Ken Dye, Notre Dame’s director of bands since 1998, and Larry Dwyer ’66, assistant director since 2001, retired at the end of the spring semester. Composers, performers and professors of music, they have overseen the University’s array of ensembles, including concert, jazz and pep bands. Their varied legacies perhaps reverberate most as mentors to members of the Band of the Fighting Irish, famed for its football Saturday performances. Dye and Dwyer embodied the band’s motto: Tradition, Excellence, Family.
Both men followed winding paths before joining the Notre Dame band family. Dye, who grew up in Los Angeles, studied at the University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach, before earning a doctorate in music education from the University of Houston. Dye led bands in Mexico and at universities in Texas and Georgia en route to Notre Dame. But he had a song in his head since junior high that would become central to the soundtrack of his career.
“I went to a school assembly and the school band played the ‘Notre Dame Victory March,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a really cool song,’” Dye says. “So that melody has stuck with me for decades.”
Dwyer, a Joliet, Illinois native, came to Notre Dame as a student in the 1960s, at first majoring in math. He had played trombone in professional bands since age 16, but the behavior of the elder members put him off the idea of performing.
“Literally every time the band took a break, they would all go to the bar and start drinking pretty heavily,” Dwyer says. “I didn’t want my life turning into being an alcoholic. It just seemed to me, in high school, becoming a musician would lead me in directions I really didn’t want to go.”
He joined the concert and jazz bands as a Notre Dame freshman, renewing his passion for music as a soloist. He met with Richard Pilger ’54, a former kettle drummer and Irish Guardsman, and Robert O’Brien, band director from 1952 to 1986, to express his concerns about what performing might mean for his future.
Pilger said he’d encounter negative influences in any profession, but as a musician “you’ll do something you love for the rest of your life.” O’Brien suggested he consider teaching music as well. Dwyer took their advice to heart, switching his major to music with an added focus on education.
While completing his Notre Dame degree, he also earned a teaching certification from Saint Mary’s College, later adding a master’s in music education from the University of Illinois. He then returned to South Bend, teaching in local schools for decades before becoming Notre Dame’s assistant band director in 2001.
Under Dye and Dwyer’s leadership, the band earned the 2011 Sudler Trophy from the John Philip Sousa Foundation — known as the collegiate band equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.
Joie Warnke, a junior from South Bend and a member of the saxophone section, considers Dye “this incredible mentor to look up to as far as all the great things he’s accomplished and the way that he’s led the band. [He’s] been a role model for a lot of us.”
Dwyer, for his part, offered Warnke guidance similar to that he received as a student. “He really saw how passionate I was about jazz and was really encouraging,” Warnke says. “I asked him to take piano lessons and he gave me all of these incredible resources. I was really appreciative of his role in my jazz journey.”
Dye’s tenure has featured many notable global performances for the band, including appearances at the Sydney Opera House and Beijing Concert Hall. In all, Dye has led the ensemble on tours of every continent except Antarctica.
And yet, “nothing compares to Notre Dame Stadium,” he says. The swell of energy when the announcer introduces the Band of the Fighting Irish as the ranks trot onto the field “never gets old.”
In those moments, the band’s motto comes to life — tradition in the continuation of a history that dates to the founding of the University, excellence in the performance of student musicians and family in the bonds the beloved songs strengthen.
“The band gives the community something to rally around — musically, emotionally and visually — and it creates the family idea of being together,” Dwyer says. “Once you hear the school song, you can remember that and bring back your own memories and enjoy being a part of the Notre Dame community.”
Paul Popiel ’95M.A., director of the University of Kansas bands for 13 years, has succeeded Dye, who reflects with appreciation on what leading the Notre Dame bands meant to him over the past three decades.
“You’re part of a very special organization of people and memories that have continued for 180 years,” Dye says. “I hope I have given good memories to all those in the band. It has given me a sense of gratitude, having the opportunity to work at such a special place where I could do the most good with the talents and time that I had.”
Pike Temple is a senior journalism student at the University of Missouri.