New MCHS Band Director Returns Home After Eventful Journey

We’ve all witnessed the past rough year for the Madison Band Program, but it seems they’re out of that rut now. Director Sam Bortka was hired over the summer to lead the band program and they’ve never been more set.

We sat and talked with Mr. Bortka and asked him about his life before Madison.

“I’m a native of Kansas City Kansas,” he tells us.

His father was offered a teaching/coaching job in Salem, Indiana from where Bortka would later graduate. He then made it into the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, “which is a pretty big deal,” Bortka states.

It took Bortka five and a half years to achieve his bachelor’s degree rather than the normal four.

“Well, the music curriculum is pretty tough. I was starting to go out on the road and tour with people and do gigs, so I wouldn’t go to school full time the last year or two.”

He would later stay long enough to achieve his master’s degree and begin teaching music at Indiana University Bloomington.

He got his first “huge rockstar” gig with the Temptations — a successful Motown band from the 1960s and ‘70s.”

“I kind of meandered between all the Motown bands.” The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight and the Pips were just a few from the top of his head.

There was a time when he realized he needed to be home more — his celebrity life had taken a toll on his personal life.

“I would come home and my first son, Joseph, wouldn’t recognize me.” The musician moved out to Los Angeles because he knew that it was easy to maintain a family and work with music there. Bortka got his old job with the Disneyland band back, but it was short-lived. His current wife was unhappy with the distance between her and her family, so they moved to New York.

“I had enough connections from playing professionally with these big groups that I started working right off the bat, “ says Bortka.

Within a couple months of working there, we was scheduled to do Christmas at the Apollo Theater with the Temptations on NBC. A couple of days before, it was found out that their contractor was unavailable.

“They didn’t know anybody in New York but me, so they called me to handle it,” Bortka tells us.

He contracted his first show, not knowing a lot of people. He ended up being able to hire people he says he grew up listening to on records.

“I was their boss. It was awesome.”

Once he hired them, the bands started hiring him, and this was what got the ball rolling for him. He went on to do a multitude of Broadway musicals, jingles, and playing sax for professional records, even orchestras for people like Bon Jovi and Paul Simon.

New York was another place he could easily teach and play professionally. He could teach music in the day and play Broadway shows at night.

“I came back here about four or five years ago,” Bortka tells us. He went straight to teaching at New Washington. “Then I saw this job opening, and I always dug Madison… I’m really excited to be here. There’s a lot of potential in this band program. A lot (of potential).”

Bortka asks anyone interested to come and try to join band or just jam with us some time. According to Bortka, his goal is to have a “hundred-person pep band and rock the heck out of it.”