Opus

Art Frank is our "Mr. Holland"
(Article from The Trenton Times, Friday, October 26, 2001)

       There Is an event coming up at Nottingham High School on Nov. 10 that has strong echoes of two music-oriented classics near and dear to all of us.
       One of them is the memorable movie "Mr. Holland's Opus" and the other is the enduring "The Music Man," of Broadway and Hollywood.
       In this case. we have in our community a man who can easily be defined as Mr. Holland or perhaps as the "Harold" of "Music Man." Formally, he is Dr. Arthur Frank, but he is known to thousands in our "River City" as a noted composer, music teacher, humanitarian and a musical pied piper whose students followed him happily and loved him so deeply.
       To me, he has always been an inspiring man who I have been privileged to call friend.
       On Nov. 10, dozens of his former choir students from 1959 to '64, his years teaching vocal music at what was then Hamilton High School West are coining back from all over the country to sing with him, reminisce with him, and soak a handkerchief or two with him.
       A couple of his students who adored him from the start and still do, Anita Gatti and Noreen Halper Barish, both of Hamilton, were joyously istrumental in making this musical overture happen.
       I sat and talked with Art and Noreen at the Franks' lovely new home in Pennington the other day. Art already had tears in his eyes as he remembered his days between 1969 and 1963.
       "Fresh out of school I had taken a job as music teacher at Hamilton West and asked to handle the vocal side. At first I had one lonely class, and a choir of 18 girls and just one boy. Most boys thought singing was sissy stuff and I needed the guys if I was to expand the program," Frank said.
       His eyes took on a distant glow and heard the melody of those years.
       "But slowly, from this class and that study hall, from here and there, I began to draw both guys and dolls. If they would just give me maybe six sessions to rehearse, I promised them fun and a pride they had never known.
       "Well, they responded and pretty soon I had 36 guys and over 50 young ladies singing their hearts out and beginning to sound pretty good, even to themselves. Two years later, we had a remarkable 225 youngsters involved in the program, which amounted to 25 percent of the student body. Oh, did we have fun."
       Barish insisted Frank turned Hamilton High West into this area's "High School for the Performing Arts." She said every girl in the choir was ga ga over Mr. Frank and adds they still are. Frank loves them, too.
       When he left Hamilton High, they gave him a surprise goodbye in the auditorium, which stunned him but gave him an unforgettable memory. And this was long before the movie opus staring Richard Dreyfuss.
       Frank went on to do many outstanding musical things in our community. He taught at Rider College, established and became the first chairman of the new fine arts program at my alma mater.
       He went to teach for 27 years at Temple University in Philadelphia, and get his master's and doctorate there, retiring as professor emeritus. For many happy years, Frank was the musical director at the famed Lambertville Music Circus and served in the same capacity at the Bucks County Playhouse and Trenton's Theatre-In-The-Park.
       And, of course, he is still gathering the test pros into big bands and his Dixieland band combo to produce some of the finest musical events in our Valley's history.
       The former kids who are coming back to sing with him and love him all over again are now mothers and grandmothers and a few grandfathers. They don't have to sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Frank reminds them, they just must believe they will sound like themselves back when they had only just begun.
       The singing wasn't always as easy as it looked, Frank recalls. "They had to lose their shyness, learn the new signs and symbols of music, feel it, sing it, work together as a team, sacrifice ego and practice self-discipline."
       Many of those students have since testified that "Music Man" Art Frank has had a great influence on their lives.
       If any former choir member reads this, the committee wants them to come and invites others to show up as well.
       The Nov. 10 Choir Concert Tribute is called "Mr. Frank's Kids' Opus, 2001." Registration is at 11:15 a.m., first rehearsal at 12:30 p.m., full concert at 5 p.m.
       Thomas Wolfe once wrote "You Can't Go Home Again." He was wrong.
       The melody lingers on.
      Arnold Ropeik is senior editor of The Times.