Finalist in the National Band Association 2014 Merrill Jones Composition Contest for concert band.
PROGRAM NOTE
On November 17, 2013 an EF 4 tornado hit my hometown of Washington, Illinois. I was in Indianapolis with my wife for the Band of America Grand National Championships. In our yearly tradition of getting lunch before starting the drive home to central Illinois, we quickly found that this day was not going to be like the any day I will soon experience again.
My phone was giving me tornado warning alerts over and over. I didn’t think all that much of it at the time since storm alerts are not uncommon. Then I saw something unexpected on Facebook. A status that I believe was posted by Jen Tallman that their house was gone, but Jim was ok. This was the only post concerning a storm that I had seen. Later I learned that phone service in the area was spotty at best and that is why this was all I had seen. It was a shocking thing to read as I sat eating lunch. Having grown up in Washington, and knowing Jim for a longtime, I knew where they lived. I knew how many homes were in that area. It was at that moment that it really hit me. The magnitude of what had most likely just happened was coming into focus. Immediately I tried calling my parents. Somehow I got through, even though they weren’t able to call out. They were fine, but unaware of just how big a storm had hit Washington. Videos started to roll on the local Indianapolis news about Washington, Illinois. Videos of the distruction. It was chilling to say the least. Seeing the devastation immediately made me feel helpless, and worried for all the families that may have been in those houses. “How could people of made it through that ok?”, I asked myself. Luckily, it seemed, almost everyone made it through. Many were at church at the time, running errands, and doing the many things that end up on our “to do” lists for Sunday. I wonder at times, just what might have happened if it wasn’t that time of day and week. . . I think I’m glad it was.
A short time later Jim came to me and asked if I would want to write a piece for the band to perform at the end of the school year. Something to bring everyone together and remember the terrible event, but more importantly show the strength of the community. Show how sometimes the toughtest times bring everyone together and make you stronger. I was incredibly honored to be asked because this community has been a part of my life for as long as I’ve been on this planet. Mr. Tallman began collect reflections of the day from students in the bands. I received pictures, narratives, maybe even some simple ramblings, but no matter what form the messages came in, they had meaning and emotion.
“A Light Still Remains” is an inspiration taken from these reflections or narratives from the students. One particular student, Courtney Stolba, wrote of a song that she was writing only weeks before the storm. Something about the text stuck with me.
The words she wrote were:
“I turn my eyes to the horizon,
But all I see is gray.
The storm has come, the rain has fallen
To wash the ashes from my face“The Earth may shake and mountains crumble,
But I will not be afraid.
Though I can’t see past the darkness,
There’s a light that still remains.”
This is where the title “A Light Still Remains” originated. The message it had to me was that no matter how difficult times may be, there is always an end to the bad, and a new beginning. We have to pick ourselves up and makes something great out of any bad situation. For me this is the perfect message. It fits with the Washington signs that say “We will RISE” on them. In the end that is what this is all about. Lifting ourselves and each other out of this moment in time to beging a new and better one together.
“A Light Still Remains” is essentially a tone people, or programmatic in nature. It loosely depicts the morning of November 17th. The calm before the storm, the sudden change in weather, and the storm that so quickly passed through the town. The fact that it was a Sunday morning also took my inspiration in another direction. I selected a simple church hymn as inspiration or the seed for the work itself.
The the 1st verse of the hymn “Now that the Daylight Fills the Sky” pretty much sums it up for me.
“Now that the daylight fills the sky,
We lift our hearts to God on high,
That He, in all we do or say,
Would keep us free from harm today.
-Craig Andrew Fitzpatrick, 2014
