Two Siloam Springs High School students got a chance to perform music they composed themselves at the spring band concert on May 9.
Junior Sam Youmans conducted the high school concert band as they played the waltz he wrote for the performance. Senior Blake Jackson sang and played the keyboard to "One Name," a worship song he composed during the summer of 2015.
Both students had an interest in music from a young age, said Band Director Daniel Hodge.
"They discovered a gift and developed it," he said.
It's uncommon to see high school students composing pieces for school concerts, but it is rare to see them compose music at the level that Jackson and Youmans do, he said.
"If you go to a band concert and a student has composed something, that is not very common to even see," Hodge said. "But typically when you see that, it's kind of a jumbled mess, it sounds like someone threw notes on a page, its not very cohesive, but these guys wrote music on a level that people would pay to purchase it to perform it."
Hodge encourages his students to try composition and has several more young composers coming up, he said.
Jackson said his song was written to be a vocal congregational worship piece focusing on the name of Jesus and its power.
Jackson credit's his mother, Michele Jackson, who plays the keyboard and sings, for his interest in music.
"She really influenced me and taught me," he said.
He played the piano for fun as soon as he could walk and started formal lessons in fifth grade. Jackson also plays the French horn and is first chair in the band.
Jackson followed in his mother's footsteps and became a worship leader for the youth group at First Assembly of God church. Over the past several years he has written five worship songs.
"I just one day thought I would write a song and started writing," he said.
Although he isn't necessarily planning a career in music, Jackson said his passion for music stems from the way music expresses feeling. In the fall, Jackson is attending Oral Roberts University in Tulsa to study Mechanical Engineering.
This is the second time that Youmans has written a piece and conducted the high school band as they played his song.
Youmans' first concert piece was performed at the band's 2015 Christmas concert.
The young composer said he starts with a melody in his head and thinks about it for about a month before he puts it down on paper. With all of his other activities, such as speech and debate, it takes a few more months to put the song together for the concert band. Hodge helped him get the song vertically aligned for the various instruments in the band.
Youmans said he liked the flexibility of working with a song that could be edited and changed.
"It's still a work in progress and I think that's kind of the beauty of working on a piece that's not published yet," Youmans said. "If we don't like how it sounds we can change it. The composer is right here and we can do what we want."
Conducting in front of an audience can be nerve wracking, but is also fulfilling, he said.
Youmans, who is home schooled, entered the public education system starting in sixth grade to be involved in activities like band. He hopes to write another song for next year's concert.
Sam has been studying piano for 10 years, since age 7, and has been writing music since eighth or ninth grade. He has written seven or eight major works, as well as some smaller projects. He is planning to study music in college and is looking at several colleges to find the right fit.
Youmans is also drawn to the way music expresses emotion.
"I just found it fascinating how you can take words out of the picture, and you can just take sound, and how playing two different pitches at the same time can pull emotion out of a human being," Youmans said. To me that's proof of a God and his love... I feel like it points to a creator."
General News on 05/24/2017