Wednesday, August 27, 2003
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003 |
Rising Starr band needs help getting to prestigious eventWhen most people think of composers, they think of Beethoven or Bach men who wore white wigs and had funny names and who died a long time ago. Students in the Rising Starr Middle School bands, however, will meet a real live composer today and he wrote a piece of music they'll perform before a national audience in December. Samuel Hazo, a middle school band director in the Pittsburgh area who also is a prolific composer on the side, was scheduled to sit down and talk about his piece entitled "Keltic Variations." That's one of the pieces the Rising Starr Middle School Symphonic Band will play when it travels to the prestigious 57th Annual Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago in December. According to RSMS Band Director Steve Tyndall, Hazo was paying his own way to Georgia to visit with the young musicians, who just started work on his piece last week with the start of school. Tyndall said he was reluctant to let them play any of it for him yet. "He said he wasn't so interested in hearing them play it as much as he wanted to talk to them about it and what inspired him to write it and what he was thinking when he wrote it," said Tyndall, who has been the band director at Rising Starr since the school opened in 1997. Previously he taught at McIntosh High and J.C. Booth Middle. But this will be the biggest honor yet for any of Tyndall's bands, and one of the biggest recognitions afforded any Fayette County school system band group ever. That's because the Midwest Clinic, as it is commonly referred to, attracts 12,000 musicians including students, teachers and performers from all 50 states and 30 countries. "We are the first group of any kind from Fayette County to receive an invitation to perform at the clinic," said Tyndall. "For middle school, this is the pinnacle of performing opportunities. It will be a unique educational experience." Of the nearly 200 orchestras, bands and ensembles from around the world that submitted taped auditions to the clinic, just 30 were chosen. As expected, a Christmas season trip to Chicago for the 78 seventh and eighth graders and their parents and chaperones won't be cheap. Fund-raising has been underway since last Spring to scrape together the estimated $65,000 the trip will cost. About $2,400 was raised through corporate donations, said fund-raising co-chair Lisa Splitlog, and student-led fundraisers like car washes have brought in a bit more. A spaghetti supper and silent auction is scheduled in October. But they are still far off from their goal, to cover as much of the cost as possible for the students. In addition to airfare, hotel and food expenses, the band must pay for guest peformers and conductors, as well as instruction and program costs, Splitlog said. Donations will gladly be accepted said Splitlog. For details, call her at 770-631-1838.
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