A mysterious sea creature lurks in the icy waters just beyond the Arctic ice shelf. That’s the Inuit legend depicted in a song that Mirror Lake and Gruening Middle School advanced band students will premiere Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
Gruening Band Director Phililp Walters commissioned the original music from composer Brian Balmages for both bands. He said it’s one of the first opportunities for his students to work with professional musicians since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve been pretty successful with some fundraisers, and I didn’t want to just buy another piece of music,” Walters said. “I was looking, I wonder how much it would cost to commission a composer to write a piece of music? And so I looked into it a little bit, I asked around, and it didn't seem like it was out of the realm of possibility. So I just started contacting my favorite composers.”
About 18 months ago, Walters reached out to Balmages, who is more accustomed to hearing his music performed in large concert halls than middle school band rooms. His music has been performed in Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House. He’s also guest-conducted all over the world, including for “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, the United States Air Force Band, and received several prestigious awards for his music. But Balmages was excited to work with middle school students. About 100 students make up the combined band from Gruening and Mirror Lake, which Balmages will guest-conduct.
“My goal is to provide them the biggest amount of growth that I can,” Balmages said. “My goal is, when I leave there, I want them to want more, right? I want them to want more music, more band, more opportunities to feel like that, and to hopefully pursue those things.”
This is a new experience for the students, as they’ve never debuted an original composition before. Walters and Mirror Lake Band Director Travis Harrington were both careful about rehearsing the piece with students ahead of time, leaving room for Balmages to make his mark in a rehearsal before the show.
“Now remember, he didn’t write any articulation changes on 60 and 64 but my guess is he’s going to want it more precise,” Harrington told his students during practice last week. “He’s going to be able to tell you what he’s thinking about when we get to certain parts, because you’re telling a story about this.”
Balmages has never been to Alaska, and said he wanted to write something that would resonate with people in the north. The story of Qalupalik is an eerie tale about a green-skinned sea creature who sings a siren song to lure children to the water’s edge in order to snatch them. Once the creature has the children, it raises them as its own beneath the icy depths.
“One of the things that I love about the way the piece ends is that you don't really ever know what happens. The marching grows and grows and grows and then, boom! It's over, and you're left to wonder, did they escape? Did they get captured, what happened? And I'd like to leave that a little bit up to the listener and up to the performer,” Balmages said.
Asked about the difference in writing for younger musicians, Balmages likens it to a talented painter using a smaller box of crayons to illustrate. He said he’s more nervous about the potential eruption of Mount Spurr than he is about hearing eighth graders premiere his music to the world.
“The next Taylor Swift is out there right, the next Mozart is out there. These people are out there, and they're in our middle schools right now, and the opportunity to go out there and work with them and potentially have an impact that changes their mindset on the way they interact with music is such a big part for me,” Balmages said. “Every time that I have an opportunity to go out and work with a group of students, for me, it's a chance to open a door to a world of music that they never truly understood, and to maybe unleash that career path for some.”
Mirror Lake flautist Kiah Christy plays a critical part as the flute section drives the eerie sound of the Qalupalik’s siren song. She started playing her instrument in 6th grade and said she’s been looking forward to performing the piece since she heard about it last year.
“It's kind of like I'm in shock,” Christy said. “I would never expect something that I chose in sixth grade would take me this far, to become an eighth grader and have an actual composer that many of us know come and compose us a piece, and direct us through music.”
Gruening French Horn player Tristan Mathews said the opportunity to premiere this piece of music has him excited about his potential future as a musician.
“It's like a once in a lifetime experience to be able to play a commission piece for the first time ever,” Mathews said. “It's really cool thinking that I'm gonna be the first one to perform this”
The bands will also perform three of Balmages’ previous pieces; Blue Ridge Steel, Rippling Watercolors, and Kyiv, 2022, which he wrote as a sequel to Moscow, 1941 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Balmages has conducted in 46 of 50 states, and will now cross Alaska off his list.
Balmages said he only gets to attend about half the premieres he writes, but was excited to work with the bands for a full day. When Balmages publishes the piece next year, Gruening and Mirror Lake will be credited as the first bands to perform the piece when other bands purchase the arrangement.
