UTC professor's musical memorial to July 16 shooting to be performed by 50 bands across the world

Music, more so than any other art form, can impact and motivate people, their thoughts, and their actions. It can also be used to express these ideas and actions, as well as create some form of closure.

Last fall, Kenyon Wilson was mired in a creative rut while composing "Five," a musical tribute to the victims of the Chattanooga terrorist attacks on July 16, 2015.

The associate professor of music at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga started working on the piece to navigate the emotional aftermath of the shooting spree, which claimed the lives of five servicemen.

"Everyone responds in their own way; I wanted to do something musical," the 45-year-old said. "One of the youngest victims [Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells] was a clarinet player in his high school band for four years. That kind of hit a little closer to home and got things rolling."

Try as he might, however, Wilson couldn't settle on a concept to anchor the work, and not having one brought him to a standstill.

As he stood outside his Lookout Valley home on the afternoon of Sept. 16, however, Wilson looked up and the solution to his problem cut the sky in half.

"The Blue Angels did their approach and flew straight over my house," he recalled, remembering the famed flight team's role in the Chattanooga Unite memorial concert. "They did the missing-man formation, and that never ceases to move me. That really guided the rest of the piece."

During the missing-man formation, a member of the jet squadron abruptly breaks formation and flies away, symbolizing the death of a comrade. Creating a musical parallel to that maneuver seemed appropriate, so Wilson started composing.

He began with the fifth and final movement, where he added special instructions for five musicians. During the concert, they leave their seats but continue playing, out of view of the audience, Wilson said.

"Those empty chairs might hit [the audience] in the same way that, every time I see a missing-man flyover, it gets me."

Wilson composed the six-minute piece with high school performers in mind. In mid-December, he began reaching out to regional high school band directors, expecting the local tie to encourage many to offer their support by purchasing the rights to perform the piece. He set a flat rate of $50 - a fraction of the normal price for a piece of music - so any band could afford the right to label their performance of "Five" as a premiere.

But the piece has traveled much farther than he expected.

To date, 50 groups across the nation and one international ensemble have commissioned "Five" and will perform it at some point during the spring. The composition will make its official debut Saturday at UTC during a performance by the UTC Tri-State Honor Band.

The worldwide attention was helped along by UTC interim band director Matthew Smith, who posted about the project on an electronic mailing list for members of the College Band Directors National Association.

"I thought it was a wonderful idea," Smith said. "In most instances when tragedy hits us in life, we turn to music."

David Butler, band director at Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, was one of the first people Wilson approached to support "Five." The CSAS band will perform the piece at some point in April, Butler said, along with "An American Elegy," a 2008 work by Frank Ticheli commemorating the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colo.

"Five'" isn't just about education or art, he said.

"It's about our community, our experience and our emotional healing. Through the music, I hope to create a better understanding of how the composer, performer, audience - every individual - relates to and understands how this event has affected them."

The diverse mix of high school and university groups, community and military bands that signed on to perform "Five" this year include points as far away as Washington state, Texas and Minnesota. One band, the Alamaty International School, is based in Kazakhstan.

"Not only does music help in the healing process, but most of the tragic events of recent history - as well as happy ones - can be tied to music," said Jeffrey Malecki, the director of bands at the University of San Diego in California. Members of the university's wind ensemble will perform "Five" sometime in March, he said.

Malecki has no personal connection to Chattanooga, but he knows Wilson through a regional music conference the UTC professor helped coordinate. Despite his geographic distance from the tragedy, Malecki said he appreciated the opportunity to help carry on music's long-standing role as an emotional balm.

"[Leonard] Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in Mahler after the Kennedy assassination, as did Kurt Masur with Brahms after 9/11, not to mention the countless other pieces written for those events or others," Malecki explains. "Listening to these pieces can be a great escape or means of meditation. In this case, being a part of the commissioning and performing can be even greater."

Wilson said he plans to travel to as many debut performances of "Five" as possible, whether to watch, conduct or assist with a rehearsal. When he can't be there directly, he said, he hopes to participate remotely via a Skype videoconferencing session.

Work on "Five" began as a personal means of coping with grief, but Wilson said the enthusiastic, widespread response to the piece helped realize that goal before the first downbeat.

"Here are all these groups with no connection to Chattanooga who are saying, 'We want to honor these five and help in whatever way they can,'" he said. "Musically, they're helping. I haven't heard a note, and it's already achieved that goal."

Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.