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A prodigy of notes

Music comes easy for Bruce Blowers, from playing the oboe or piano to composing works for a play or orchestra.

By MARINA BROWN
Published June 28, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG -- From a modest house, in a modest neighborhood, where pickup trucks and econo-vans outnumber passenger sedans, the sounds of a young operatic baritone singing Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus come tumbling into the street.

If one waits longer, the vocal notes might switch to piano chords. Sometime later, the voice of a melancholy oboe may pour from the windows. In each case, the musicmaker would be the same, Bruce Blowers, just turned 18, and filled with both music and, he says, the Holy Spirit.

The enigma of Blowers is how he has managed to weave together his faith and his music. His musical teachers nurture the notes; his and his family's deep belief gives perspective to what comes out.

And there is much. Blowers excels in nearly every musical genre. "His gifts just keep spilling over," says Marilyn Michael, professor of voice at St. Petersburg College.

The home-schooled musician, dancer, composer, singer, actor and this summer, Bible School counselor, is hurtling through an artistic schedule that takes him and his chauffeur mother, Rosanne, throughout the Tampa Bay area. Blowers admits he hasn't had time to learn to drive, or even to complete the courses to graduate from high school. Musicmaking is his priority.

And everybody wants some of his work. Most recently Blowers played the long and difficult oboe solo in a major concerto by Brahms with the Tampa Bay Symphony; next, musicians from the Florida Orchestra recently played Blowers' composition for woodwinds at the Palladium. And then there is the Summer Vocal Institute with Sherrill Milnes, and the just-finished score for a Greek play.

First came the piano. "I think it was when I discovered an old keyboard stuffed under my parents' bed," says a slightly embarrassed Blowers. He is small-framed, smooth-faced and direct. He seems like a young gardener tending to the talents that he knows are growing inside him. "I wasn't a kid, I think I was 9. But I immediately started playing tunes - usually church hymns - the kind our family was singing together all the time."

Blowers attended Keswick Christian School through second grade. He flirted briefly with the clarinet, but when he switched to home schooling, he also switched to another tricky reed instrument, the oboe.

"Everybody was surprised I made decent sounds so quickly," he laughs.

Joyce James, Blowers' first oboe teacher, says she knew from the start she had a prodigy on her hands. "He was so small he couldn't even hold the instrument - we had to put a sort of training strap around his neck - but oh, how he could play!"

Blowers remained the principal oboe in the Keswick band even as he began to be in demand elsewhere. By age 13 he was playing principal oboe with both the St. Petersburg College orchestra and band, with the Pinellas Youth Symphony and the Tampa Bay Youth Orchestra, and with the orchestra at Seminole High School, which he attended part time. There, he enrolled in harmony, theory and composition classes as a dual-credit student under the direction of Vernon Taranto at St. Petersburg College.

"I just love the playing of music," Blowers says. The numbing schedule and the mathematical complexities of writing music come easily; algebra, he admits, did not.

It is unclear where Blowers is academically. He thinks his credits add up to "my senior year." Home-schooled students often have ancillary credits from a variety of sources accumulated in a "credit bank." Diplomas can be issued based upon the pace at which the student progresses.

Rosanne Blowers, Bruce's mother, says she always "watched what flowed out of her children's minds" and let that lead her. "I believe that music is the course Jesus wants him to follow," she says.

The family includes another son, Brendan, 24, who is completing his masters degree at the Savannah School of the Arts, and a daughter, Brianne, 15, who sings, dances and plays the flute.

Bruce wrote the "ancient" music for his brother's Greek play and has composed music for Brianne's dance events.

Dr. Jonathon Steele, program director of fine and applied arts at St. Petersburg College, says he is continually awed by the talent Blowers demonstrates. "It's the breadth of it that is so astounding, " he says.

Steele adds another musical genre in which Blowers has excelled. "With his first attempt, the first movement of his First Symphony won second place at the 34th Annual Composer's Guild Competition. It seems like he's involved in everything."

Steele apparently wasn't even counting the performance at Carnegie Hall with the National Festival Orchestra, Blowers' appointment as new principal oboe at the University of South Florida, or his stints as a Disney actor, a hip-hop student, or dancing the strenuous Russian variation for Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School.

Mark Sforzini, principal bassoonist with the Florida Orchestra and artistic director of FloriMezzo, a gathering of professional and student musicians, says he heard and was charmed by Blowers' most recent composition, a woodwind quintet. "It's wonderfully sophisticated, especially for someone this young."

Sforzini played the first movement last year and encouraged Blowers to expand the piece to three movements. The composer calls it The Wind Whimsy Quintet.

"I think of it like a carousel. I wanted the players to be dancing in their chairs." Blowers says.

Blowers, along with Brian Moorhead, principal clarinet with the Florida Orchestra, performed the work June 18 at the Palladium in St. Petersburg.

As to what comes next in his musical odyssey, Blowers is uncertain. He feels that his "steps are put in order by the Lord," and that his whole family "trusts in God's revealing."

His earnest good manners and aura of sweetness almost make him seem vulnerable. But he says, his belief is rock solid. And he's not shy about calling for some help. "For the Brahms, believe me, I was praying like there was no tomorrow."

There could be a major music institute - Curtis Institute of Music or Eastman School of Music - in his future, or Blowers says, he may follow his own current musical inclination and simply be a "leader of worship, writing songs of praise and thanksgiving."

One of his teachers feels the current unconditional support of his family and the nurturing of the Tampa Bay musical community is right for him now. "Sometimes the joy in playing is lost in the critical atmosphere of the big institutes," Michaels says.

For the present, Blowers seems, like Bernstein or a young Mozart, to be filled with joy - joyously rushing to keep up with the creative flow of music that occurs to him - even in his dreams.

[Last modified June 28, 2005, 07:09:03]