Brass Bound for the Gold

Oxon Hill High Band Taking a Fast Tempo to China for Olympic Celebration

Walter Harley's baton sliced the air, and the timpani boomed the first chords of the song. The trumpets flourished. Then came the clarinets, flutes and saxophones. Harley signaled for more sound, and the French horns, baritones, trombones and tubas answered. Then the music mellowed and senior alto saxophonist Hager Franklin III began a haunting solo.

The sound had to be perfect, Harley told the 55 members of the band sitting in front of stands covered with musical scores. The piece they were rehearsing -- "Godspeed!" by Hampton-based composer Stephen Melillo -- is one of eight the Oxon Hill High School Band members were readying for their trip to China and, they hoped, a prophecy of their voyage.

"There are a couple of notes you should have expressed a lot more," Harley told Hager after critiquing the whole band. "Let yourself go more. Feel more comfortable expressing yourself through the saxophone and the music."

Strong sound and expression were the focus of a recent rehearsal in the school's cafeteria, where 45 members of the band and 10 alumni, now music teachers, spent three hours practicing the music that will be part of their repertoire when they travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Xian next month to participate in concerts as part of the preliminary events for the 2008 Olympic Games, scheduled to begin Aug. 8.

The Eleanor Roosevelt High School Wind Ensemble and the University of Maryland Community Band are also among the musical groups from around the world that have been invited, officials said.

For more than a year, the Oxon Hill students have been honing their music skills and raising money. The total cost of the trip is $265,000, about $3,800 a person. Besides the musicians, about 20 others are going, including chaperones, security personnel, a registered nurse, a minister and Prince George's County Council member Tony Knotts (D-Temple Hills).

The students will play six concerts during the 12-day trip, including one at the Great Wall and another at the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace in Beijing, Harley said. The performances will include two mass band concerts with groups from around the world conducted by retired University of Maryland at College Park professor John Wakefield, he said. The students will also play in an "exchange concert" with a high school in Beijing. In their downtime, they will take sightseeing excursions and a special tour of the Olympic stadium in Beijing. They are set to depart June 19 and return before the games begin.

Wakefield nominated the Oxon Hill band for the China trip. Once it had been selected by the Salute to Beijing group in 2006, Harley was initially reluctant to take his large band that far from home. Eventually, he picked 50 of the 175 band members -- and added some music teachers -- for the trip.

"It wasn't just the best musicians," said Camessia Johnson, 16, a junior from Fort Washington who plays trombone and will ride an airplane for the first time when the group takes off from Reagan National Airport. "He said he mostly chose kids who are responsible, kids who could be relied on . . . and do what they were supposed to do."

Harley picked Oxon Hill Middle School band director Everett Martin as his co-conductor, and the two set about selecting music that would demonstrate the students' wide range of talents and the rich variety of American band music, including "Exultations" by African American composer William Owens and an arrangement of "America the Beautiful" by Carmen Dragon. They will also play several songs in the mass band selected by Wakefield.

Although learning the music has come easy, bringing in more than a quarter-million dollars has not. After receiving two extensions, the group still owes more than $50,000 for its last payment, due tomorrow, Harley said.

"We're hoping that we'll get enough public donations to put us over the top," he said. "If not, I'm going to tell somebody to dig a hole six feet deep and put me in it."

Harley has been taking his fundraising campaign on the road, speaking to community groups and businesses. County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) pitched in $20,000 from the county's coffers, and business leaders have given several thousand dollars. Friends and relatives have donated, including the grandmother of one of the band members who gave a box of pennies she had been collecting since she was 8 years old. The students sold candy and took part-time jobs.

Tuba player Cameron Armstrong, 17, a senior from Clinton who is headed to Cornell University to study biology and premed on a scholarship, said he is looking forward to touring some of China's great treasures, such as the excavation of 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors and horses. He first learned about the artifacts in a story he was read as a child.

"And I want to see the Great Wall," said Armstrong, who has maintained a 4.12 grade-point average despite taking a job at a golf course to help pay for the trip. He plans to buy souvenirs for his mother and grandmother and trinkets "that will say, 'I've been to China.' "

The trip will be a family affair for soloist Franklin, 18, a senior who will attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston on a partial scholarship in the fall to study film scoring and music business/management. Joining him on the trip will be his mother, Beverly, the band's treasurer; his father, Hager Jr.; his grandfather Bernard Lee Howard; and his sister Harmonee, 15, who plays clarinet with the band and is one of only three freshmen who were invited.

"It will be fun performing in front of an audience of that magnitude," Franklin said. "It will be televised and shown all over the world, and that is special. This is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us, and I can't wait."