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Music publisher to distribute choir director’s composition
By Kim Nguyen, knguyen@acnpapers.com
One Plano music teacher is taking a new approach to strengthening the talents of young Plano Independent School District musicians.
Evan Ramos, assistant choir director at Rice Middle School and Jasper High School, was recently notified that Alliance Music Publishing will publish one of his choral compositions.
“I was blown away when I received the news,” he said. “I had sent the transcript away about nine weeks ago, but I hadn’t heard from them since so I figured they scrapped the piece.”
Ramos said he tries to write a new piece of choral music every year for the men’s choral groups at Rice and Jasper. His primary goal while writing “El Dorado!” was to provide a broader library for the current and future men’s choirs to choose from.
“There’s not a lot of amazing music out there for men’s groups to sing other than sea chanteys, cowboy music and love songs,” he said. “With cowboy songs and sea chanteys, you can only sing them one or two times before they get old, and middle school students could care less about putting the right emotion into a love song. I wanted to write something meaningful to them that I know they’d like and relate to.”
“El Dorado!” is an accompanied piece for three men’s voices with text from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem by the same name.
“I wanted to try to write a piece that was interesting and yet accessible for middle school boys,” he said. “It has a lot of very different harmonies and dissonances that are all approached step-wise.”
Ramos said he was reading through Poe’s original poem and wanted to find a way to convey the feelings into music.
The piece was well-received and performed by the Rice Middle School Men’s Choir on their recent fall concert.
“They have really liked some of the pieces I had written before, so much that they asked to sing it at concerts,” Ramos said. “I think they’re really into it because it’s like having a piece that is written for them.”
Additionally, Ramos is encouraging his students to find an avenue to express themselves musically and continue pursuing men’s chorus.
“A few students have expressed a bigger desire to be a part of the guy’s chorus and that’s a big thing for me because not many boys stay in choir after middle school,” he said.
Ramos is in his third year of teaching in PISD. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of North Texas, where he also studied composition. After beginning his teaching career, Evan began writing compositions for high school choirs in order to teach specific choral skills and to supplement the currently available literature for young choirs.
“El Dorado!” should be available for purchase by choral programs across the country in the coming months.
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