Assessing Rubel's influence in letters to the editor
Mark Rubel, a major figure in the American and California music industry, has passed away.
His sister Sasha said in a Facebook post that Mark passed away “peacefully at home” on Friday, adding, “We have you all in our hearts, Mark's music, teaching, and students. , please know my love for the broader music community.” And his loving family (his niece and I) will live on. ”
Rubel, director of education at Blackbird Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, grew to become a musical change-maker at the University of California. He attended Real Elementary School, University High School, and the University of Illinois in Urbana.
He opened Pogo Studio on Taylor Street in downtown Champaign and produced thousands of recordings over a 33-year period before moving his business to Nashville in 2013. At that time he was 55 years old.
“I love Champaign. I really do,” he told The News-Gazette's Melissa Merli. “It's a great combination of town and city. I think it's a great place for music, and the ambient level of music here is unprecedented. The people who grew up here are too high-level I didn’t realize how great it was.”
More from Merli:
Rubell has recorded hundreds, perhaps thousands, of musicians, including Alison Krauss. And since 1985, his studio has become an actual classroom for Parkland College students taking music recording classes.
Rubel, who is extremely busy and rarely gets out of the house, also works at Eastern Illinois University. EIU gave him a year off, “which I really appreciate,” he said.
There he teaches courses on music technology and the evolution of jazz and rock and roll. Each fall and spring, he gathers between 120 and 150 students per section.
“It's completely ramped up and it's gotten to the point where it's kind of a show,” said Rubel, who has invited guest artists to perform, including Elsinore's Ryan Groff. .
He also created something of a super-band of CU musicians to perform for the class, including drummer Josh Quirk, guitarist Matt Stewart, blues singer Candy Foster, and Rubel, who plays bass guitar. did.
At EIU, where Rubel began working in 2007, he also serves as director of sound for the music department, helping with other departments as well as the sound of the $70 million Doudna Fine Arts Center, where his office is located.
“I really felt like I could go to Oz every day and teach,” Rubel said. “It's a wonderful facility.”
Regionally, Rubel is also known as the bass guitarist for the oldies thrash band Captain Rat and the Blind Rivets. I have known him for 33 years.
“I’m proud of our band,” he said. “I'm proud that we're resolutely not hip. That means hip in my book. We get ridiculed by other musicians all the time. We never intended to be good people. We always wanted to be super fun.”
Rubel was 2 years old when his family moved to the University of California. His father, Lee, is a mathematician and came here to enroll in the mathematics department at the University of Illinois.
When he first arrived on a gray, rainy day, Mr. Lee told his wife, Nina, that he intended to move his family elsewhere in a year. Lee and Nina remained here for the rest of their lives.
Nina Rubel was a well-known reporter for the Courier and News-Gazette in downtown Urbana, and published a compilation of her work at both newspapers.
Rubel has witnessed major changes in downtown. When he first started living there, it was just himself and Dave Monk and “sometimes a prostitute,” he joked.
Now he sees people flocking to coffee shops, bars and restaurants and enjoys that too. But there's one thing he can't miss. It's a drunken zombie in the middle of the night.