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Malcolm Caluori (continued)
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As a boy, Caluori was always drawing, especially portraits. Though under age, he would repeatedly send in for drawing tests from magazines. One day when he was old enough, he got a call. He told them he had by now chosen music. The caller wished him luck, and informed him that he was in the top 10% of anything they'd ever received.
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After a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance, Malcolm (Frederic) poses with his sister Tresa and "Major General" Johnathan Daniel Steppe. A world history buff, today Caluori is a collector of historical swords and daggers, and lent two of his own rapiers to contribute to the sound FX for the duel at the end of the Original Concept Recording of Dangerous Liaisons.
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Malcolm is awarded both First Place and "Best of Class" for his compositional entry in the 1988 Student Expo. He wanted to enter several works, but regulations allowed only a single entry unless pieces were part of a related collection. So he proceded to write several separate small pieces for piano, for harpsichord, and for various chamber music ensembles, and called them all "Music from Barvelie" a ficticious country he had created. The variety of music exhibited a range of talent, winning the prize and initiating his studies with Brooks Grantier.
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The pseudo-militaristic nature of drum corps appealed to Caluori's sense of order and tradition, and his leadership eventually led to his becoming Sergeant over the horn line. He continued to write on the road. During the all-night interstate bus rides from one venue to the next, they would occasionally come upon long lit tunnels. They were so long that, on those occasions, as a novelty, he would pull out an ongoing piece called "Ode to Tunnel" which he would continue adding to until they exited the tunnel.
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At age 19, Malcolm began writing music for Dangerous Liaisons. With Johnathan Daniel Steppe, the show would be written over the course of their 20's. The very act of composing the show was, in itself, a course in composition, and he was concerned that the earliest written parts would sound less experienced than the later portions. But because certain types of musical numbers were written first, and others held till last, and because the score is so thoroughly integrated with a sophisticated system of leitmotif, it feels whole and organic.
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Malcolm accepts the Glassmen "Brass Player of the Year" award in 1988 from mentor in music and humanity, David Tippett. On tour with the Glassmen Drum & Bugle Corps Malcolm was a soloist playing the mellophone bugle for the length of his corps career. A mild mid-voiced instrument with the range of a soprano bugle (the bugle equivalent of a trumpet), the mellophone arrangments always offered the most beautiful and most technically demanding parts to play. Though a trumpeter in his civilian life, he never wanted to switch from mellophone to Soprano.
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