April 27, 2005: Events: Headlines: COS - Chile: Music: CDA Press: Chile RPCV Gary A. Edwards is going back to school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- "Coeur d'Alene Suite."

Peace Corps Online: State: Idaho: February 8, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Idaho : April 27, 2005: Events: Headlines: COS - Chile: Music: CDA Press: Chile RPCV Gary A. Edwards is going back to school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- "Coeur d'Alene Suite."

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-181-108.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.181.108) on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 1:55 pm: Edit Post

Chile RPCV Gary A. Edwards is going back to school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- "Coeur d'Alene Suite."

Chile RPCV Gary A. Edwards is going back to school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- Coeur d'Alene Suite.

Chile RPCV Gary A. Edwards is going back to school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- "Coeur d'Alene Suite."

School orchestra to perform classical piece written by graduate

By Lynn Berk
CDA Press
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
April 27, 2005

POST FALLS - Ask Gary A. Edwards what a world without music would be like and a look of genuine horror crosses his face.

"It would be like living in hell," he says finally.

Music has been a part of Edwards' world for as long as he can remember. His dad wrote swing jazz music in the '40s. His grandpa played barn dances out at Spirit Lake.


And now Edwards, who graduated from High School in 1959, is going back to the school on May 24 to listen as the school's string orchestra performs one of his own classical pieces -- "Coeur d'Alene Suite."

The 30-minute piece consists of nine sections, each describing a chronological bit of North Idaho history.

"I wrote about the missionaries, the traders, the trappers," he says. "There's one part about the miners' strike in Kellogg, and another about Noah Kellogg's mule finding silver.

"It's a celebration of 100 years of Coeur d'Alene High School. I had one piece already written, but the other eight pieces took me two months. And I never got stuck -- ideas came faster than I could put them down on paper."

"Last week, I spent a couple of nights watching them record the suite," he says. "Forty-six years ago, I was in the same orchestra. Sitting in on rehearsals was a real thrill for me, too. Being an orchestra geek paid off."

But he was more than an "orchestra geek," as he puts it. Although he grew up in Coeur d'Alene wanting only two things out of life -- to teach music and to play in a symphony orchestra -- he heard something besides music in the mid-50s and early '60s.

He heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He heard the voice of President John F. Kennedy. And, after one eye-opening drive through Georgia, the tall, sturdy Caucasian from North Idaho saw wrongs that needed righting and needs that he couldn't ignore.

"I saw black people sitting in the back of the bus, drinking out of the colored drinking fountain," he says today. "It turned my stomach."

That's when Edwards discovered he had another love in life: activism. He demonstrated for civil rights in Louisville, Ky. -- where he did teach music and he did play in the symphony orchestra.

But he also stepped in to bolster the cause of the migrant workers when Cesar Chavez led the grape boycott in California. And he helped champion the cause for free speech at People's Park on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.

He served with JFK's vaunted Peace Corps in Santiago, Chile. And he stood up to the Aryan Nations here in North Idaho in 1998, confronting them with a sign that eventually got him both arrested and a court settlement for $15,000.

"I was an activist," he says with a shrug. "I'm still an activist."

Edwards writes in all genres of music. He knows no boundary lines when it comes to the words and notes that come into his mind. He's written country, classical, rock 'n' roll, even tried his hand -- with former Platters singer Wendell Noble -- at rap, although Noble's nephew tweaked it a bit to make it more, ah, contemporary.

"I had my deacons and elders tapping their feet to it at my church in Post Falls," Edwards says good-naturedly. "But I guess it needed a little more work."

But what put him on that collision course with the Aryan Nations, and, come to think of it, with the civil rights movement as well, is the same force that motivates his music. Because underneath it all is a finely honed sense not just of justice, but of spirituality. Sometimes it comes out as a spit-in-your-eye look at the neo-Nazis.

Sometimes it comes out as a gospel song. As a matter of fact, he just spent four days working on a yet-unnamed gospel CD with Noble.

"I'm a very spiritual person," Edwards says, "and I think music is very spiritual. It's a way of taking disharmony and dissonance, and resolving it.

"Otherwise, it's just noise."

Information about Gary Edwards' music can be accessed at edwardsmusicpublishing.com, and the Coeur d'Alene High School string orchestra performs at 7 p.m. on May 24. They are selling CDs of "Coeur d'Alene Suite" for $10 each as a fund-raiser for the instrumental music dept.





When this story was posted in April 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:


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April 24, 2005: This Week's Top Stories Date: April 24 2005 No: 576 April 24, 2005: This Week's Top Stories
PC says program in Uzbekistan is fully operational 23 Apr
Business is booming for bi-lingual RPCV's law practice 22 Apr
Phil Hardberger criticizes twin swap in San Antonio race 21 Apr
Alejandro Toledo has managed to stay in power 21 Apr
Dale A. Olsen wins Guggenheim fellowship for music 21 Apr
Dr. William E. Hurwitz sentenced to 25 years in prison 21 Apr
John and Karen Lewis build eco-tourist hotel in Costa Rica 21 Apr
Federal panel recommends Global Health Corps 20 Apr
Lena Medoyeff is a businessperson who makes clothes 20 Apr
Forty-one in Congress sign PC funding letter 19 Apr
James River Park manager Ralph White back to work 19 Apr
Pat Waak tells Dems to keep eyes on the prize 18 Apr
Al Kamen says First Fan Knows Baseball 18 Apr
Broughton Coburn tells his tales of Nepal 13 Apr
Maria Shriver talks about her father 12 Apr
Bellamy says no big difference with non-RPCV director 11 Apr
Abbey Brown faces women's issues in Bangladesh 10 Apr

April 24, 2005:  Special Events Date: April 24 2005 No: 574 April 24, 2005: Special Events
Jody Olsen speaks at Ivy College on May 6
RPCV Kent Island Family Weekend on May 6 - 8
Nepal RPCV film showing in Massachusetts on April 30
Gaddi Vasquez speaks in Berkeley on April 25
Cameroon RPCVs selling special Pagne
Bush proclaims National Volunteer Week
RPCVs: Post your stories or press releases here for inclusion next week.

Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000  strong Date: April 2 2005 No: 543 Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong
170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community.


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Story Source: CDA Press

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Events; Headlines; COS - Chile; Music

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By kira frank (swwwfilter7.syd.ops.aspac.uu.net - 203.166.99.252) on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 11:16 pm: Edit Post

bad website it needs music scores


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