By Ann Marie Shambaugh
ashambaugh@neighborsgo.com

Berkner High School senior Aaron Singleton was skeptical as he listened to fellow musicians talk about how the Mighty Ram Band’s trip to the Midwest Clinic in Chicago would be a life-changing experience.

After performing at the prestigious international band and orchestra conference, the tenor saxophone player had a change of heart.

“I thought they didn’t play it up enough,” Singleton said.

The Berkner band performed a world premier, a song rarely played by high school bands and a piece by Frank Ticheli, a professor at the University of Southern California who graduated from Berkner in 1976.

Berkner director of bands Frank Troyka said the five-day trip was perfect “from beginning to end.”

“Every aspect of the trip from the travel arrangements to the recreational and educational activities and the concert itself ... couldn’t have gone any better,” Troyka said.

One highlight of the trip was performing the world premier of “Anima Luminis,” a piece written by Japanese composer Wataru Hokoyama in response to the earthquake that struck Japan in March. Officials from the Midwest Clinic commissioned the song and selected the Berkner band to perform it for an audience that included a band from Japan.

“The piece we played was so emotion-filled,” said Robin Sweeden, a Berkner junior who plays oboe and English horn. “You could feel that other people were feeling the same things we were feeling as we played it.”

Singleton said he was honored to rehearse the piece with its composer.

“He’s just such an expressive and deeply committed composer,” he said. “When he steps in front of you, you really feel the connection with the music. He got me to do things I didn’t know I could do on my instrument.”

Troyka, who grew up near Chicago and returned there to work for a year in the late 1990s, wanted the band students to experience the city as locals, not just as visiting musicians.

He arranged for the students to travel everywhere by train, and he took them to see the Blue Man Group, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the city skyline from the 95th floor of a skyscraper.

“They could see the whole world spread out in front of them,” Troyka said. “The look on the kids’ faces was just amazing. Their jaws just dropped. We saw the city of Chicago and Lake Michigan laid out there in this huge panorama.”

The trip had such an impact on Singleton, that he’s started rethinking his career goals, which now include music composition or directing a band.

“I want to be a head director of my own band,” he said. “I’d love to bring a band to the Midwest Clinic myself.”

Ann Marie Shambaugh is the Richardson/Lake Highlands/Far North Dallas neighborsgo editor and can be reached at ashambaugh@neighborsgo.com or 469-330-5689.