Both Daviess County Public Schools’ high school bands will be under new direction for the upcoming school year.
Apollo High School
The AHS band will be led by Drew Tucker, who directed Elizabethtown High School’s band for four years before moving to Owensboro as the music teacher at Foust Elementary.
“My family [wife Amber, son Knox, 3, and daughter Khloe, 2 months] loves Owensboro, and last summer my wife accepted a teaching job at Meadow Lands Elementary,” Tucker said. “When the job opened up [at Apollo], I was excited at the opportunity to teach band again.”
At 28, Tucker also plays the French Horn in the 100th Army Band that is stationed at Fort Knox.
Tucker said that he has been extremely fortunate to have several people influence him. Among those are his beginning and middle school band directors, his high school student teacher, his pastor, and a friend who “pushes me to keep progressing and move along with other high school directors.”
The biggest musical influences for Tucker were his parents who introduced him to music by singing and playing the guitar at home.
Tucker is aware of the history of Apollo’s program and said he looks forward to continuing that history as well as providing life-long memories for the students. The band has already had a couple of days of fundamentals camp to prepare for marching band and will practice together later this month. Once school starts, marching band will continue as well as jazz band and concert band and student auditions for all-district and all-state groups.
Apollo’s fall marching band show is titled “The Caged Bird Sings,” which is based around a poem by Maya Angelou and explores the different world views based on life circumstances.
“I can definitely tell there are some great, hard-working students and I’m looking forward to working with them and making music together,” Tucker said. “I enjoy the process of starting something, rehearsing it, fine-tuning it, and performing it. Also, I’m just excited to see what the students can accomplish. My goal is for each of them to feel successful and valued and all of us work together toward a common goal of successful performances.”
Daviess County High School
For the past two years, Nathan Clark has been the assistant band director at Daviess County High School, something that is familiar to him as he was in the band when he was a student at DCHS.
During his time as the assistant band director, he has directed the jazz band and been instrumental in several of the band components — Indoor Winds, United Sound, marching band and concert ensembles, which consistently score high ratings at competitions.
Clark spent four years as the band director at Webster County prior to returning to his roots, and in a position that his father led for over a decade.
“I am looking forward to continuing and growing the excellent tradition of performance at Daviess County High School; additionally I am very excited to see what new and exciting opportunities the 2019 staff will create for our students,” Clark said, adding that in the past two years, he and the previous band director, Karen Alward, revamped the ensemble offerings at DCHS. “It is always interesting to see what is ‘in demand’ from the student perspective and to see how many of their interests we can cater to.”
Clark has spent the summer focusing primarily on the fall marching program’s design and instruction as well as some long-term projects for the upcoming year.
“In addition to finishing the marching arrangements for the fall, we are working to put together a concert set for our upcoming trip to New York City and a set for our Christmas Concert in December,” Clark said. “While both of these events seem far off, it really requires every minute of rehearsal to coach up high school musicians of any skill level to produce an authentic performance.”
Clark said that he has been fortunate to have great band directors and private teachers throughout his musical career, but added that those who have challenged him the most and had the most direct access to him musically are members of his immediate family.
“Both of my parents and brothers have music degrees,” Clark said. “That means that there is always someone practicing or creating content related to music. With that comes an immediate audience and sounding board which is great because ‘undercooked ideas’ rarely leave the house.”
At 29, Clark is excited for the upcoming year and holding onto the longstanding band traditions but also the opportunity to make changes that range “from minute to pretty big.”
“With all of that in mind, it’s always a spectacle to watch the fall show take shape as the group matures — it is never exactly the same twice,” said Clark.
