Features
Building Harmony: Introducing NIC’s New Director of Bands
North Idaho College’s (NIC) new Director of Bands has a lifetime of experience teaching music and brings this knowledge to NIC along with his passion for creating community.
Photo Credit – Kyer Wiltshire
David Blink first picked up music in the form of a trumpet when he was in sixth grade. By junior high, he realized he wanted to be a music educator. By seventh grade, Blink was already teaching music to elementary school students as a band teacher’s assistant.
While pursuing his undergraduate music degree, Blink taught music in local high schools. He said he has always had a passion for “lifelong learning.”
He went on to earn his Master’s in composition from Central Washington University and then taught for 14 years in Yakima. During his time there, Blink developed a Latin music festival where faculty, dancers, and artists from Michoacan, Yakama’s sister city in Mexico, gathered to share their culture and music with over 6,000 people. This festival ran for nine years.
Due to this connection, Blink spent two years at the University of Michoacan and Conservatorio de las Rosas teaching music in Mexico.
Blink moved to Mexico with minimal Spanish skills and said the experience gave him more empathy for his students.
“Now I understand students in traditional college when they are second language learners, that struggle that they have.”
Blink has returned to Mexico annually for five years to serenade the monarch butterfly migration.
After his time in Mexico, Blink spent seven years teaching at the College of the Siskiyous in Mt. Shasta Calif. before working as director of bands at NIC.
Mixed in with his teaching career, Blink spent six years as the music director for “the procession and ambient drummers” at Burning Man. Blink said this position had a major community focus and gave him some transferable skills for teaching at community colleges like NIC.
Photo Credit – Kyer Wiltshire
Blink’s passion for all his projects is to create community through music. “That is the goal and why I’m in education, to connect those dots.”
NIC students and community members will see Blink’s work as a teacher and band director for the first time during the Fall Jazz Concert on Oct. 29 in Schuler Auditorium.
If any NIC students or community members are interested in learning music from accomplished faculty like Blink, music courses are available every semester and require no previous experience. Grant money is available to eligible students interested in music courses.
