A Bayside Trilogy A Bayside Trilogy (May 11, 2001)

Composer writes piece for Graham Middle School

By Amy Goodpaster Strebe

It's not every day that young music students get an opportunity to work side by side with a professional composer. Through the "Composer in Our School" program students at Graham Middle School have not only been taught and directed by a prolific composer, but have also had the unique opportunity to learn a composition commissioned by their school especially for them.

Since January, students in the Graham instrumental music program have been hard at work practicing a piece written by percussionist and composer Dave Black, the school's visiting composer in residence.

Titled "Bayside Trilogy," the composition is broken down into three movements: "Sunrise over the Golden Gate," "Midafternoon in Chinatown" and "Mountain View (A Majestic Celebration)." The students performed the piece with Black conducting in a special concert at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on May 8.

"It's very beneficial for the students to meet the person who writes and directs the music," said Tyra Ingram Cable, Graham's instrumental music director, who created the program eight years ago. "It gets kids more involved with the music [and] it helps to build their self-esteem for someone to come here and write a special piece of music for the school."

Black, who has been involved in music for the past 36 years, is a composer and arranger, as well as the author of several best-selling books. He is presently the director of instrumental music for Alfred Publishing Company in Van Nuys, Calif. Many of Black's compositions have been used as background music for TV shows, including "All My Children," "Coach," "The Drew Carey Show," "General Hospital," "Ellen, Grace under Fire," "Nightline," "Roseanne" and "Good Morning America."

It was at the annual Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago two years ago that Black met Cable, and she approached him about participating in the Composer in Our School program.

"She told me that she had been playing my music and was interested in something that I could write in three movements that would include a piece on Mountain View," said Black, who worked with music students all day at Graham May 7 and 8.

For the composition's third movement, Black drew on his idea of Mountain View as a majestic valley surrounded by mountains.

"I knew that Mountain View was at the base of San Francisco Bay, but I did some research on the area to help me visualize the piece," he explained. "I found Mountain View to be an adorable, quaint, bustling city that is multicultural. It's a very diversified place, and I tried to capture that in the music."

The piece took four months to write. "In March I recorded the movements in Chicago and sent Tyra a copy of the CD so she could hear what I was thinking about for the piece," he said. "She told me that by listening to the recording, it put the music into context for the students, and they were inspired by it."

CDs of "A Bayside Trilogy" will also be mailed to 35,000 middle school, junior high and high school band directors worldwide so that they may perform it.

"This will be great publicity for the school and Mountain View in general," said Black, who has worked on several commissioned pieces for schools around the country, but conducted the first student concert of his work Tuesday night.

Black enjoys visiting schools and working with young people.

"The kids here have been great to work with," he said. "They ask lots of questions, and I think that they are generally fascinated by people who are in the arts. They often see it as an unusual thing to do. It's also a great way for young students to get exposure to someone who is working in the music business."