Off Highway 20: And Selected Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996261012)

Dennis Bourret is currently the music director for the Tucson Junior Strings, a national model program instilling leadership for creative and intelligent students of orchestral music. These young musicians perform without a conductor, and in so doing develop leadership, teamwork and a sense of musicality that goes way beyond the average orchestral experience. Dennis has instructed over six thousand public school age musicians over a span of forty-six consecutive years with the disciplines of technique and the art of creativity. What does all this have to do with poetry? Timing, lyricism, and sagacity are what Dennis brings to his poetry audience. Dennis also brings a unique perspective which drives his subject matter from the heart of America, through the jungles of Vietnam in wartime, through unique observations of daily life and finally to addressing the philosophical realms of existence. Dennis was raised mostly in small towns in western Nebraska and Wyoming off Highway 20. He began playing the violin in elementary school and writing imaginatively while in junior high. Coming out of high school he had fully funded college scholarship offers in both journalism and music, ultimately choosing the music career path -but never dropping his pen throughout his life. In 1968, after completing three degrees in both violin and viola, Dennis was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Vietnam. There he spent half of his year directing howitzer fire while protecting a Special Forces patrol base on the Cambodian border. He endured being the target of daily enemy fire, the loss of close comrades, and being wounded by shrapnel on three separate occasions. Upon release from his service, Dennis moved to Tucson, Arizona where he currently resides with his Tucson Junior Strings partner and wife, Anna. In their service to Tucson Junior Strings they have turned their pet project into a nationally recognized music education program that has been praised by some of the highest level musicians in the United States. In addition he has held principal chair positions in the Tucson Symphony, Arizona Opera Orchestra and Tucson Pops Orchestra. He also was a founding member of a professional piano quartet that toured internationally. Dennis also wields a baton and has been a guest conductor and clinician for high school honor orchestras and college festivals across the United States.