International Musician Denver Bierman and the Mile High Orchestra making “History-REES”
By Jamie Fleury - Pilots News, Staff Writer
Image: Pilot News Group Photo / Jamie Fleury
Denver Bierman of the Mile High Orchestra, Shelley Heiden, Linda Starr, Donna Pontius and Randy Danielson in River Park Square. “We’ve had a lot of divine intervention moments in the past five and half years.” said REES Co-Chair Randy Danielson.
Also learn more about Denver Bierman and The Trumpet Challenge on ABC57 News
International Musician Denver Bierman and the Mile High Orchestra (MHO) is helping make history with The REES in downtown Plymouth during the Grand Re-Opening in October. Denver and the MHO is leading a team of trumpeters, including musicians from Plymouth High School (PHS), in the World Record Trumpet Challenge on October 1 at 1 p.m. in River Park Square. The goal is to break the world record of the most trumpeters playing in one location. Bierman has already invited people across the nation who intend to attend.
Bierman and the MHO will also be performing in the first live performance in The REES after years of laying dormant and after over five years of renovations. The concert at The REES is part of the 2022 tour “Hymns of Hope and Worship Tour”.
Bierman is a PHS Graduate, Class of 1995. He is the son of Terry and Laura Bierman with one brother named Nathan. Bierman and his wife Amy have two children, Boston who is 17 and London who is almost 15. Boston and London went back to school on August 1 in Hendersonville, Tennessee, a short trek north of Nashville. Boston will be with his father on October 1 at the Rees Grand Re-Opening.
Bierman grew up in Knox before his family relocated to Plymouth. His father taught Social Studies which included United States History and Geography at Knox High School for over forty years. His mother was a Speech Pathologist in South Bend. She also gave piano and vocal lessons from their living room home in Knox when he was growing up.
Bierman has been making music professionally for over 20 years. His first album came out on CD and cassette tape. Long before that his journey in music began. He started taking piano lessons from an instructor in Culver when he was five years old and continued until he was ten when they moved to Plymouth.
Bierman attended multiple elementary schools before he found himself at home at Lincoln Junior High (LJH). “It was my saving grace.” It was at LJH when Denver began to play the trumpet, though his first instrumental ambition was the flute, then the clarinet. “It’s a funny story. Like in third or fourth grade, we were driving one weekend I think up to South Bend or Merrillville to go to the mall or whatever because that’s what our family would do sometimes on the weekends. We got in the car and I was in the back seat of the car and I told my mom - I said, ‘You know when I get to play an instrument for band class I want to play the flute. That’s what I want to do. That was like my dream. My sweet mom, she turned around me and said, ‘Denver, we live in a small town. She said, ‘You will be the only boy flute player in that whole group and everybody is just going to make fun of you.’ She’s like, ‘Honey, I love you but I won’t let you. I won’t let you play the flute.’ I was really kind of heart broken. I was kind of crushed about it.” he laughed.
He put the flute from his mind after that. By 5th grade it was time for him to choose another instrument. “I already had in my mind what I wanted to play because there was this dude on the radio - I heard him - it was a saxophone - his name was Kenny G. So I decided I’m going to play the saxophone, right?” He laughed.
By the time it was Bierman’s turn to choose an instrument the list for the saxophone was full. In addition to that crushing news, he was also told that his hands were too small to play the saxophone efficiently. “I was crushed again. My mom said I can’t play the flute. This man tells me my hands are too small to play the saxophone.” He added. “What I didn’t understand in 5th grade was that everybody’s sister’s dog’s cousin had already signed up for the saxophone because Kenny G is on the radio and they all want to play saxophone too. Way too many saxophone players.” It was recommended that he play the clarinet. He reluctantly signed up for the clarinet.
It was during the band parent meeting at LJH when Denver’s life took a fateful turn. “Have you guys ever had this experience - maybe with your own families in life - where very pertinent information gets discussed right at the last second when you absolutely have to know something like right then and there? And like all of this time when it could have been talked about, no one just thinks to talk about it? So we’re standing in this line for twenty to twenty-five minutes because we’re at the back of it. All that time my father had something to say to me that he didn’t choose to say until literally like three minutes before we’re about to purchase the instrument. There’s like two or three people in front of us and he goes, he turns around and looks at me and he goes, ‘You know, Denver, these things are really expensive right? So if you break it, you know, or if you lose it or if you hate it - there will not be another. Your band career will be over. We’re getting one of these things and this is is? Right?’ So he said, ‘Are you sure? I just want to be really sure before I go write the check for this instrument. Are you sure that you want to play the clarinet?”
He had three minutes to make a decision that would impact the rest of his life. “I’m a massive people pleaser. It’s one of those issues in life that I’ve gone to a lot of counseling for - I’m just being real.” he laughed. “So thank God in that moment I’m actually honest instead of just doing what the dude said I should do because my hands are too small. I finally said, ‘I don’t want to play the clarinet. I never wanted to play the clarinet. I wanted to play the saxophone then I was told my hands were too small. Before that I wanted to play the flute and you said I couldn’t. My dad asked, ‘Did you hear that Laura, he doesn’t want to play the clarinet?!? We’re about to sign up for this. We’re about to pay for this thing. What are you going to play?!?”
Overwhelmed and bewildered with less than three minutes to make this decision, Bierman did what any reasonable junior high student would do - he asked one of his best friends. “Thank God my best buddy at Webster Elementary School, Jason Feece, his parents were right in front of me in line. This is what changed my entire life. I tapped Jason on the shoulder and said, ‘Jason, what are you playing? What are you playing in band?’ He said, ‘Dude, I’m playing the trumpet.’ I literally looked at him and said, ‘The trumpet? What is that?’ I didn’t even know what it was. He looked at me and said, ‘Denver. It’s cool. It’s loud.’ This is what sold me - he said, ‘Denver, you should sign up for the trumpet and you and me - we can play trumpets together.’ Sold. I said, ‘Dad, I’m playing the trumpet.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Jason’s playing it. I’m playing it’ And it changed the entire course of my life.”
Shortly after acquiring his trumpet, the fate of Bierman’s musical future was put to the test when he forgot his instrument on the front steps of LJH when he was bussed to a Cross Country meet after school. “My mom - cause I was not first chair in the band - was like, ‘Uou need to practice more. You need to bring your horn home and practice.’ Usually I just left my horn in the band room overnight - right - and kept doing my thing. So I picked up my horn because I’m going to go home and practice and we’re waiting for the bus to come and take us to the park where our Cross Country meet is going to be - get on the school bus because it’s going to take us there - and I grab my backpack and everything else - there’s the bus - I just grab my backpack and I left my horn on the front steps of Lincoln Junior High School.”
Bierman was unaware he left his trumpet behind until after the meet was over and his parents asked him where it was. “The race is over so now - it’s five or five thirty at night and we got out of school at three. My parents are like - ‘Did you bring your horn? Where’s your horn?’ I’m like - oh yeah, I brought my horn. Wh-where is my horn?” He laughed. “I’ve only had the thing for two or three weeks. I’m like - (gasp) - ‘I must have left it at the school.’ They were like, ‘In the band room?’ I’m like - ‘No - on the front steps of the school.’ ‘What?!?’ So my dad just gets in the car and drives without me. He left me there and just drives. Thank God that horn was still sitting there right there where I left it.”
Despite a few hiccups, Bierman went on to be a Drum Major and a Trumpet Player in the Plymouth Marching Band. When he was a Junior his life changed when he lost a dear friend in a car crash when she was driving home from school. “Life for everybody, including myself, is full of ups and downs. Right? Things that are confusing. Things that are hard. Things that are wonderful and full of joy - things that just bring you to tears. My life growing up here was really, really wonderful - but I had to come to terms with some really hard truths about life and that life is not easy and that life is hard and it is temporary. I kind of learned that when I was a Junior in high school because one of my dear friends in high school died in a car accident driving home after school. I was at band practice, her name is Christina Gibbs.” They were on the speech team together. It was Bierman who had encouraged Christina to join the speech team.
Her loss made a lasting impression in his mind, soul and spirit. “Even though I had been born and raised in church - church was church and my life was my life and I almost kind of separated the two. You know? I don’t know. That day that she died, we had gotten done with band practice and I was carrying this - well, I wasn’t carrying it - it had wheels but it was heavy - the big podium that the drum majors would be on - because I was a drum major but I was a junior so I had to do all the jobs that the Senior Drum Majors didn’t want to do. Karen Cardinal who was a year older than me, she was a clarinet player, she had come - we were all going to the band room which was kind of far away from our practice field on the parking lot - she was walking towards me because we were really good friends. She said, ‘Did you hear what happened after school today?’ When she told me I just dropped it. It just crashed. I just sat down on the gravel for like three and a half hours and cried. I realized that life is fragile and I thought that there’s got to be something more to it. You know? How empty is it if there’s not something more to it? So that’s when God became more than just a story in a book.”
Denver’s journey became and would remain a journey with God. “I’ll go on record to say that I’m not a super duper amazing Christian. I’ve got tons of issues in my life - always have. I’ve gone through the ups and the downs and the goods and the bads and the uglies that life brings our way. But when I read in the scripture in Corinthians that His love never fails - when I read His promises that He says He’ll never leave us or forsake us, that with prayer and petition we could actually begin to have a peace that is beyond our own understanding - some of these things that I have looked the world over to try to find on my own - and that many of us have in life - these are the things that only God can give us. So, yeah - I think our journeys in life - any kind of journey -sometimes has detours, sometimes there is construction, sometimes there is all kinds of craziness along the way - but my journey through this life has become a journey with God. It’s the most precious journey I have. Like when everything else falls apart around me, when everything else fails in this world, God is still there. His love doesn’t change because His love is not built on the circumstances of this world. For that I am eternally grateful. My faith is a huge part of me.”
During his late high school career he began to consider music professionally. His mother told him that he would need a strong, wide foundation in music including piano and vocal instruction. He resumed piano lessons and requested an audition with Mr. Robert “Bob” Pickell to be in the Choir. “He took a really big chance on me to be in that choir. There were some really great singers in that choir.”
Pickell gave Bierman an opportunity to sing alongside his classmates and learn; not only about music but culture. “He taught me so much in that year about the foundation - not just in singing - but he would always bring something new to the table.” At least once a week Pickell would introduce a new type of music or band to the choir. “He exposed me to things that I would have never ever known about that were really hip and cool.”
Pickell brought the students to musical experiences including theatrical shows in Chicago including “Forever Plaid” and to unique cultural experiences including Ed Debevic’s, a famous retro-themed 50’s Chicago Diner. “What a cultural experience for me! My parents didn’t get out of Plymouth much. They hated traffic. We never went to Chicago, ever. Here’s my choir teacher laughing it up with me at this theater show and taking me to go get burgers and fries. Not just making memories but really trying to give us these tastes of artistic cultures that we weren’t going to get otherwise and I really appreciated that about him. He was very, very good to me.”
Bierman holds fond memories of Pickell, after which The Bob Pickell Performing Arts Stage is named. Bierman and the MHO will be the first live performance on that stage the evening of October 1. “It’s bittersweet. I would rather that man be sitting in the front row, jamming out, singing and having a blast, but if we can’t have that then that stage shouldn’t be named after anybody else. So I’m grateful if we can do that - grateful we can champion him in that way. He has poured out a lot in to this community.”
Bierman’s goal is to encourage and uplift. He has been told that his guests appreciate the wholesome quality of his performances. “There’s a million different ways to try to speak encouragement in to someone’s life. All of these things that can be based on the foundation of the unfailing love of Jesus Christ. Sometimes I get to talk about Him. Most of the time I get to talk about Him. Sometimes I don’t. But it doesn’t mean that He’s not the foundation of what I’m hoping to do which is encourage people. Because what I realized is that life is hard. Jesus in the scriptures said, in this world you will have trouble. Not maybe. He said in this world you will. I’ve read those words. I’ve prayed over those words. I’ve wept over those words in different seasons of my life. When I felt there was no life left I’ve read those words. But the verse doesn’t end there either. He says - but take heart, be reminded that I have overcome the world. He is slowly but surely overcoming for me and if I can remind people of Him along the journey then that’s what’s important. Because it’s a journey and we’re all on it and it’s hard and we need a Savior. We need a Helper, we need a Healer, we need a Redeemer and thank God we have one. I think that as often as I can, that’s what I want to do is encourage people in that in a tough world.”