Don Schamber
Don Schamber was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to an army doctor and a registered nurse mother. I have lived and gone to school in Peking, China, Yokohama, Japan, Stuttgart, Germany and several US states. In 1959, after release from acitve duty in the US Marine Corps, I attended the College of San Mateo and was part of their great jazz program. I moved to San Jose and attended SJS and was again part of the jazz program that I would like to believe I helped start.
I earned a BA in 1965 along with a teaching credential and obtained a Master’s in 1969 while teaching music in the San Jose Unified system. It was at this time that an instructor at San Jose State wanted to form a music publishing company named Mission Music Publishers. In 1969, I accepted a teaching position at a small Arizona community college located in Douglas, Arizona and I moved back to California in 1971 to accept the jazz position at Monterey Peninsula College.
The college was and is important to the area and the Monterey Jazz Festival used our facilities and some equipment while donating funds to our scholarship fund. I became their educational coordinator in 1974 and had the position of directing the California High School All Star Band as well as running the high school competition held on our campus in the Spring. It was also during this time that Mission Music was dissolved and I created DVS Publications, publishing my own works. I retired from fulltime teaching in 1995 and am still involved with teaching two music classes at the school.