Meara Isenberg

staff writer

@mearaannee

Seven years ago, four 6th graders walked into their middle school band class for the first time. Little did they know that what they learned in that class would someday be the focus of their education and careers.

Now seniors, these talented, dedicated Coppell High School band students are living up to their reputation by pursuing music in college.

One such senior is clarinetist and senior assistant drum major Hannah Thorp, who never would have picked up the wind instrument if it were not for her mom.

“My mom played it,” Thorp said. “Before the audition for trying out instruments came along, she [said] ‘here’s a clarinet,’ she just bought one. I played on it for a while, took some lessons, and I took to it immediately.”

Thorp was selected to be one of three drum majors chosen to lead CHS band after a rigorous audition process.

Just playing at home and at school wasn’t enough for Thorp, who over the period of middle school and high school played for her church orchestra and the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra.

Thorp will attend Baylor University, where she hopes to obtain a degree in music education.

“It’ll be very different but I think it will be a good experience for me,” Thorp said. “I want to come back, but I want to get my graduate degree outside of Texas just to feel what it’s like. Music in Texas is much different than elsewhere.”

As a music teacher, Thorp plans to bring a whole other side of music to her students.

“With technical passages, fast stuff, things that make your fingers move fast, Texas musicians do really well,” Thorp said. “Musicians outside of Texas are more musical with the slower stuff, they are very expressive, so getting to go and see that kind of music would be very helpful. I could teach that in Texas.”

Also pursuing a career in music is french horn senior Leslie Wray, whose passion for her instrument can be seen in the songs she plays and the movies she watches.

“It’s just a really cool instrument,” Wray said. “I like listening to movie scores because they use it a lot.”

At the University of Dayton, Wray plans on getting her degree in music therapy, which will allow her to use music to help people with illnesses and disabilities.

“There’s a lot of ways music can help with different conditions,” Wray said. “Like with Alzheimer’s, it’s becoming a really good treatment for that because people who might not remember their kids name will still remember the lyrics to a song from when they were a teenager. So you can play those songs and sing along, that helps them to regain some of their memory.”

Though there are many applications to her degree, Wray has an idea about how she can benefit people through her music.

“I would like to use it to help people with mental illnesses, so that would be at like a state hospital or a facility for people dealing with that,” Wray said.

In order to get her degree, Wray plans to learn piano, guitar, voice, and some percussion along with the french horn. She is well on her way to becoming a music virtuoso.

“This past summer I took a couple piano lessons with my friends mom, so I know the basics of piano,” Wray said. “I just have to work on it some more.”

Senior bassoonist Lauren LaChapelle is another senior band member who is planning on going into music performance at the University of North Texas.

LaChapelle started playing in sixth grade, and hasn’t stopped since. However, she was not sure what her skill would result in until halfway through high school.

“Some people, they knew that they wanted to do music for a really long time but for me it was probably sophomore year, it just started to click more,” LaChapelle said.

Realizing what she wanted to do in college pushed Chapelle to work harder, securing spots in the Texas All-State band both her junior and senior year.

“After being at those conventions in San Antonio for the five day trip, it just kind of made me realize that I really wanted to do that,” LaChapelle said.

Chapelle plans on getting a performance degree so she can teach private lessons and freelance. She also hopes to apply for symphonies, but knows the challenge that comes with it.

“They’re [symphonies] really hard to get into because if if you get into it, you pretty much have a job until you don’t want to be there anymore,” LaChapelle said.

Still, LaChapelle looks forward to attending UNT in the fall and pursuing a future in music.

“I’m really excited, it’ll be interesting because especially in college I know that I don’t have to take as many core classes as other people,” LaChapelle said. “All of mine is really music based, its just a few semesters of other things or none at all. That’s nice too.”

Full time student and part time rock star senior Brady Knippa is always by his drumset, whether it be as a member of his band The Merge or CHS band.

Knippa will attend the University of Texas at Austin, where he plans on getting a major in music and a minor or double major in finance so he can work in music industry.

“I think what I really want to go for is venue management, working with people like [American Airlines Center, Gexa Energy Pavilion}, and working with artists there,” Knippa said. “It’s more like promotion or ticket sales, booking the venues and working with the artists to get shows going.”

The idea of pursuing music didn’t strike Knippa until he made Texas All-State band his junior year.

“I talked to a bunch of conductors there, and they were all talking about it,” Knippa said. “That’s what really got me to decide that I wanted to do music in college, and through that I’ve found a really small side of music. It’s the industry side.”

Supporting Knippa in his decision to go into music industry are two of his bandmates, CHS senior Coleman Loose and Flower Mound senior Dax Matlock.

“They are the ones who told me about music business,” Knippa said. “That was actually about a year ago, so I began to look into what they told me. That’s what I decided to do surprisingly enough.”

With friends by his side and drumsticks in hand, Knippa is ready to play his next venue- Austin.

“I’m really excited about it,” Knippa said. “What I wanted to do in college, it shifted around over the years. I’ve wanted to do many, many things and I was like ‘ah, I’m never going to find out what I really want to do.’ But then through the allstate convention and through Dax and Coleman in my band outside of school, I think I found what I really like doing.”

Band director Scott Mason, has known and mentored each student during their four-year CHS band career. He has shared memories with each student over the years, but he remembers one particular moment with Knippa.

“I saw Brady Knippa one day practicing his snare drum, and he was so into it, there was a lot of noise going on in the band hall,” Mason said. “He would keep on going over the same thing until he got it just exactly right. That’s an extremely high level of intelligence, working to do what he’s doing.”

Mason wrote recommendations for the students, and after four years, is ready to see where their journey in music takes them.

“Those students will do incredibly well,” Mason said. “They are very talented, hardworking, intelligent, and they have so many positive attributes. In the world of music they will excel as much as they want to.”