Mehlville Band Plays Under Famous Composer

Mehlville High School Symphonic Band students performed at the beautiful Touhill Performing Arts Center Tuesday night, led by the composer of the very notes they were playing, Frank Ticheli.

Ticheli is a modern composer known around the world for writing powerful and deeply thoughtful pieces of music, largely for concert bands. He currently teaches composition at the University of Southern California, and came to Missouri for two days this week to work with the Mehlville bands.

The symphonic bands at Mehlvile High School, Washington Middle School and Margaret Buerkle Middle School each had a Monday morning, and the high school band rehearsed with him again Tuesday morning at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The workshop culminated in a concert at which the Mehlville High School Symphonic Band played two of Ticheli's compositions, under his direction, in the Anheuser-Busch Hall at Touhill Performing Arts Center. They were followed by the University of Missouri-St. Louis Symphonic Band performing three more Ticheli pieces and one by another modern composer, Michael Markowski.

Emily Weber, a freshman clarinet player, said Mehlville bands have been playing Ticheli's music for years, so it was an honor to meet him in person. She said the most valuable thing she learned from working with him wasn't in the technical aspect of her playing, but emotional.

"A lot of it isn't about what you play, but how you feel when you play it," she said. "It's about not just playing the notes on the page, but really putting your heart into it."

Mehlville High School band director Tony Brown invited Ticheli to the school three years ago. Since then, Brown and the Mehlville Bands Parents Association have been working hard to raise enough money and make arrangements for it to happen. Angie Weber, Emily's mother, said they raised around $7,000 for the event and it was rewarding to see their work pay off.

"It's a learning experience that you can't really get anywhere else," she said.

Jason Becker, also a freshman clarinet player, said that what he learned from working with Ticheli was perseverance.

"If you want to succeed at something, you don't give up after the first try. You may have a lot of failures, but you have to keep at it," he said.

Kelly Becker, Jason's mom, said it was especially exciting to see her son perform at Touhill.

"It was such a pleasure to see the whole band perform in such a beautiful place," she said.

The band performed two of Ticheli's compositions that evening, "Shenandoah" and "Angels in the Architecture." The second, inspired and commissioned for the famous Sydney Opera House, is a sweeping five-movement battle between light and dark musical motifs. By quoting melodies from three different religious cultures—a Shaker hymn at the beginning and end, a traditional Hebrew song and a 16th century Christian psalm—Ticheli said he intended for the music to transcend any one religion and represent universal peace, hope and love.

"This is not a piece written for high school students," he said to the audience while introducing the piece. "They do an excellent job."