SIDNEY — Melody Bober, of rural Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, was 3 when she began to play the piano.
Her brother, older by six years, would practice for his piano lesson. Then baby Melody would climb onto the bench and play by ear what she’d just heard. Two years later, she began formal lessons, and she’s not stopped playing since.
Bober was in town Saturday, April 23, to be honored by the piano students of Kathy Jendrusik, of Sidney, during the third annual Composer Appreciation Day at the Sidney Church of God.
Jendrusik began the event to applaud the people who educational music. Each year, she invites a composer to conduct a master class with her students and to perform with them in an afternoon recital.
“Composers are the ones that lead our national students into the most beautiful journey of music and these composers deserve it. There sould be more of these composer appreciation days to tell them, ‘We love you,’” Jendrusik said.
Bober earned a Bachelor of Arts in music education and piano performance from the University of Illinois and a Master of Arts from Minnesota State University. She taught music in public schools for 20 years, has been a church music director and teaches private piano students.
“I started writing (music) for my students. I just wanted to write pieces for them,” Bober said. In 1995, her husband, himself a sometime musician, heard one of the pieces.
“That sounds pretty good. You should get that published,” he said. Bober sent it off.
“I got four rejections and one acceptance and that’s how it started,” she said. During the last 20 years, she’s been published by Willis Music, FJH Music Co. Inc. and Lilleness Publishing Co. Her current publisher is Alfred Music.
“Publishers give you parameters,” Bober said in explaining how she decides what level of student her pieces are for. She composes for elementary to advance-level piano students.
“A little melody will come into my head and that’s when I sit down and try to develop it,” she said. Although her routine is to write every morning, she’s not one to stare down a blank piece of paper or a keyboard to try to force something to come to mind.
“It’s more as the spirit moves,” she said. “I start playing it as I hear it. Then I might have to make it easier or more sophisticated. Sometimes it becomes a duet. Sometimes it becomes a trio.” She composes an entire piece on the piano before committing it to paper. From the paper, she enters it into a computer software program for printing.
Her most challenging composition was a commission by the Music Teachers National Association in 2012. The association asked for an intermediate-level, chamber music piece for piano and two woodwind instruments.
“I could pick the woodwinds, but those two woods had to work for strings, as well,” Bober said. She created “Suite in Seasons,” a four-movement piece for piano, bassoon and flute. The bassoon part could be played by a cello; the flute, by a violin. It was a challenge because Bober doesn’t usually write for those instruments.
The composer travels widely to perform, lecture and teach at conferences, workshops and conventions. It was at a long-ago conference of music teachers in Nashville that Bober and Jendrusik first met.
“Nobody does what Kathy does,” Bober said of Saturday’s master class, during which she coached Jendrusik’s students, one at a time, on the playing of her works. “The students were fabulous. Each and every one played so musically, expressive, technically. They made the music come alive the way I want it to, the way I wrote it. You can play a piece technically well but you have to put your heart and soul into it.”
The students, themselves, were in awe.
“They get to see who writes their music. That’s a memory they have forever,” Jendrusik said. Her nod to composers is beginning to be appreciated by them, too. A professor at Southern Methodist University has already asked her if he can be the writer who’s honored here next year.
Students participating Saturday were Grace Francis, Myla Cox, Brooklyn Jackson, Keagan Smith, Haley Cox, Alice Chrisman, Shannon O’Donnell, Soleil Drinnen, Lola Chambers, Taylor Bisbee, Alayner Rindler, Lilly Pelletier, Julia Dilbone, Abby Burkett, Meredith Klein, Liliana Phillips, Colton Smith, Martha Chrisman, Luke Hamaker, Liz Michael, Gabrielle Pelletier, McKenna O’Donnell, Connor Nuss, Cassie Heath, Ryan Nichols, Carter Nuss, lawson Snapp, Savanah Koester, Callum Smith, Lorelei Chambers, Hunter Clark, Summer Dilbone, Madison Roe, Maria Wiseman, Lucy Prakel and Nobel Zhou.
Adults — former Jendrusik students — who performed were Stephanie Schoenfelt, Alex Niekamp, Sonya Phillips and Cari Beth Noah.
