Dr. Gary Robinson's Most Honored Students for 2006-2007

ANDY GULLION: HONORABLE MENTION IN PERCUSSION I

A full-page ad posted by an insurance company in a recent edition of the New York Times posed the question, “Why do so many 16-year olds drive like they are missing a part of their brain?” The company answered themselves with the droll response, “Because they are,” and went on to explain that, at the age of 16, teenagers have potholes where some prefrontal grey matter will eventually be. By the age of 18, these cerebral road hazards are largely filled in, making teens better drivers and thus better insurance risks. In my Percussion I Class, I would suggest to my younger students, with considerable seriousness, that they should emulate the practice habits of the sole high school senior enrolled because they would probably be better drummers and better overall musicians, and, just maybe, their brains would grow faster. I could always count on Andy to come to class not only having absorbed the lesson material, but having personalized it as well. He played snare drum with skill and accuracy. His drum set playing was marked with style, power, and a musicality that was distinctively his own. He also got great grades. In close, this Honorable Mention in Percussion I goes to the hands, feet, and brain of senior percussionist Andy Gullion.

LUKE DELELLO: HONORABLE MENTION IN WOODWINDS
The clarinet is one the most versatile of all woodwind instruments. In the hands of a skilled player, it has a practical range of over three octaves. With practice, it can have a dark chocolate fondue lower register, a smooth crème de mint middle register, and a tart lemon sherbet upper register. It can be played as softly as a purring cat or as loudly as a screeching parrot. A good clarinet player can squeeze off as many rounds per second as a modern assault rifle. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should probably regulate the clarinet. Its key system, however, is a Rube Goldberg contraption of disks, levers, rods and springs that has evolved from the clarinet’s humble origins as a folk instrument through its refinements in the 19th and 20th centuries. To get around the instrument needs nimble fingers, upstream from that, an equally nimble mind, and a determination to wrestle this black tube festooned with metal down to the ground. Our Honorable Mention in Woodwinds goes this day to a freshman who was willing to take on the task. He came to the Fine Arts Center with a foggy notion about notation, the clarinet, and the art of music making and leaves a competent clarinetist as well as a literate, expressive young musician. He accomplished this the old fashioned way: with daily practice, with a deep desire for quality, and with the musician’s moral code that what was good enough yesterday is never good enough today and will need to be bested tomorrow.

DAVID KATILIUS: HONORABLE MENTION IN ADVANCED PERCUSSION

Now I would like to recognize a student who came to the Fine Arts Center in terminal condition: he entered as a senior, thus his first, last, and only year as one of our students. He had high aspirations about going into collegiate level percussion but a desultory history when it came to his training: a few years of strings in middle school, some piano, a tour of duty with the high school marching band and some lessons on guitar with himself as a teacher. Not exactly the years of consistent study and practice you would hope an aspiring musician would have at the exit of high school and at the doorstep of college. In fact I told his mother, a trained pianist with a degree from one of our leading conservatories, that even with a “nice pair of hands,” he seemed to lack a bodily coordination that would be fundamental to someone considering a field better suited to human Gumbies or musical contortionists. A quiet first semester that seemed to bear out my fears, however, was merely a percolating period of gestation that was followed, in semester two, by a Cambrian explosion of two and four mallet marimba works, tympani repertoire, snare drum pieces, and original compositions that outpaced my ability to keep up with him. He worked tirelessly. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have, as I later learned, perfect pitch, a near photographic memory, and a vast musical intelligence that is only partially hidden by a sweet, endearing humility. David will take time off from school to prepare for college auditions a year hence. I know he will do well.

MEREDYTH BOWDEN: GCYO OUTSTANDING MUSICIAN

Greenville County Youth Orchestra has been a presence at the Fine Arts Center since about 1980 when, at the time, it was an after school activity. In the late 80s it became a course with credit issued to its members through the school’s guidance office. As it evolved GCYO was knighted Orchestra-in-Residence at the Fine Arts Center – as opposed to Fine Arts Center Symphony Orchestra – so that it could maintain its distinctive presence in the community. With a full series of performances at the Peace Center and other concerts and events staged throughout the year, GCYO is, in practice, the orchestral emissary of our school. Its membership includes many of our daytime music students, seated here this day, as well as many other exceptional high school musicians. It is fitting, therefore to acknowledge at least one of GCYO’s superb musicians recognized at our May 1st awards banquet. A member since 2003, she has had an impressive four-year tenure. For the past two, she has rotated through the principal chairs of the cello section in both the full and chamber orchestras. This past year alone, she has performed three separate concerti, one each with GCYO, with its sibling, The Philharmonic, and with the prestigious All-State Orchestra. For all of her years she has lead by her example of excellence: excellence in membership, excellence in preparation, excellence in performance, excellence in intellect, and excellence in integrity and community. Representing Greenville County Youth Orchestra on this day, a truly outstanding senior, Meredyth Bowden.

BEN TOMLINSON: OUTSTANDING ADVANCED PERCUSSION

We are proud here at the Fine Arts Center to be able to make a difference in the lives of young people whose motivation, innate abilities, and strength of character make them distinctive amongst their peers. We are a dedicated staff of teachers who now, thanks to the tireless efforts of our Director, have the tools and facilities to give these exceptional students a decisive advantage in the arrow of their development. Ultimately, however, each individual student is the owner and sole proprietor of his or her success. Put simply, they excel in their art and in their life because they want to and have figured out how to do it. The Fine Arts Center’s Outstanding Senior in Percussion is just one such student. In the span of two brief academic years he has mastered an impressive collection of repertoire on all the major percussion instruments and has developed the complex set of skills and sensibilities needed to perform them. Sometimes a daunting task for a drummer, he is now a fluid music reader. Our senior has won principal or significant chairs in county and regional band festivals, performed on the level of a professional as the Principal in the Fine Arts Center’s orchestra-in-residence, won impressive scholarships to significant summer music programs and an even more impressive scholarship to study music starting in the fall at Furman University. He accomplished all of this while retaining a rare humility, a gentle respect for his peers and teachers, and a generosity for others around him. In short, he is a young man who has and who will continue to do well.

TINA BU: YEARBOOK EDITOR

Young men in the audience take heed: young women are not only hijacking your names – Bobbi, Tommi, Mikal, – notice that they’ve left you Lance and Bubba – they are also advancing on or overtaking you in education and in the market place. Some science authors even believe that, sometime in the distant future, they will be able to do without us males altogether. This has already taken place in the history of the Fine Arts Center’s yearbook that, for each of its publications, has been captained by a highly intelligent and motivated young woman who was driven to do something good for her school. For the second year in a row, Creative Writing student Tina Bu has spearheaded the Fine Arts Center’s yearbook, this year teaching herself the computer application In Design and doing most of the layout work herself. She has lavished enormous time on this project so that you could take home a keepsake of this pivotal year in our school’s history. We are all very impressed by you, Tina, and thank you enthusiastically for your vision, your drive, and for your lasting gift to the Fine Arts Center.