Felix The Storyteller» band

BABYBEARS MEET THE BAND

Felix Mayerhofer — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:20:36 +0000

What a great way to be introduced to the instruments of the band. It’s both funny and instructive with a strong story line in rhyme that keeps building rhythmically. If you want to decide what instrument to play, go no further than this musical gem.

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Inspiration

Throughout my life I disliked poetry because I thought I couldn’t write it. I had never experimented with this style until I was 71 years old. I was reading Twas the Night Before Christmas, when I had a sudden urge to try my hand at rhyme. I used my story in prose, Kim and Jim Meet the Band, as the guinea pig. After a few false starts, words and rhyme began flowing to my ecstatic surprise. I thought it was beginning luck, but as I continued, I realized I had the ability to write in this genre. I couldn’t believe the fun I had creating one verse after another, and in doing so, I found the original story now in rhyme had become stronger. I renamed the story Babybears Meet the Band. The ideal presentation for this story in rhyme would be to have a narrator with a soloist on each instrument, accompanied by a concert band. After my son, David, read it, he said it was the best thing I’d written. That gave me great pleasure. I hope others will be of the same opinion.

THE MAD CONDUCTOR

Felix Mayerhofer — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 01:30:09 +0000

Hugo Von Flugel is not your ordinary beginning school band director, but a colorful one loved by his students. With an important decision to make, you’ll have the opportunity to see if he makes the correct one. This story comes alive in rhyme.

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Inspiration

Having been a beginning band director for a number of years, I knew what this job could do to one’s psyche. So I decided to write a story in rhyme about a conductor who “lost” it. I got the idea from a wild-eyed disheveled German conductor with a heavy accent, who taught young children at the Henry School Settlement House in New York City.

THE BAND BUSTERS

Felix Mayerhofer — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:56:26 +0000

Pride, destruction, and pathos threads through this calamitous story. This could be the wildest story in rhyme you’ve ever read, where all adversities are overcome and good wins over evil.

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Inspiration

I had just finished writing Babybears Meet The Band, another story in rhyme, and for a change decided to do something crazy in the style of Dr. Seuss. During my 30 years or more as a band director, I’d seen a few students or other nefarious characters do great damage to our band instruments, and on occasion bashed them over someone’s head. I thought this might be an interesting subject for a story. One particular incident came to mind: As school was about to begin, a mother and her daughter came into my bandroom with the girl’s school French horn in tow, or what was left of it. The daughter had vented an unbridled rage at her father by smashing the expensive professional horn against her bedroom wall. I never asked the mother what happened to the wall. With similar episodes filed in my memory bank, I felt well equipped to author Band Busters, a story in rhyme.