Teacher Profile: Mark Hoover

The jazz choirs at Seattle Academy have become well known for their musical talent, but many people forget who makes the jazz choir program what it is. Mark Hoover is the head of the vocal jazz program at SAAS, and he has quite the musical background.

From the age of five, Hoover studied piano and sang in church choirs. In high school, he not only became the accompanist for his school’s choir, but helped form a rock group which played local high school dances. In 1978, Hoover went to college in pursuit of music. “That’s what I was passionate about,” says Hoover. In 1975, he went out on the road with a top 40 band called Second Wind. They played clubs mostly in the Northeast.

Hoover encouraged Second Wind’s horn section to cover songs by rock band Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears. “They liked being on the road, but didn’t like to work as hard as I wanted to,” Hoover says, “I needed to find people who were more devoted and serious about music, which made me pursue music education.”

In 1987, after speaking with a Seattle Academy alumnus, Hoover decided to apply for a job here and became the music teacher. After years of slowly developing the vocal program, Hoover received an arrangement from Darmon Meader, one of the members of the jazz quartet named the New York Voices. Meader’s arrangement made Hoover fall in love with vocal jazz.

The vocal jazz program started as an after school program that anyone could participate in. The 2001-2002 school year yielded the first jazz choir class, but it took many years for the program to become recognized. In 2010, the jazz choir went to the Reno Jazz Festival for the first time. On their second trip to Reno, In 2011, “We won first place in our category, and that was unexpected,” says Hoover, “We were the smallest school. We didn’t think we would be recognized due to these ambitious jazz programs we competed against. The work we were doing was at a higher level then we realized.”

Mark Hoover created this program from nothing, and the program’s success has shown in the many awards the jazz choirs have earned. He has devoted his life to music, and he has a good reason why: “I think music is the purest expression of the human spirit other than complete silence.”

An Inside Look: Gary Anderson

By the time Gary Anderson was 30, he had already retired from his job as general manager at The Computer Store of Seattle. “We were the largest computer store in the I-5 region for the seven years that I worked there,” Gary said. “And that allowed me to have a reasonable amount of financial independence.”

After his retirement, he went on to pursue his interests and hobbies. At first, this meant developing software. “I had a small software company where I developed networking software,” he said. “I did that from age 30 to about 34 or 35.” After several years of developing software, Gary began to feel bored. He wanted to do something more significant with his life.

By this point in his life, Gary had already studied business, economics, computer science, and math at the University of Washington. He had already taken semesters abroad, studying at prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. It was then that he decided to go back to school. “I went to Seattle University which has a one year program to get a master’s degree in teaching,” Gary said. “My thought was that I would teach in public schools like my parents did and that would have been fine. I chose math because I felt that would be the easiest thing for me to get a job any place I wanted to work.”

One of the teachers who attended Seattle University with Gary happened to be an alumnus of SAAS. She recommended that he check out Seattle Academy. He was soon hired as the department chair of the math program at Seattle Academy. “Usually you wouldn’t be hired as department chair right out of college,” Gary said. He attributes this accomplishment to his experience with computers and management.

Now, 20 years later, Gary considers the growth of the computer technology program and the increased reputability of the math department as his greatest accomplishment at SAAS. “I think it’s hard for what was considered to be mostly an art school to have a serious technology program,” Gary said. “I think that now we have serious programs in all sorts of areas.”

Not having a family to tend to allows Gary to pursue topics that interest him. “I think that teaching gives me a base that’s a regular part of my schedule,” Gary said. “I’m lucky to have a job in which I have a lot of flexibility to do what I want to do, where I feel like I can accomplish something and have a positive impact on others.”