Bandemonium! featuring Mister Vic

Concert for kids

The Concord Band presents BANDEMONIUM!, a musical event for children and families. This event is being held on Saturday, November 8th from 1:00pm–2:15pm at 51 Walden St., Concord, MA. This event is geared toward children grades K–4, though all ages are welcome to participate.

This year the program features songs from K-pop Demon Hunters and a special guest performance from Vic Lalli, or "Mister Vic," for an interactive drumming experience! Mister Vic has an extensive career teaching music to young children, and is currently the co-director and owner of Music Together® of Assabet Valley. He is known for his energy and enthusiasm, and can be spotted around Maynard, Stow, Hudson, and Sudbury in his signature African pants.

Light refreshments will follow the concert, and children will have the opportunity to explore a variety of concert band instruments at the instrument petting zoo. It will be a fun experience for kids to see the band in action, gain exposure to musical instruments, and above all, enjoy their interaction with music!

Tickets are $15 per person or $30 per family. We encourage families to purchase tickets ahead of time using the following link: https://www.ticketstage.com/concordband

Fall Concert Livestream

Music of the Macabre and Mysterious

Saturday, October 25, 2025 • 7:00 PM
The Concord Band
James O‘Dell, Music Director and Conductor
Roger Cichy, Guest Conductor

View Livestream

Program

Halloween	Morton Gould
Toccata and Fugue in D minor	Johann Sabastian Bach
POEtic Justice	Roger Cichy
First Performance, Roger Cichy conducting
Craig Howard, narrator
Tell Tale Heart Cask of Amontillado Masque of the Red Death
Intermission
Incantation and Dance	John Barnes Chance
Funeral March of a Marionette	Charles Gounod
Unquiet Spirits	John Mackey
Dance of the Witches	John Williams

Composer and Guest Conductor, Roger Cichy

Roger Cichy, composer and conductor

Ohio born composer, conductor, educator, music producer and music advocate, Roger Cichy began his musical careers teaching public school instrumental music in elementary through high school levels. He has a Master’s degree from The Ohio State University. He then served as Associate Director of Bands at the University of Rhode Island and Iowa State University where he directed the marching band, concert band and taught various courses in music education. All the while teaching at the public school and university levels, Roger was busy composing and arranging music and had his first publication in 1985 while still attending graduate school.

In 1995, Roger left Iowa State University to devote his full efforts to composition and now has more than 350 works for all levels of band, orchestras, and small ensembles, as well as 14 film scores. Roger has composed four pieces for the Concord Band including Flowing Pens from Concord, Emblazoned Joy, The Diamond Baton, and POEtic Justice. His music has been recorded by premier ensembles and is available on CD and many audio streaming platforms as well as YouTube. Roger is in demand as a guest conductor as well as a composer-in-residence and has conducted outstanding musical ensembles throughout the country. His music philosophy has always been that music is as natural as eating and sleeping, and that music, and the study of music should be available for all.

Music of the Macabre and Mysterious

Roger Cichy conducts
the rehearsal of POEtic Justice

The Concord Band will perform its Fall Concert on Saturday, October 25, 2025, at 7pm, at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center in Concord MA. The Fall program features the world premiere of POEtic Justice by noted composer Roger Cichy, inspired by the dark, sinister tales of Boston-born author Edgar Allan Poe.

The composition was recently commissioned by one of the Band’s French horn players, Jean Patterson, along with her daughter, Alexandra Mattor. Both worked closely with Cichy, pitching their ideas for subtle, and not so subtle, musical themes for three of Poe’s classic short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” On listening, one can “hear” and actually visualize the servant who is haunted by the incriminating heartbeat of his murdered master buried under the floorboards, or a drunken Fortunado wandering from the carnival down to the crypt only to be walled in brick by brick, or the chimes that ring out during a masked ball as Prince Prospero is pursued and hunted throughout the castle, room by room, by the Red Death.

2025 Fall Concert Poster

To round out its seasonal program of eerie and beguiling musical themes, the Concord Band will perform several additional works. Dance of the Witches, a piece John Williams wrote for the 1987 film “The Witches of Eastwick,” involves three women who unintentionally form a coven and conjure a dashingly handsome man, whom they must then inescapably deal with. In composer John Barnes Chance’s Incantation and Dance, low and muted incanted rituals of magic bring forth wild and frenzied dancing, while Unquiet Spirits by John Mackey evokes unsettled and unsettling moods from the restless, to an ominous off-kilter, waltz-like dance, to a fiendish yet sparkling “moto perpetuo” (perpetual motion) finish. The Concord Band will perform two timeless masterpieces, Charles Gounod’s witty and ironically humorous Funeral March of a Marionette, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s powerfully majestic and rhythmically driven Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The Fall concert program will close with Halloween by composer Morton Gould, which summons all the creatures and objects of darkness—ghosts, goblins, pumpkins and brooms—to spring to life to celebrate an unholy sabbath.

Admission is free and open to the public. A $20 per person donation is requested. Complimentary light refreshments will be served at a reception following the concert. To learn more about the Concord Band, visit www.concordband.org and on Facebook.