History comes full circle for Warren County fourth graders when they hear music in the making this November.
McMinnville native and composer Charles Faulkner Bryan (1911-1955) earned international acclaim for his work in bringing the flavor of Southern folk music to some of the most prestigious concert halls in American and Europe.
Nearly 70 years after his sudden death from a heart attack, Bryan’s legacy in music education is reaching elementary school students in Warren and several other Upper Cumberland Counties.
“Talent knows no geography. It knows only opportunity,” Dan Allcott told The Rotary Club of McMinnville at its weekly luncheon Thursday in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church. Allcott is professor of music at Tennessee Technological University and music director and conductor of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra (BSO), the only professional orchestra in a rural area of the Volunteer State.
The Rotary speaker was making the point that natural talent can arise anywhere, even in remote, isolated places not known for strong artistic or intellectual development.
The composer Bryan was raised in the still-standing Falconhurst mansion overlooking Charles Creek in the Faulkner Springs Community. From the banks of that creek the musically-minded boy captured a large turtle whose carapace became the sound chamber for his homemade dulcimer.
“You never know where talent will come from,” Allcott remarked, recalling his own childhood in the rural Midwest to learn music and perform on the cello. He credited the John Deere Tractor Company, based in Moline Ill., with sponsoring music education outreach programs which encouraged and reinforced his early ambitions.
Since 1976 the Bryan Symphony offered educational concerts to elementary students in Putnam County. The performances, lasting about an hour, introduced children to the various instruments of the orchestra, then bringing them together in symphonic unison to produce dazzling, kaleidoscopic splendor.
The Rotary Club of McMinnville, in collaboration with the Warren County school district, signed on with the BSO in 2011 to bring some 500 local fourth graders to the concerts in the Bryan Fine Arts Building. In quick succession, other Upper Cumberland counties adopted the idea, now sending as many at 3,000 students to performances in Tech’s venerable Memorial Gymnasium, a venue which has hosted shows by the late Johnny Cash and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
On Nov. 18, the 2024 cohort of Warren County fourth graders will file onto buses for the annual concert where a local student has chance of being invited on stage as guest conductor of the orchestra.
“These concerts meet state curriculum standards for music education,” the Rotary speaker noted, underscoring the instructional content of the programs as well as their cultural exposure and enrichment value. The orchestra provides course material to teachers to aid in preparing the students to derive the greatest benefit from the experience.
“The Tennessee Arts Commission (TAC) loves these concerts,” Allcott stated. The Commission is the sate government’s leading agency for promoting the arts and cultural education and is a major source of funding support for non-profit arts organizations, including the Bryan Symphony.
Allcott expands on his Rotary remarks when he appears this week in the FOCUS interview series on McMinnville Public Radio 91.3-WCPI. The half-hour conversation will air Tuesday at 5 p.m. and again Saturday at 9:35 a.m.
