The Piano Man

Terry Edwards poses for a photo at First Presbyterian Church on Jan. 23, 2018, in Perryville, Missouri.

Ben Matthews ~ Southeast Missourian

Stories from musician, teacher and composer Terry Edwards

Terry Edwards' grandma lived on a dairy farm in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and she had a piano. From the time he could walk over to touch it, Edwards banged on the instrument like children do, because he had “free reign” at his grandmother's house. A wonderful pianist herself, she was his first piano teacher, teaching him how to play a measure of a hymn at a time, which he would then play over and over all day.

Edwards was self-taught throughout high school and didn't take formal piano lessons until he attended Three Rivers College and then Southeast Missouri State University. He always knew he would study music and create a life from it.

Fast forward several decades, and Edwards has built an impactful career teaching choral music from these early experiences with the piano, and taught nearly every student in Perry County, Missouri, who knows how to play the instrument. He also has written a musical about the very farm on which he first played.

Terry Edwards plays the piano Jan. 23, 2018, at First Presbyterian Church in Perryville, Missouri.

BEN MATTHEWS ~ bmatthews@semissourian.com

East Highway Club

Storytelling and music are both integral parts of Edwards' personality. He credits learning to tell stories from listening to his father, a good storyteller.

“I always told stories to get people's attention,” Edwards says. With a smile, he added, “Some people say my stories weren't true, but — they were at least based on truth.”

Edwards’ musical, “East Highway Club,” is set in 1959 in Poplar Bluff, on his' grandparents' dairy farm where he spent much of his time as a boy. It centers around the women of the East Highway Club, an organization loosely associated with the church across the street. In the days of Edwards' childhood, the club was comprised of women who were farm wives and met together to discuss techniques important to running a home. Edwards' grandmother and great-grandmother were in the club, and he knew many of the other members, too.

“It was a very charmed place when I was growing up,” Edwards says of his hometown. “There were a lot of characters around, and I was able to keep all those people in my brain all my life. For the past 10 years I've been developing how I could make all of that into a story.”

Edwards says he always knew he was going to write the musical. He did most of the writing and composing on his morning walks, working out a song or scene each day. Edwards drew inspiration from his family members who, along with the ladies of the East Highway Club, compose the cast. Edwards began writing the musical the week after he retired from teaching choir. From that point, it took him about a year to complete.

Although “East Highway Club” focuses on the women of the club, Edwards says readers have told him it is really about change in people's lives. The musical is even complete with a southern-gospel quartet competition.

There are no current plans to produce the musical, although Edwards has held a reading of the two-and-a-half-hour script and score with actors, actresses and musicians from a St. Louis theater group, St. Louis' Black Rep, and the town of Perryville, Missouri.

“It was sort of fun to listen to it,” Edwards says of the experience. While listening to other people read and sing his words, he understood the revisions he needed to make. He has since revised it and given it to a few production and workshop companies across the Midwest.

“If you're doing it right, there is no harder job than education.”

Telling stories through music is something Edwards passed on to the thousands of students he taught during his 31 years as a beloved choir teacher at Perryville High School. Edwards used stories to get students' attention, help them dissect music and learn how to sight read.

“All of a sudden they could understand my humor, or maybe my humanity,” Edwards says of the connection stories fostered between him and his students. “Some of the stories weren't necessarily funny, some of them were sort of sad, that kind of thing, but I think they would come to understand me a little more and that I was — I hope, anyway — at least genuine in what I was doing.”

Singing each day, treating everyone fairly and teaching each individual student were also important components to Edwards' teaching. He realized early in his career there are a variety of talents in a choir classroom, and even if a student wasn't the best singer in the room, they brought other necessary and positive qualities.

Edwards' and his wife Jane's children — Paul who directs plays in New York, Leah who is an architect in Omaha, Nebraska, Jacob who is a musician and Luke who works as a supervisor at a grocery store, both in Nashville, Tennessee — were all members of Edwards' choirs while in high school.

Edwards credits his students and fellow music instructors as his teachers.

“They're very much a family,” Edwards says of the music directors in Southeast Missouri. “Music brings us together.”

“Music is Sort of a Fundamental Thing”

Edwards listens to all types of music and sees the musician's job as one of creating pieces that help people feel emotion. The goal with music education, Edwards says, is for students to become good consumers of music.

“Good music is something that other people and the performer can be emotionally attached to,” Edwards says. “Something that causes them to — if nothing else — maybe smile on the inside, or maybe cry on the inside.”

He especially connects with music that tells a story, which is what he tries to do through the music he composes. Words were the reason he chose to become a choir director, so he could use both music and words to tell stories.

“Music is sometimes more than notes. It sometimes is conversation. It's sometimes just the ability to converse with other things,” Edwards says. “It's just an integral part of all of our beings.”