Music teacher, students collaborate on score for amusement park documentary

by Chris Collins

So here’s a riddle for you: What do music, roller coasters and an amusement park in Louisville, Ky., have in common?

The answer is John Pasternak, a music teacher at Central School in Brecksville.

“I’ve been a coaster enthusiast as long as I can remember,” said Pasternak, who has traveled all over the U.S. and numerous other countries to ride roller coasters. When he’s not traveling, he watches videos about coasters online.

About a year ago, Pasternak watched a YouTube video called “Kings Dominion: A Lifetime of Memories.” It documented a Virginia amusement park and was produced by Taylor Bybee.

Bybee, a 21-year-old Virginian, has a YouTube channel devoted to roller coasters and amusement parks called Coaster Studios. Pasternak contacted Bybee, offering to compose music for another documentary Bybee was making about the reopening of Kentucky Kingdom, an amusement park in Louisville.

Bybee surprised Pasternak by asking him to send some samples of his compositions. They bonded over their common interest in coasters, and Pasternak began to compose music for the film “Save My Park.”

Kentucky Kingdom originally opened in 1987 but closed after its first season. New York entrepreneur Ed Hart reopened the park in 1989 and eventually sold it to the company that owned Six Flags amusement parks. The park closed yet again in 2009, and the state sought other uses for the 13-acre site, strategically located at the intersection of two interstate highways.

Bybee’s film, which runs just over 40 minutes, chronicles the efforts of a group of citizens called “Save My Park” that lobbied state and local officials to give the park another chance. In 2014, Hart returned and led the reopening of the park.

Pasternak composed music for several independent student films while a student at Kent State and found he enjoyed the process. After graduation in 2011, he became a music teacher in the Brecksville-Broadview Heights City School District.

Bybee sent Pasternak a rough cut of the film, and Pasternak went into action, using computer software that allowed him to compose the score while viewing the film scene by scene.

Pasternak said that during the process, he identified five themes within the story: the vision of a leader, family, the movement to save the park, rebuilding the park and the reopening.

He asked fellow BBH music teacher and director of the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School orchestra, Steve Cocchiola, to assemble a group of musicians to record the music soundtrack for the film. They called this band the “Thrill Seeker Orchestra.”

On a Saturday earlier this fall, Cocchiola, Pasternak and about 40 musicians from the high school orchestra, other faculty, alumni and guest performers assembled at Central School, where Steven Savanyu of Hudson-based Buford T. Hedgehog Productions engineered the recording of the soundtrack.

Pasternak, a Macedonia resident, enjoys composing music and markets his work to a variety of publishing companies. But he said his first love is teaching, and he shares what he’s learned about composing soundtracks to give his music students a unique perspective.

“That was like a dream come true for me, to share that with them,” he said.

The documentary “Save My Park” can be viewed on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=_ypLgCUq0n0.

 

Featured image photo caption: John Pasternak displays his completed score for the documentary “Save My Park.” Photo by J. Kananian