Today we’d like to introduce you to Charles Mekealian.
Hi Charles, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in a small city outside of Fresno called Sanger in the central valley of California. I spent a lot of time playing sports on the street in front of my house with my friends and traversing our neighborhoods spending lots of time at my friend’s houses. That and I spent a lot of weekends with my dad working on his grape vineyards as a young kid. Music has been a guiding force in my life ever since I picked up an instrument as a child. It has been a player in every major step I’ve taken in life and something about that has given me purpose that is hard to really convey through words. This path is similar to music because there is just something magical about music that I feel cannot be truly explained that connects humans to experiences in their life, though there are more than enough theorists out there with great ideas as to why.
I started playing the clarinet in 6th grade and I was hooked! I had never really considered band or music as something that would interest me especially since I came from a very non-musical family with the exception of my grandfather who played the trumpet at church while I was a child. It was just fun. I didn’t do many school activities and just spent my time outside of school playing with my friends. I ended up switching to the trumpet in 7th grade because my best friend at the time was playing the trumpet and I remembered my grandfather playing it growing up. I also thought it was just cooler. Only three buttons! The rest is really history. I stuck with trumpet and still play it today and that has taken me on quite the journey. I made many lifelong friends during high school marching band then I went on to march with the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps organization for four seasons after I graduated high school. That’s where I met my wife and the trumpet continued to drive me forward. There was something about the marching arts that I connected with more so than any other element of music. Performing your instrument while doing some incredibly challenging physical acts inspired me as a composer and taught me mental and physical disciplines I never imagined I’d need. Some of those marching experiences were more difficult than any of the most physically demanding moments of Marine Corps Boot Camp. So I ended up joining the United States Marine Corps as a trumpet instrumentalist and served for seven and a half years which took me and my family on some great adventures away from California. After I ended my service, I went to SDSU to complete my Music Education degree and become a music teacher which is where I’m at now in Carlsbad at La Costa Canyon High School.
Along this journey, I began writing music as a way to express myself because I’d always had a desire to take those melodies in my mind and realize them as notes in the air. I began not really having any strong background in music theory but still having the drive and persistence to make my next project better. As I continued in my music performance and music teaching experiences at my old high school band program, I learned a lot and was able to start creating more digestible works. Though, I really never envisioned myself as a composer at the time. It was just a hobby. My main interest was writing music for the marching arts activities like marching band and drum corps. My experience participating and teaching in these activities gave me more than just the thrill of performance. It gave me purpose. I felt that I wanted to ensure that I could give people that same feeling of enjoyment and fulfillment that I had in my experiences. Now I get to do this as a career in two different ways. One as a teacher and the other as a composer/arranger.
One of the pinnacle moments along my music journey was while I was in the Marine Corps. I had the fortunate opportunity to meet one of my favorite composers at the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina concert performed by Marine Band New Orleans in 2015. He came to watch us perform a piece he had composed as a commemorative reflection on the devastation and revival of New Orleans after the disaster. I always make it a point to talk to composers and ask for tips and pick their brains so I can learn from the best! Well, I did just that and I told him about my experiences so far and he had asked me to send him some of my work to take a look at and I expected some commentary telling me what I could do better but what I received back was something completely unexpected. He wanted to publish one of the pieces I sent to him! I was really surprised and wasn’t sure how to feel. I had been writing for a while at that point and was having a lot of fun performing my works with my friends in our brass quintet. I had considered publishing some of my works but really didn’t think it would pan out. After this, I knew I was ready to push myself and write more! I did and now I have 10 pieces published with the RWS Music Company and 21 pieces through my own self-publishing through MekealianMusic along with many other music projects out in the world.
My family and I have lived in the Point Loma area for the better part of the last 15 years and I decided to start my own company as a way to connect with performing musicians and music teachers on a more personal level and offer my take on original and arranged works and promote the RWS Music Company who has been so great to me! I also thought it would be a great space to give out free digital resources that I have used through my own teaching experiences to those who need them. I know I’ve been helped by others who do the same. A large part of what I do as a composer is write marching band shows for bands that compete in field tournament circuits. It is a huge undertaking! You have to write music for a band and have so many variable elements to consider. Not only the level of the group, but the level of individual sections and what type of equipment the group has and then I work with collaborators to write music for the drumline which is another timely element in the process. All this is done to hopefully give those student performers that same experience I had in marching band and Drum Corps and give them a moment in their lives to look back and reflect positively on and remember the role music played in their life.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
One of the main struggles I’ve had along the way are probably similar to most people with busy lives and that is the time to truly dedicate to my craft. Music writing has always been something I’ve done more as a hobby as I’ve traveled along with my family and my trumpet as a performing musician and teacher. Music writing typically happens late at night while the family sleeps or while I’m taking my dog for a walk, I’ll record my ideas onto my voice memo app. I really try my best to prioritize my time at home with my family and not do too much work because that time is already so limited due to our busy schedules.
Also, not everything I’ve written has been published or even performed but that is part of the creative process. Some tunes are just not going to connect with performers or an audience and some are. Those tunes become exercises for me in my exploration of the music writing process and music industry. The scariest part of composing is writing for marching band because a group’s success can be directly in your hands as the adjudication process varies from year to year. You may have great ideas but if they don’t fit into the general idea of the show or reflect what the visual element is portraying you are essentially to blame. Not that your ideas are invalid, they just don’t translate in to a coherent or cohesive part of the overall production. Fortunately, I’ve learned a great deal from my previous experiences and feel like I’ve come a long way in this element and feel pretty confident these days but definitely humble.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
So in short, I’m a music educator. I’ve loved the idea of teaching since I was a child and ran class with my younger brother and friends frequently while growing up. Early on I saw how music brings all sorts of people together at the educational level and I felt I wanted to be someone who can inspire that variety of students, no matter their background, to be the best they can be in performance. Not just for themselves, but for everyone. Music in school is unique in that anyone can do it if they want. They don’t really have to have natural talent or have years of experience to participate which invites a huge pool of students of various backgrounds into music because they are all welcome.
My specialty as a composer would be in educational writing though I’ve done a few projects for professional musicians along the way to include a few while I served in the Marine Corps. One thing that I’ve decided to do with some of my younger band compositions is focus the themes and titles on where I grew up in central California. Titles like “Bells of the Christmas Tree City” and “March of the Sequoias” try to paint pictures for beginning bands of what these locations can mean through music. I would also say I’m a bit unconventional in my writing style just because I like to go against the grain naturally. I’m a fan of musical surprises and subverting expectations.
I’d say I’m most proud of my work writing and arranging marching band shows. Marching band music is probably THE most rehearsed, practiced and performed music in all of music education just due to the immense work it takes to put all of the elements together. This means your music gets played A LOT and you have to hope the members connect with it! All I wish is that the students and band staff enjoy the music while they all go on their marching band journey together. I feel that each show I write gets better and better as I constantly reassess my process and compositional techniques. Plus, I love it!
Who else deserves credit in your story?
I had a very supportive high school band director who really gave me the confidence to try and honestly who was a key component in many of my future steps. Dan Pena is a band director in Sanger, CA and I worked with him for the first few years after I graduated high school and he really gave me an open canvas to learn how to teach and also compose music.
A friend of mine in high school was a composer and was really the catalyst for my venture in music composition. I had never really considered taking my music ideas and bring them to reality but I was inspired by his creation process. Andrew Esquer is now working on music projects in New York City and holds a Master’s Degree in music composing from NYU and we are still good friends to this day. He actually does virtual sessions with my digital music composition course at my high school.
I’ve had many other great friends along the way help give me the confidence in my writing to continue on my path and I couldn’t be more grateful. One of those friends, Joseph Archuleta, is now the band director at our former high school and I’ve been writing his marching band shows for the last few years. Our collaboration goes into all sorts of fun and creative directions since we have such a great friendship and know each other very well.
Robert W. Smith was and is still a role model for me as a composer far before I met him. I enjoyed listening to his music and had performed a bunch of his works throughout the years. He brought me into his company and showed me the business side of composing and publishing and we had many conversations about balancing life and composing. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago which was a huge hit on the band world as he made such an impact on the music education industry through his hundreds of compositions and time as an educator at so many levels. Definitely someone who gave everything to the world of music.
My family has been very supportive of my love for this craft. My wife knew that this was an obsession of mine early on as I’d sit at computer for hours inputting notes into notation software listening to the ideas over and over. The process has changed significantly and now my oldest daughter has been performing my music with her high school marching band for the last three years. Love you guys!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mekealianmusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charles_mekealian_composer/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mekealianmusic
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-mekealian-b47000125/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmvYSnvn4mDHtzi5r-9NNvg?view_as=subscriber
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mekealianmusic
- Other: https://rwsmusic.com/composers/charles-mekealian/
