David Powell II and Collins O’Dwyer II hung up their instruments for the last time as Jennings High School Warriors. David and Collins, along with six other seniors on the Warriors marching band, said farewell on Sunday at the annual Annie Malone May Day Parade.
“I’ll miss the fun group of people I worked with the most,” Collins said.
The two seniors from Jennings High, located at 8850 Cozens Ave., shared in nearly $40,000 worth of college scholarships for their musical abilities.
In the fall, David will attend Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala. on a $6,000 drum major scholarship and $10,000 in other scholarships. Collins will attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. on a partial scholarship for vocal music and scholarship awards from the Opera Theater of Saint Louis. He turned down a full scholarship to Clark Atlanta University.
“Band is not just music,” David said. “You have to know a lot of other stuff like math and history.”
Next year, David will compete to become the first freshman drum major to lead the Stillman College Blue Pride Marching Band.
“We look forward to him becoming drum major unless he has three left feet,” said Stillman College Band Director Robert A. Williams.
Williams said he was most impressed by David’s creativity. While other prospective students turned in letters of recommendation, David sent in a DVD to highlight his talents.
“It just wasn’t someone following him around with a camera,” Williams said. “It showed his lighter side, that he was human, and the seriousness of him as a drum major.”
David got his start in music as a second grader at Woodland Elementary School, in the Jennings district. His first instrument was alto saxophone.
At Jennings, his peers voted him as a sophomore to be drum major. For the homecoming parade that year, David wore a suit and tie instead of a uniform. He had a swagger that could demand an audience and motivate others, Jennings Band Director Charles Lee said.
“I’m a competitor, and I took band very seriously,” David said. “I was shocked when they nominated me for drum major. I just started dancing with my sax.”
His musical influence comes from his father, David Sr., who would take his son every year to the St. Louis Gateway Football Classic.
“He told me when I was in the second grade that I was going to be down there on the field marching,” David II recalls. “I used to get very excited just hearing the band. A few years later, I became a part of my elementary school band.”
For Collins, music started at 8 years old, singing with Saint Louis Cathedral Concerts.
In fourth grade, he was introduced to the soprano saxophone and has played the instrument ever since.
“The first time I heard him play, I knew he was something special,” Lee said. “He is unlike any performer I ever taught.”
Jenese Jones, Collins’ former teacher at Jennings High, noticed Collins’ musical potential early on. She got him involved in the school choir and got him back to playing the piano.
“Often times, she winded up believing in my ability more than I recognized it,” Collins said. “She always put me out there, always made me to be a leader and take more responsibility.”
Collins said Jones was also the one who pushed him to join the Artists-in-Training Program with the Opera Theater of Saint Louis. The program works with area universities to provide urban students with weekly voice lessons by opera professionals and master classes with visiting artists.
The theater is where Collins developed his love for opera and helped distinguish him as a baritone singer. His rendition of “Siete Estinte O Mia Speranza,” an Italian art song by Alessandro Scarlatti, is what ultimately landed him the full ride to Clark Atlanta. But he chose Howard instead because he said it would better suit his musical aspirations. In his spare time, Collins writes and composes gospel music.
“I’m very emotionally attached to my music,” Collins said. “I’m a stickler about perfection, and I expect to be as close as perfect as I can be.”
Jennings’ marching band has come a long way since Lee arrived to Jennings in 1998. The band has grown from seven students to a full band of roughly 35 students with instrumentalists, majorettes and flags.
“We used to be called band geeks, and now people come up to us and say ‘Oh, y’all sound good,’” David said.
Jennings seniors Markis Thompson and Akil Hutchins said, “This band is not about competition, it’s about growth and development. A band is not just one man, everyone plays a big part.”
Lee has built a program that has taken students all over the country to play music. Last year, they performed at Universal Studios, Stillman College, Clark Atlanta University and Truman State University. They also managed to win first place in Harris-Stowe State University’s homecoming parade.
“Although we don’t have 800 people, we’ll take our 40 people and overpower those with 100-plus people,” David said. “We like to keep quiet and come in as the underdogs.”
Last year, Jennings proved that they could march with the larger, more experienced bands by placing second overall in the Annie Malone Parade. But this year, without their band director, who was out because of surgery on his rotator cuff, the band did not place.
They will be back next year, Lee said.
“I am very confident that our lower classmen will step into the very large shoes that these young men are leaving,” Lee said of all the seniors.
In the future, Collins hopes to make it as a mainstream gospel artist. He wants to launch a gospel concert to unite St. Louis and to address the issue of black-on-black crime.
“Instead of coming back to St. Louis and giving money, I want to give something with some substance targeted around having love for your neighbor,” Collins said.
At Stillman, David will major in computer and information science and minor in music. His dream of playing in the Gateway Classic will finally come true on Sept. 27 when Stillman plays Kentucky State University in the 15th annual Gateway Classic.
Stillman College President Ernest McNealey – who said 80 students from the St. Louis area have been accepted for fall admission since Stillman appeared in last year’s Classic for the first time – will be in St. Louis next week for the official kickoff of the 2008 Gateway Classic at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 27 at the Millennium Hotel, 200 S. 4th St.
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