The Franklin Community Band performs at the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater in downtown Franklin in June. The community band will have a concert Sunday where it will debut “Franklin 200,” a piece written by Franklin native Phil Beaman commemorating the city’s bicentennial.
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The sound of 200 years is celebration.
When local musician and composer Phil Beaman was commissioned by the Franklin Community Band to compose a work for Franklin’s bicentennial, he thought about what the city has meant to its residents. He wove together aspects that have made up Franklin’s history — faith, family, the railroads, Franklin College.
“I started using other pieces of music or songs that would jog people’s memories of something related to Franklin as an institution, or a value of the people of Franklin to build the town,” he said.
Beaman’s piece, “Franklin 200,” makes its debut on Sunday at the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater during a special concert by the Franklin Community Band. The unique piece draws from a number of different inspirations and compositions, bringing a variety sounds together in a one-of-kind composition.
“The way (Beaman) layers several aspects of Franklin’s history into a unique musical composition speaks to his creative and musical genius,” said Gina Bollinger, director of the Franklin Community Band. “It is a delightful work that the band has enjoyed learning. The luxury of having the actual composer conducting and rehearsing his own piece has made the whole experience even more exciting.”
With the community spending much of 2022 recognizing the twin bicentennials in Franklin and Johnson County, the Franklin Community Band wanted to get in on the action.
With the support of members of the Johnson County Museum of History and David Pfeiffer, museum director, the idea emerged to have a local composer write a never-before-heard piece for a special concert, Bollinger said.
She knew exactly who to approach.
“We felt like Franklin’s rich history could be well represented through music. And who better to help us out? Composer Phil Beaman of course. Hailing from Franklin, Phil was the obvious choice,” Bollinger said.
She and Beaman had known each for years, and she respected his talents as both a composer and a musician.
Beaman had just returned from the Caribbean island of Grenada — his second home during the year — when Bollinger stopped over.
“It was my first day home, and I was outside. Five minutes later, Gina stopped over and proposed this idea,” he said.
Growing up in Franklin, Beaman started his musical journey with piano lessons at Franklin College. By the time he was 10 years old, he was giving recitals alongside college students.
He’s gone on to earn nine degrees, diplomas and academic certifications in everything from performance to music psychology to theory to composition — from conservatories in six different countries.
“I’ve done a little bit of everything,” he said. “I’ve taken advantage of the opportunities that have come up.”
Beaman has toured all over the world as a performer, first with piano and then on pipe organ. Composing music is a more recent addition to his resume, though he has still written more than 1,000 pieces in his career, distributed through an online company, Sheet Music Plus.
His resume is wide-ranging and impressive. Beaman has won three international competitions for composition, and in 2014 was commissioned to write a piece for the British royal family, which he presented to them.
Thirty-five years ago, he moved to Grenada to found the music department and serve as a music professor at St. George’s University in Grenada. Beaman has split his time ever since between the island and Franklin.
“I really got more into composing when I got to Grenada. We didn’t have a music store down there, so if I needed something, I had to write it,” he said. “But I fell in love with doing it.”
The opportunity to write a bicentennial piece for his hometown sounded like a wonderful idea, Beaman said. Little did he know the timeline he would be working on.
“I hadn’t been around, so when Gina asked me and I said yes, I assumed the bicentennial was next year and I’d have a little more time to do this,” he said. “Only to find out they needed it for the next month. So I had two weeks to write it, so the band had enough time to rehearse it.”
Beaman didn’t need the full two weeks to write “Franklin 200.” He finished the piece in nine days.
Because the band has a strong brass section, he started with a celebratory fanfare, before moving through different elements that connected it to Franklin.
Beaman included eight notes from 11 different songs — “On the Banks of the Wabash,” Indiana’s state song; the Franklin College fight song; “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” because of the railroads’ impact on the city.
“I didn’t want it to just be a piece of music that can be used for this, I wanted to have some tie-in,” he said. “So I tied those all together into a piece that hops around.”
One of the more unique aspects comes at the beginning. Beaman wanted to transition from the brass fanfare to these different musical inspirations, to make it less abrupt.
While attending a concert by the Indiana Wind Symphony in late July at Grace United Methodist Church, he found his inspiration: a march by Fred Jewell, a well-known Indiana composer who in 1927 was named the musical director of the Indiana Masonic Home band.
He took a 16-bar excerpt from the middle of one of Jewell’s marches and wove it into the piece.
“I thought, ‘That’s it.’ Franklin has a long history of community bands, and Fred Jewell would have been the sound you’d hear in Franklin many, many times over the past 200 years,” Beaman said.
To close out the piece, Beaman gave a wink to his part-time home. The final section serves as a bookend to the fanfare at the start, done in soca calypso form.
“I’ve lived for 35 years in the Caribbean, and no one knows how to party quite the Caribbean people,” he said. “I’ve got all the poly-rhythms going, and there’s all the back-and-forth with the calypso.”
Since Beaman finished it, the Franklin Community Band has been rehearsing and learning the piece. There has been a lot of excitement about doing such a special work, Bollinger said.
“We are all very proud to perform the piece ‘Franklin 200’ and make a musical contribution to Franklin’s Bicentennial,” she said.
When the song debuts on Sunday, Beaman is excited to hear it played in front of people. His family has long-standing Franklin roots; they’ve lived in the city since 1924, and his great-grandfather used to own a grocery store on West Jefferson Street.
He’s looking forward to spotlighting his hometown with the community as a whole.
“I hope they enjoy it,” he said. “We all just want to celebrate that night.”
IF YOU GO
Franklin Community Band concert
What: An outdoor performance by the community band featuring the debut of “Franklin 200,” a piece written by Franklin native Phil Beaman celebrating the city’s bicentennial. Local artist Dianne Porter will also be painting a piece inspired by the music.
When: 5:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: DriveHubler.com Amphitheater, 161 W. Monroe St., Franklin
