USA East Music NYSB BULLETIN - WINTER 2018 | Page 3

Ted Marshall Remembered
Ron Waiksnoris, Former NYSB Bandmaster
Forty year, or lifetime, friendships
are powerful and important. As I
remember Ted Marshall for the NYSB
Bulletin I can’t help writing from
a personal point of view. We were
friends.
I first became aware of Ted as I
became aware of the Earlscourt Citadel
Band. Earlscourt was a special band.
They had unique crimson uniforms
with matching caps. They played really
well. They were invited to International
Congresses. They made recordings,
they toured, and they were a corps
band. All of that appealed to me.
As a youngster in the late 1950s
I was soaking up all I could about
Salvation Army bands. My father was
the corps officer at Buffalo Citadel and
he regularly invited Canadian bands to
visit Buffalo. We also made the journey
across the Peace bridge from Buffalo
to Canada quite often. I became aware
of names like Dovercourt, Danforth,
Hamilton and Earlscourt.
There was a bit of romance in my
life about Canadian banding. And, another
thing, when Derek Smith moved his family
from England to North America, the first stop
was Earlscourt before moving to New York.
Move forward about twenty years and I
was working in The Salvation Army’s Eastern
Territory Music Bureau and playing in the New
York Staff Band. The NYSB had been making
recordings for decades but always looked for
a better way. Excellence was always the goal.
When Listening to recordings coming out of
Canada we saw the name Ted Marshall. He was
an Earlscourt man and a professional sound
engineer with great ears and skills.
The band invited him to come to New
York and record us. The result was a superb
recording called “Bravo” featuring some solos
by Philip Smith. Bandmaster Derek Smith
with old school recording ideas warmed to
Ted and new methods of recording and we
never looked back.
I’m not sure how many recordings we
produced with Ted, but I know it was over
thirty in my time as Music Secretary and Staff
Bandmaster.
Working with Ted was smooth. He was
T H E S A LVAT I O N A R M Y U S A E A S T
so quietly confident that there was always
a sense that any recording would turn out
well. His recordings of the Canadian Staff
Band, London Citadel, Melbourne Staff Band,
New York Staff Band and so many others are
superlative examples of how to make a band
sound their best.
Spending time with Ted I soon learned
of his alter-ego “Ed Marshall”. Somewhere
in time Ted had separated his professional
life from his SA life by adopting the name
“Ed”. I have known a few others who have
successfully done this , like Wayne also known
as Ken, and Gus, also known as Don, but there
have not been many.
So Salvationists may not have known
much about Ed Marshall. Ed was
involved in capturing the sound
of classical music for decades. He
recorded hundreds of orchestras,
choral groups and soloists all over the
world. He engineered more than a
thousand LPs and CDs and thousands
of radio broadcasts both recorded and
live. He was the broadcast engineer
for the Toronto Symphony for
twenty years, for the Canadian Opera
company for thirteen years, and the
principal recording engineer for CBC
Records in Toronto.
I looked forward to editing sessions
with Ted at his home. Often those
visits would include going with “Ed” to
a broadcast session with the Toronto
Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall or a
recording session with a world class
artist. There were also visits to the Glenn
Gould studio and later years to the Elora
festival where Ed recorded great music
in a huge storage shed that the locals
had discovered had first rate acoustic
properties.
Ed/Ted was nominated for and recognized
with many prestigious awards. He was
awarded the “Prix Anik” for his work with the
CBC film department’s documentary of the
visit of the Toronto Symphony to the People’s
Republic of China in 1977. His CD recordings
resulted in many JUNO nominations. I
should also mention that his engineering
and production on the New York Staff Band
recording “Blazing Brass” with tuba artist
Patrick Sheridan won the “British Bandsman”
CD of the year.
Throughout his busy life he was a
committed family man. His wonderful
Swedish bride Eva, who he met at the 1965
International Congress, along with son Len,
and daughter Paula, enjoyed life with a
dedicated Christian man as husband and
father. He also took great pride in his grand-
children Xavier and Felix.
Ted Marshall lived a significant life. He was
an artist, a consummate professional with a
true passion for his life’s calling. Christian
humility, award winner, family man, and loyal
friend are just a few of the ways to describe
Edward (Ted) Marshall. He is missed.
WINTER 2018   NYSB BULLETIN   ‡   3