Dr. Buddy Clements conducts the Walnut High School Symphonic Orchestra.
The Walnut High School Symphonic Orchestra may be the only high school in the U.S. that can boast of an annual film music concert. Each year, for more than a decade, the orchestra has performed a “Magic of Music and Movies” concert. This year’s concert, dubbed “They Went That-a Way,” took place on May 22, 2008, at the school’s Performing Arts Center. Under the direction of Dr. Buddy Clements, and associate conductor Corey Wicks, the students performed music from well-known film and television Westerns.
Dr. Clements decided that Dimitri Tiomkin’s long-lasting and significant contributions to this genre warranted devoting a major portion of the evening’s program to the composer. Clements selected the themes to the Gary Cooper classics High Noon and Friendly Persuasion (“Thee I Love”), music from the John Wayne films Rio Bravo and Red River, and the theme from the television series Rawhide. “I am gratified that the students of Walnut High School enjoy performing classic film music,” said Olivia Tiomkin Douglas, upon hearing of the recent concert. “I’m absolutely thrilled that music Dimitri composed some fifty years ago remains relevant to young musicians today.”
Walnut High School Vivace String Ensemble
Forming the backbone of the Orchestra are members of the Walnut High School Vivace String Ensemble, an advanced group of nearly fifty players that would earn the envy of any high school music director. Providing support are the talented, up-and-coming intermediate players of the Allegro String Ensemble (pictured, below)—the “junior varsity” team, to put forth an athletic metaphor.
Walnut High School Symphonic Orchestra
“In most cases, the orchestra performs from copies of the original manuscripts that were used in the Hollywood recording studios when the motion pictures were made,” explains Dr. Clements. The music is rented from John Waxman’s company Themes and Variations. Other selections in the May concert included the theme from Legends of the Fall, by James Horner, and music from the John Wayne films The Cowboys, by John Williams, and The Sons of Katie Elder, by Elmer Bernstein. Dr. Clements met Bernstein at a seminar at UCLA in the mid-1980s. In later years, he called on the distinguished composer half a dozen times to conduct at Walnut. “Elmer really liked those children,” recalls orchestrator Patrick Russ. “He kept their thank-you note to him, which was signed by about 100 kids.”
Walnut High School, a National Blue Ribbon School, is located, among the rolling hills of the San Gabriel Valley in Walnut, California, twenty-two miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Affluent immigrant families from China, Korea, and the Philippines have settled in this middle-class suburban enclave, drawn by Walnut and Diamond Bar High Schools, both California Distinguished Schools. The music program at the academically rigorous Walnut High School enjoys tremendous support from the community. The student body is ethnically diverse, with approximately 60 percent Asian and 20 percent Hispanic or Latino.
Thanks to Dr. Buddy Clements for calling our attention to this concert and for providing information. Photographs by Bob Pyrah of Pro-Pic Photography, courtesy of Dr. Clements.