Nationally acclaimed composer leads LHS Symphonic Band
During the recent Liverpool High School Band Festival, the LHS Symphonic Band became the very first musical group to perform the composition, “21: The Won Way,” written by Stephen Melillo.
The piece is a tribute to baseball player Roberto Clemente who lost his life in a plane crash in 1972. Melillo spent several days at LHS rehearsing with Symphonic Band members, and served as the guest conductor for the Band Festival. His more than 1,010 works span from the IBM Thinkpad Demo to the Concerto for Violin & Orchestra. In 2005, his documentary in music, “Kakehashi: That We Might Live” was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Music, and in 2006, his recording “Stormworks Chapter 5:8, Writings on the Wall,” was nominated in four categories in the first round of the 49th Grammy Awards. In 2008, the “visually scored” DVD version of “That We Might Live” was nominated at the 50th Grammy Awards in the Long Form Documentary caption, and won two Telly Film Awards for History/Biography and Music Concert.
His scoring work can be found in 14 feature films, 28 network television programs and in the 1991 Academy Award-nominated movie “12:01PM.” In the early 1990s, Melillo composed game music for Nintendo, Sega-Genesis and others through his affiliation with Absolute Entertainment.
