Original composition heralds merger of Brunswick’s middle schools - cleveland.com

BRUNSWICK, Ohio -- How does a music teacher celebrate past, present and future? With music, of course.

In 2018, when planning was under way for the Brunswick City Schools’ new combined middle school, middle school band teacher Gary Allen began thinking about how to musically celebrate the event.

He said he had an idea for a new musical composition that could be performed by what would be the eighth-grade band at the new school. Those students were in the sixth grade at the time, divided among the three separate middle schools.

“Ironically, that same year, I saw that a composer from Pennsylvania (was holding) a raffle for a free piece to be commissioned for (a school) band. I thought, how perfect would this be if we were chosen for this?” Allen said.

“Sadly, we were not selected, so I began thinking of other ways we could find money to make this happen.

“I reached out to this composer, Jeff Herwig, and shared my thoughts/ideas with him for what we were thinking about. He was excited about the idea, and we talked back and forth for the two years that followed about how we could make this possible for the 2020-21 school year.

“In Brunswick City Schools, we are very fortunate to have the Brunswick Education Foundation, which provides amazing support to our teachers in many different ways,” Allen said.

One of these ways is to offer teacher grants each year. When time to apply rolled in the middle of the 2019-20 school year, he decided to apply. His idea was one of those selected.

“We are very grateful to the BEF for their generosity to our Brunswick teachers in order to make these amazing extra opportunities happen for our students,” Allen said.

He began to work with Herwig online to share ideas and thoughts for what the music would symbolize and how the piece would sound.

Although Allen was selected for this grant, he was not assigned to teach the eighth-grade band this year. His colleagues, Scott Little and Michelle Wank, are this year’s teachers. They have been super flexible to “swap” classes with Allen a few times throughout this second semester to familiarize the students with the musical number.

Little and Wank will be doing the vast majority of teaching and rehearsing the new piece with students.

Allen is a Northeast Ohio native. He graduated from Midpark High School in 2009 and attended the University of Akron. He is currently attending graduate school online and will graduate with his master’s degree in music education in the spring of 2022.

He grew up in a family with an appreciation for music. His parents sang in church groups and he followed in his mother’s footsteps playing trumpet. She actually began to teach him some songs before he took it up formally in the fifth grade.

He plays trumpet to this day. He has performed with several music ensembles and became a private music teacher during his junior year in high school.

His Brunswick affiliation began in 2015 when he was hired to teach K-5 music at Huntington Elementary School. In 2018, he was transferred to teaching middle school band.

He and his wife, Amanda, have a 2-year-old daughter, Isabelle(Izzy).

“I’ve been lucky to teach at all three middle schools prior to the opening of the new school,” he said.

Students began learning some of the music from the new composition after the second draft, with the final composition expected Feb. 15.

“Initially, we planned on having our students perform this live for this school year, but, obviously, COVID-19 has turned those plans around for us,” Allen explained.

“After discussing with my colleagues, we decided that the next best thing would be to create a recording of the piece in order to share with our band families, and for the eighth-grade band to have something super exciting to look forward to as they wrap up their years as middle school students.

“However, after some thinking, I had an idea to take this a step further and essentially put together a documentary of Brunswick’s middle school(s) history. The Brunswick Historical Society has shared some amazing historical information and pictures that have gotten me started with the script to write for the documentary.”

Students will read much of the script for the documentary. Alumni and potentially family members of the now-former Willetts, Visintainer and Edwards schools will be interviewed throughout the documentary, as well.

Allen plans to take the audience through the history of the three schools and to end with the world premiere video performance of the eighth-graders, whose audio and video tracks will be put together for the performance. The performance will premiere on YouTube at 7 p.m. June 3.

“A special showing will be shared with the eighth-grade students in class on Friday, May 28, prior to the world premiere,” he said. “We are very excited to share this with our community!”

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Original composition heralds merger of Brunswick’s middle schools - cleveland.com
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