“Helmcamp” Concerto – score notes
In the early 1970’s, a young band director named Richard Helmcamp arrived in the town of Cleburne, Texas, determined to start an excellent High School band program, essentially “from scratch.” Within 5 years, the band was consistently a sweepstakes band, and within 10 years was consistently competitive at the state level. He did this nearly entirely by the force of his personal leadership – he had the ability to effectively encourage students, to effectively express profound disappointment with students, and the uncanny ability to know which students needed which of those modes of communication at which time. His students often report that they all thought they were “his favorite.” His imprint on the band program in Cleburne is still felt today – all subsequent band directors to date have been either assistants or students of Helmcamp. His students – musicians, welders, physicians, plumbers and bankers – were greatly impacted by his pushing them into cooperative excellence.
When he died in 2022, many of his former students had the desire to do something appropriate to honor his legacy. One way this is being done is through a Scholarship Fund in his honor. In conjunction with this, Candace Bawcombe (one of his early students) asked me (Kerry Jones, another of his early students) to write a piece that could be premiered at a benefit concert for the Scholarship Fund. We eventually settled on this piece – a triple concerto for piano, two trumpets and Concert Band – which is expected to be premiered by Candace Bawcombe (piano), James Sims (trumpet), Craig McKennon (trumpet) and the current Cleburne High School band. All the principal musicians involved were Helmcamp students during the very early years (I am the youngest, and graduated in 1977).
In form, the piece is a bit reminiscent of a “jazz funeral” – the first movement is a processional lament, the second is a meditative “night song,” and the third is an exuberant celebration. There are bits of musical material taken from various pieces that we all associate with Helmcamp – melodic/rhythmic shapes from “March Grandioso” and “Valdres;” textures derived from his love of chorales; timbres derived from his love of the sound of conical-bore brass; an American hymn tune, “Wondrous Love;” various motifs from the Holst “First Suite;” a rhythmic style from his love of Latin concert dances. The listener will probably not notice most of this material, but it provides a unity and consistency to the piece. In addition, the relationship among the soloists and the band varies in the course of the piece: in the first movement, the soloists mostly interact with the band individually; in the second, they begin to interact with each other as well; in the third, they are a unit, fully integrated with the band. For me, this mirrors the way Helmcamp interacted with his students musically: he pushed us to be better individually, then pushed us to play together in ensembles, then he made us part of the band as a whole.
The trumpet soloists also play flugelhorn and piccolo trumpet during the course of the piece. The two solo parts are simply two different solo parts, and are designated “Alpha” and “Omega” rather than some designation like First and Second.
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