Let Me Be Frank With You (Band) John Mackey

Version for concert band

In the summer of 2020, in the midst of COVID, I desperately felt like I needed to write something joyful. So I started writing, and after about 24 measures, I had this terrible feeling not uncommon for composers that maybe the piece I was writing had already been written. And in this case, I feared that I had just plagiarized Frank Ticheli.

I sent the opening to Frank, who was incredibly gracious in his response. He said that he had NOT written this tune although it's clear that could have. This is a Ticheli-esque tune if ever I had written one!

It turns out that if I think let's just write 3 minutes of joyful fun, my brain jumps to you mean Ticheli with an excessive amount of snare drum and a few extra wrong notes.

Thank you to Frank Ticheli to whom the piece is dedicated for his inspiration.