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Dr. William G. McManus
Music Director Emeritus |
By Dr. William G. McManus
Bill McManus was the second Music Director
of the Concord Band, serving in
that position from 1995 to 2009. Upon his
retirement from the Band, he was named
Music Director Emeritus.
Dr. McManus has been an extremely
successful and much revered musician and music educator.
Alfred Reed’s music has been a part of
The Concord Band’s long legacy of performing
outstanding classics of the concert
band repertoire. It will be my honor
to conduct Alfred Reed’s
A Festival Prelude
at The Concord Band’s Winter Concert
on March 2, 2019, in celebration of
the band’s 60th Anniversary Season.
Dr. Alfred Reed is generally recognized
as one of the most important composers
of music for concert band and
wind ensemble of the 20th Century. He
published more than 250 compositions
for band, orchestra, chorus, and chamber
groups and is perhaps best know for composing
many works that have become
classics of the concert band repertoire.
His compositions have been performed
throughout the world.
Over the years, The Concord Band
has performed many of Alfred Reed’s
original compositions for concert band,
including such classics as
A Jubilant
Overture (performed in 1970),
A Festival
Prelude (1984),
A Symphonic Prelude
(1984),
Second Symphony (1979),
Armenian
Dances, Part 1 (1995),
Russian
Christmas Music (1995),
El Camino Real
(1997), and
Hounds of Spring (2004). The
Concord Band has also performed many
of Reed’s great arrangements, including
The Music Man (1974),
Greensleeves
(1978),
Radetzky March (1998), and
Finiculi,
Finicula (1998). Alto saxophonists
from The Concord Band, including the
late Dr. Gerald Kriedberg, were frequently
featured performing Reed’s great
arrangement of
Harlem Nocturne. One of
Reed’s very
last compositions
for concert
band was
Music in the
Air, which was
played by The
Concord Band
at the 2006
Winter Concert
in Alfred
Reed’s memory.
 |
Alfred Reed
composer |
I first met
Alfred Reed in
1987 when he
came to Boston
to present a
clinic of his
music at a conference
of the
Eastern Division
of the Music
Educators
National Conference
(MENC). The
College of
New Jersey
Wind Ensemble
was participating in the clinic with Dr.
Reed and would be performing a number
of Reed’s compositions in the clinic. Prior
to the conference, Dr. William Silvester,
the Director of The College of New Jersey
Wind Ensemble, contacted me and
asked me if his wind ensemble could use
the Belmont High School auditorium for a
rehearsal with Dr. Reed the day before the
conference in order to prepare for the
clinic. I was delighted to accommodate
this request and was able to have all of
my Belmont High Band members excused
from classes for the morning so that they
could attend the rehearsal and meet Alfred
Reed. This was especially timely since
my band was currently learning one of
Alfred’s pieces—
Armenian Dances. What
an experience this was for my students!
Especially since
Armenian Dances was
one of the pieces that Alfred Reed was
featuring in his clinic at the conference in
Boston. My students were able to watch
Alfred rehearse this piece with this wonderful
wind ensemble.
Armenian Dances is an extremely
challenging and exciting piece for concert
band and one of my all-time favorite
pieces for symphonic band. I rehearsed
this piece with The Concord Band as part
of my audition for the directorship of the
band and then included
Armenian Dances
in my very first concert with The Concord
Band at 51 Walden in the fall of 1995.
While it was an honor for me to meet
Alfred Reed, it was also an honor for me
to meet Dr. William Silvester, the conductor
of The College of New Jersey Wind
Ensemble. This music group was one of
the premiere college wind ensembles in
the country. Dr. Silvester was also the
conductor of The Eastern Wind Symphony,
an adult
symphonic band
based in Trenton,
New Jersey.
Dr. Silvester
and I became
great
friends and colleagues.
We
were honored to
have Dr. Silvester
as guest
conductor of the
Concord Band
at the 2003
Winter Concert.
I knew that
Dr. Bill Silvester
and Alfred
Reed were very
close friends,
and in 2004 I
asked Bill if he
thought Alfred
might consider
a commission
by The Concord
Band. He suggested
that I ask
him myself and
told me that Alfred would be visiting New
Jersey to attend a recording session of his
music by The Eastern Wind Symphony. I
traveled to New Jersey and was able to
enjoy a wonderful evening with Alfred
and Bill. It was over dinner that Alfred
leaned over to me and said, “I hear that
you want me to compose a piece for The
Concord Band.” He told me he would
love to compose an original composition
for the Band and we began a correspondence
regarding the commission. Unfortunately,
Alfred died in 2005 without having
completed the composition. The day
after his death I received the following
email from his family:
Alfred Reed passed away yesterday
afternoon, 17 September. His gift to
the world is a body of music that will
continue to thrill, charm and delight
audiences in virtually every country
of the world, as it has done for the
last fifty years. His gift to those of us
blessed to have known him was a kind
and generous spirit that is all too
rare.
Formed in 1959 as a marching band for the Patriots’ Day parade, the Concord Band became exclusively a symphonic concert band in 1970. The Band has commissioned or inspired more than 80 works for symphonic band.
