The Key of Sea> College of the Atlantic teacher composes, improvises jazzy sounds

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Talking about music is kind of like dancing about architecture, according to music man John Cooper. But despite the limitations of the spoken word, this teacher, director, composer and performer’s feeling about music is ever present.

“My career has never been a job, it’s been a love,” Cooper said. “When my wife has come home and had a hard day, I feel guilty.”

Cooper teaches music and communications at Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic but he is also known as a composer – compositions such as “Birkenstocks and Mood Rings” – for local high school jazz ensembles, and orchestral scores for documentary films such as “High on Maine.”

But first and foremost, Cooper is a performer who has played the saxophone, flute, piano and a half-dozen other instruments everywhere from Atlantic City casinos to the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono.

With a mother who sang hymns in the church choir and a father who demanded that someone learn to play the piano sitting in the living room, Cooper can’t remember a time when he wasn’t surrounded by music.

Like most public school kids, he picked up a band instrument in the seventh grade; the sax won out because it looked cool. Performing came later. “It was the ’60s – everyone had a garage band, so I picked up a guitar,” he explained.

But throughout his adult life, Cooper has been drawn to improvisational jazz for its freedom.

“If I was only playing other people’s music, it wouldn’t be enough,” he said. “I have to do it my own way. With jazz, you’re creating as you go.”

Jim Frick, a fellow jazzman from Orono, says that Cooper’s improvisational gift is one of his friend’s greatest strengths. Frick and Cooper have played together for about a decade, frequenting Borders in Bangor and the Lompoc Cafe in Bar Harbor with groups such as A-Train and the John Cooper Trio.

“His improvisations are almost compositions on the spot,” Frick said. “His style is liquid. It’s very melodic and creative.”

It was only a matter of time before the melodies in Cooper’s head grew from improvisational solos to full-scale compositions. Even now, after studying music for decades, most of Cooper’s rhythms and melodies start as a few notes he hums in the car or the shower. He writes his ever-evolving music piecemeal, tweaking each composition until it lives up to the creation in his mind.

“You write what you have to write, because that’s the note that has to be there,” Cooper explained. “It’s deciding if it’s good or bad that’s hard. You can’t add it up and see if it fits a mathematical equation – there’s no absolute.”

But after many years of composing, Cooper has developed his own style, complex rhythms that appear in most of his music, whether jazz duets or synthesized film scores. Cooper’s pieces throb with a persistent tension created by the rapidly shifting rhythms and tempos.

He started writing on an old Macintosh computer nearly 10 years ago, and found that it allowed him to make the most of creative bursts.

“I can jot down ideas then figure out ways of putting them together,” Cooper said. “I consider the computer another instrument. It’s the tool of my writing.”

The computer also helps Cooper compile his thoughts quickly, necessary for a busy man who tends to be a bit of a procrastinator. Both Frick and Steve Orlofsky, a member of A-Train and band director at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, tell the story of Cooper hunched in the back seat, furiously arranging a jazz piece en route to their scheduled performance.

He named the piece, “Last Minute,” Orlofsky said.

“He’s usually right up to the wire,” Frick added.

But despite the economy and utility of computerized instrumentations, compositions sound flat and pale in comparison to the swelling tone of an orchestra drumming a rhythm in the pit of your stomach, says Cooper.

Most of his work has never been performed by a live orchestra. Each of the scores composed for documentary films narrated by NBC newsman Jack Perkins was drafted, perfected and performed by Cooper alone in his digital recording studio.

“The dynamic level is different, the timbre, the ambiance … there’s just something about the bow going across that string, and lots of strings vibrating,” Cooper said. “I could die and go to heaven if I heard some of the rich string things from my film scores that I think would sound pretty good live.”

Cooper first collaborated with Perkins and filmmaker in 1991, with “The Gift of Acadia,” and found that writing for films was a unique outlet for a musician. He says the pieces must be subtle and not overpower the dialogue – gentler than many of his jazz compositions.

“It’s not like it’s banging you over the head, it is tying the film together,” Cooper said. “If I hadn’t done these films, this music would never have been written unless I did a John Tesh-type album, which I’d be embarrassed to do,” he said with a wicked grin.

“The world just doesn’t need more of that,” he said.

Cooper’s day job, as the sole member of the music department at College of the Atlantic, provides another opportunity for improvisation.

“All the music courses here gravitate from me,” Cooper said. “We’re all like our own ships at sea.”

The one-on-one teaching job at COA differs from any other position Cooper has held. He misses the atmosphere of a large school like the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught music to hundreds of dedicated students.

“You walk down the hall lined with practice rooms, and there’s this beautiful cacophony of sound,” Cooper said.

And as he gives guitar lessons and discusses how music plays a role in life, he misses the role of director, bringing together his students in a triumphant performance.

But Cooper is pleased to leave behind the outside pressures that restrict school band direction, and concentrate on his music.

“I know what it’s like out there in the trenches,” said the veteran of high school music education. “A band director has to be a psychologist, a cheerleader, a coach and no one has to take these courses, so it better be fun.”

At COA, his mission is clearer. Cooper shares his love of music with each individual student and presents the art as an alternate medium for expression.

“I’m teaching them music as a second language, as an important vehicle for communication,” he said. “It’s a way to get your ideas across. It makes you more human.”

In all his incarnations – from translator to coach – Cooper advises students to ask themselves if they absolutely have to be a musician. I they aren’t sure, he tells them to take another path.

John Cooper, the musician? He’s never looked back from the path that chose him since starting to perform at local weddings as a high school student.

“You can hate medicine or law, but there’s a good financial reward in it. It’s a job, and you can forget it when you go home,” he said.

“But musicians – we get paid back by the music,” Cooper said. “We love it, and we’d do it for nothing.”