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Student composes band concert music

Lead Summary
By
Lori Sorenson

Seventeen-year-old Mitchell Graber hopes to write music for Disney someday.
The Luverne High School junior composed a song called “Glory” that will be performed during Friday night’s spring band concert.
The song has an action film sound to it, and it’s the first in a portfolio that Graber hopes will lead to a composing career in Hollywood.
“I want to write music for films — maybe Disney,” he said when asked what he’ll do with a music composition major he’s pursuing at Concordia College, Moorhead.
“I enjoy listening to film scores,” Graber said when asked what inspired his band concert song. “That is what has had the most influence on my musical writing style and specifically ‘Glory.’”
According to Luverne High School Band Director Richard Owen, it’s the first time he’s directed a student-composed piece in a concert, and it’s likely a first in the school’s history.
“I first heard it as a digital recording, and I liked the tune,” Owen said. “We often want to find something that connects with our audience as well as the musicians, and I liked what this sounded like.”
Graber, a percussionist, smiled when asked what it was like to hear the song performed by his high school band peers.
“It was nice to hear an actual band playing it,” he said. “The recordings are nice, but the woodwinds and low brass are deeper sounding than a digital recording can be.”
Graber’s mother, Seana Graber (Luverne High School choir director) said she first learned of her son’s composing last fall when she heard a digital recording of a song he composed with a free version of Finale software.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing — that he had done this,” she said about the song written for a string quartet.
With a little more experimenting and purchasing the full software version of Finale, Mitchell Graber approached Owen in January about composing something for the high school band.
“We discussed some specific things like tempo and dynamics to make more like what he had in mind,” Owen said. “Normally it’s up to me to interpret music, but it was nice to have the composer right here for me to ask, ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ That was fun for me.”
The Finale software allows composers to choose which instruments they want to hear in the piece and opens a score with a separate line for each part.
“I first messed around on the keyboard for a melody, then I added the instruments,” Graber said. His song ended up with 30 different parts with special attention on mallet instruments.
When asked why he called it “Glory,” he said, “I’ve been asked that a bigillian times and it’s basically because I couldn’t call it ‘Band Piece.’”
Even though he still has his senior year ahead of him, Graber will start this fall at Concordia where he’ll complete his high school credits while getting a jump on his major.
“I feel like I can advance what I want to do more there than I can here,” Graber said.
Owen said he wishes he could offer the one-on-one tutoring that Graber’s degree requires, but the demands of his full-time directing duties in Luverne wouldn’t allow for that.
Graber’s “Glory” will be the second number performed by the high school band in the spring concert.
The event will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 29, in the Luverne Elementary School gymnasium. It includes performances by band students in fifth through 12 grades.

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