
While the recent arts funding of about $400,000 from the California Department of Education helps, it is not enough, Yip said. What is needed is a shift in thought as well. Instead of viewing music and core subjects as adversaries in the fight for funding, they should be seen as complementary. Involvement in music promotes skills, such as multitasking and stage presence, that can help students reach new levels in core academic areas, he said.
“If you have music in your life, you achieve those goals better,” he said.
Yip now has ample time to pursue his own goals. In particular, he hopes to get back into tennis or fishing. He also wants to spend more time with his daughter and 4-year-old granddaughter in Davis and his daughter in New York.
Music will remain a focus in his life. In addition to teaching private music lessons, he will continue playing saxophone for two area bands – the Central Coast Sax Quartet, which he has performed with for the past 14 years, and the 23-piece South Bay Swing Band, which he has been with for eight years.
Yet even if Yip chose not to play in public, he would not be forgotten, Midtgaard said.
“I’m sure it’s good for him, but it is a loss for the district,” she said. “He’s really touched a lot of students and moved them along on their musical careers.”
