FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 17, 2001 CONTACT: Sean Flanigan, (515) 271-2776 or (515) 270-6162 Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119 NOTE TO NEWS MEDIA: The Drake Concert Band will rehearse "An American Elegy" at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in the Hall of Performing Arts, Harmon Fine Arts Center. The rehearsal will be open to the news media, and professor Flanigan will be available for interviews at the start of the rehearsal. DRAKE CONCERT BAND TO PERFORM MUSIC COMMEMORATING COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING On Friday, April 20 -- the second anniversary of the shooting rampage at Columbine High School -- the Drake University Concert Band will perform "An American Elegy," which was composed to honor the memory of the 12 students and the teacher who lost their lives on April 20, 1999, as well as those who survived the tragedy at the Colorado school. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will start at 8 p.m. in the Hall of Performing Arts at the Harmon Fine Arts Center, 25th Street and Carpenter Avenue. "An American Elegy" by American composer Frank Ticheli, premiered on April 23, 2000, in a concert performed by the Columbine High School Band. The work had been commissioned as part of a special project sponsored by the Alpha Iota chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi at the University of Colorado. "It's a very dramatic, beautiful piece of music," said Sean Flanigan, assistant professor of music at Drake and director of the Drake Concert Band. "Yet as a modern piece, it's very accessible to the listener. The students have reacted very well to the piece and play it with genuine emotion. The music is at times simple in texture, with beautiful flowing melodies. It gives many different players opportunities to play important melodic parts, so they all feel very involved with the piece. There's also a very haunting trumpet solo played offstage by Bryan Parsons, our first-chair trumpet." After Ticheli was commissioned to write the piece, he discovered that Columbine High School had no school song, so he also wrote "The Columbine Alma Mater," which has since been adopted as the official school song. Toward the conclusion of "An American Elegy," Flanigan said, "the music moves into one of the climactic parts of the 'Alma Mater.' The performance notes state that the lyrics for that section of the song are 'We are Columbine. We are all Columbine.' It's a very dramatic moment." In addition to "An American Elegy," Friday's program will include the "Hannaford Overture" by Canadian composer J. Scott Irvine; "National Emblem," a famous march by E.E. Bagley; and "Chester," a marching song by William Schuman that was popular during the American Revolution. The concert will conclude with a collection of four gypsy dances titled "Puszta" by Dutch composer Jan Van der Roost. "While we're commemorating the tragedy at Columbine High School, we also want to celebrate life," Flanigan said. "The gypsy dances do just that and end the concert on a positive note."