Joan Wildman

On April 8, 2020, Joan M Wildman passed away in her home, attended by her son Randall J Wildman. She was 82 years old. She was born on January 1, 1938 in Loup county, near Milburn, Nebraska, the daughter of Ralph D Poland and Lydia A (Kokes) Poland. She was the second birth of the year in Loup county, missing the first birth by 12 minutes.

She grew up on a ranch in Greeley county near Spalding, Nebraska as an only child. The ranch became quite successful but was a lot of hard work. This legacy of hard work but successful outcomes shaped her for her entire life.

She married Thomas J Wildman in 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and gave birth to four sons between 1959 and 1963. She and Thomas raised the boys together, even after they divorced in 1975-1976.

Her specialty was music, and she performed it, taught it, and professed it at an incredibly high level. She was a pianist and synthesizer player and a contributor to music theory. She attained her bachelor’s degree in the late 50’s from MacPhail College (where she met Thomas) and her masters and DMA degrees from the University of Oregon during the mid to late 70s. She is the first and only member of her extended family to have achieved a doctoral-level degree.

She was a professor of music at the University of Wisconsin—Madison from 1978 through 2002 specializing in music theory and was formative in establishing the jazz studies program that now exists there (which is newly revived). Her performances span from 1978 through 2019 in the Madison area. She popularized the avant guarde form of jazz that is otherwise hard to reach for audiences, packing clubs in the Madison area for decades.

Her artistic expression also crossed into the computer-generated animations, web pages, and computer-generated drawings. Her extensive overview of jazz history and styles formed one of the first web pages in the country, dating back to 1994 and was still active after she retired eight years later. It incorporated multi-media, using animations, sound and static visuals in addition to hyperlinked text.

She is survived by her four sons Mark E, Randall J, Keith T, and Lawrence M Wildman. An in-person celebration of her life is planned for a time after self-COVID-19 isolation can be relaxed and will be announced on the Cress Funeral Service Website, as well as her Facebook page. Memorial contributions are to please be given to the Benedictian Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica of Achinson, Kansas, where she studied before transferring to MacPhail.