Travis J. Weller

I hope Ed Rendell reads this.  I hope he reads and gets off whatever horse that apparently got him elected.  Saying he’s a friend of education is like saying Enron cared about its shareholders.  It’s like saying Vick was humane to dogs.  As the Keystone State Lawmakers continue to exchanger verbal volleys this week, friends of mine go unpaid and all functions of the state come to a screeching halt.  I have the solution to free up a lot of money in the budget – kill standardized testing where it stands.  But knowing Rendell’s agenda, we will stay the course and ultimately force districts around the state to make their cuts to save the essentials.  So now the arts in public education find themselves in another tooth and nail battle because we are non-essential….yeah, right.

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So thanks to Dr. Jay Dorfman’s (while he was still at Kent)class this past summer, I created an interdisciplinary unit on the Trail of Tears to enrich my ensemble’s studying of two pieces of music, “The Trail of Tears” by James Barnes and “Etowah” by Brian Balmages.  For those of you unfamiliar with the piece by Barnes, I highly recommend it.  It is not incredibly difficult music – but it is uplifting, dramatic, great music that has been crafted by one of the greatest band writers of the past 50 years.  Etowah is a new piece from FJH this year about the Hightower Trail that once connected Cherokee and Creek lands in the south.

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I was honored to be asked by friend and colleague Drew Fennell to write for the River City Youth Brass Band.  They will present “A Frontier Fought and A City Found” on May 31, 2009 of this year.  The piece is a historical sonic potrait of the battles fought between the British and the French during the 1750′s around Pittsburgh.  You can read all of the program notes about it by clicking here.  I had the opportunity to meet several of the groups members at the Diocesean Honor Band Festival in January and over this past week at the PMEA Region Band held at Ambridge.  I am eagerly looking forward to this debut.  Drew is a great musician, and it is an honor to have him wave the stick and bring this music to life with such a great group of kids.  I chuckled out loud after seeing one of the French Horn students’ sweatshirt last Thursday.  It read -  “Rive City Youth Brass Band: Real Heavy Metal”.  This is going to be awesome!  My thanks to Drew for his musical guidance in orchestration, and to my neighbor Dr. Daniel Barr for the books and resource information he provided!

Additionally, I recently received a recording of Pirates!, a multi-movement work that will be available from FJH in the Summer of 2009.  The recording is from the Nassau Division 4 Honor Band that Drew conducted back in January.  If you get the chance, click here to here this group of freshmen and sophomores swashbuckling away!  The students did a wonderful job under Drew’s conducting.  My thanks to Drew and the Directors who programmed this piece for their festival!

I need to keep evolving.  That means staying current, and that means staying up with what these youngsters are listening to.  So it requires some time on my part and sometimes painfully enduring the contrived chord progressions and hollow lyrics of any number of artists that students feel compelled to ask me to listen to.  So I decided I would be proactive and make the commitment on my time – so I watched the Grammy Awards.

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