The Concord Band 60th Anniversary Celebration

Saturday, March 2, 2019 • 8 PM

Join the Concord Band as it continues to celebrate 60 years of music-making with an anniversary concert at 51 W a/den, the Performing Arts Center in Concord, MA, 9 on Saturday, March 2, 2019, at 8:00 PM. The Band will perform several significant works commissioned by the Band, two world premieres, and some of the greatest music composed for symphonic concert band. Admission is free, however tickets must be reserved in advance at www.ticketstage.com/concordband. Contributions received at GoFundMe or at the door are greatly appreciated.

Roger Cichy
composer

Two new commissions will take center stage at the March concert, both penned by prolific New England composers. Emblazoned Joy, by Rhode Island composer Roger Cichy, incorporates the notes C-B-A (Concord Band Association) as motivic elements which all sections of the Band get to play at some point during this robust and lively fanfare.

Andrew Boysen
composer

New Hampshire composer Andrew Boysen Jr. wrote Diamond Jubilee Suite following traditional form, consisting of three movements (March, Song, and Finale), also using the motivic cell of C-B-A as formative and thematic material. The three notes that make up this set also form the key centers for each of the piece's three movements (I is in C major, II is in Bb major, and III is in Ab major/whole tone). Each of the three movements also pays homage to one of the band's three Music Directors and one of the band's three main functions throughout its history. Each movement is also slightly more difficult than the previous movement, reflecting the continued and consistent growth in the musicianship of the band.

Abracadabra by Frank Ticheli is a magical piece, full of fun and fantasy with the majority of the composition being crafted from the opening main theme, traversing abrupt and recurring "magically" exciting events.

James Curnow
composer

One of the Concord Band's many commissions, James Curnow's Five Concord Diversions, was written in 1987 in commemoration of William Toland's 25th year as Music Director of the Concord Band. The work is brilliantly scored for brass quintet and band with the outer movements featuring brass quintet and the tutti ensemble, while the inner three movements feature the brass quintet paired with woodwinds, percussion, and brass respectively.

Alfred Reed's Festival Prelude "was conceived specifically in terms of its title as an opening kind of piece ... the music was to establish a bright and brilliant mood throughout, with no other connotation in mind." Two fanfare-like motifs and a main theme occur throughout the composition using the brass and woodwinds separately and combined to impart tone color and majesty. Conducting the work will be Concord Band Music Director Emeritus Dr. William G. McManus.

Two extraordinary marches are featured on the program. Valdres March by Johannes Hanssen "is one of the most famous marches ever composed and is evocative and expressive of Norway, its land of birth. The opening tune is played by the comet and is a bugle call from the Valdres Battalion. The second subject is an old tune for hardanger fiddle. The trio is a pentatonic tune based upon Norwegian folk music." Also featured at the Band's 25th Anniversary concert, The Gladiator March by John Philip Sousa is considered to be the composer's first successful march and received many public performances. It sold more than one million copies.

Flourish for Wind Band by English composer Ralph Vaughn Williams is a masterfully elegant, transparent, and seemingly simple fanfare written in 1939 as an opening celebratory performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

William Toland's arrangement of Auld Lang Syne rounds out the program paying homage to the spirit of the Concord Band, the many audiences that have enjoyed the concert performances, and the members themselves, who have valued and enjoyed lifelong music-making.