Written by Ben Cox – There are many names in Brownwood that spring to mind when people think of certain things. Auto Repair? Tommy Blevins or David Chrysler. Tortillas? Ricardo. Lions football? Dallas Huston. Cleaning? Draco Miller. And so on.

 

When you think of music, one name among many pops up almost automatically, Dean Kiesling.

Teaching music in one fashion of another for over 16 years, Kiesling started as a band director before switching to choir directing and most recently elementary music education seven years ago.

“My first job was in job was in Oakwood, a little bitty town in east Texas, I was there for a year. I taught high school band, which was just 2 high school freshmen and a bunch of 7th and 8th graders and then they told me they didn’t plan on having band the next year! My second job was for a K-12 school in Crowell. I taught in Sanderson, Wink and I came here as band director and have moved around since then.”

Often seen in the orchestra pit, or rather the top of his head is seen, Kiesling has lead the orchestra for every Lyric musical with the exception of Annie, in which he acted onstage. “I was terrified! I had three little lines and had to work to get them out every night! I much prefer playing and conducting to acting.”

Music has been in Kiesling’s life since he could reach the keys of the piano, and he didn’t stop at that instrument. “I started piano lessons in 1st grade after tinkling with it as soon as I was tall enough to reach it, piano is my main instrument. I played tuba in high school, but having been a band director I can play all the major band instruments. Not so much with strings, but I can fiddle my way around on the bass a little bit.”

Also highly active in the Arts Council of Brownwood, he was instrumental in the development of the now annual Cinco de Mayo celebration put on by the Arts Council every spring. “I saw an opportunity, we had booked the Revolution Strings from Abilene and it happened to be that weekend, so I thought ‘Let’s do this!’ I presented it to Eric (Evans) and both our wheels started turning!”

Also active in his church, he plays the piano for the traditional service at First United Methodist Church of Brownwood, taking over that role six years ago. True to form, however, that is not the only instrument he has played for church services in Brownwood. “I used to play organ at Coggin Baptist. I took organ lessons from Al Travis,  a well known organist who taught organ at Seminary and now plays the organ at Broadway Baptist in Ft Worth.”

The accompanist for several Howard Payne music students, he is also involved in the University Singers, which is lead by Chris Rosenborough who shares the stage as part of the band with Kiesling this weekend as the Lyric wraps up its run of ‘Always, Patsy Cline’.

He credits his High School Band director Bob Floyd who is now the head of TMEA (Texas Music Educators Association) and Bill Green, minister of music at his church growing up as his primary influences. “Bill was also a huge spiritual influence on me.”

Kiesling says that one of the biggest hurdles he had becoming a musician wasn’t learning a scale or mode, but rather telling his father who wanted him to follow in his footsteps. “Telling my father I was taking choir as a senior instead of calculus was very hard to accept for my engineering daddy! But, it all worked out!”