Live Music During COVID

Fall Concert 2021 Poster

The Concord Band will return to live performance at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center in Concord, October 22 & 23, 2021, at 7:30 pm. The new season begins with two concerts inspired by an innovative prism format. Each concert will feature a unique program of small ensembles assembled from Concord Band musicians. The Concord Band has established guidelines and practices to ensure safe live performances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Band was able to present live music in a safe manner during the summer of 2021. Small ensembles, ranging from two to nine players, rehearsed and performed outdoors at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard and at Hastings Park in Lexington. These open-air performances were thoroughly enjoyed by the players as well as by audience members who attended.

To keep our players and audience safe, Music Director Jim O’Dell has decided to have the Fall Concerts continue to present small ensembles. With the number and variety of small ensembles within the Band, two concerts will be performed. The concerts, aptly titled "Prisms," will present five different small ensembles on each night. The small groups comprise several quartets, two quintets, a sextet, and a 9-member jazz ensemble. The variety of styles and genres will appeal to all musical tastes.

Beginning in September, small groups have been rehearsing in two shifts in separate rooms at 51 Walden or at the TriCon Church of Concord across the street. 

The Concord Band has verified that all performers are vaccinated, and we ask all audience members to be fully vaccinated or show evidence of a recent negative test. Based on current recommendations from the Massachusetts and Town of Concord Boards of Health, audience members may be required to wear face coverings. Seating will be arranged for appropriate social distancing. To reduce mingling, the 90 minute concerts will be held without intermission and there will be no post-concert reception.

In addition, the Performing Arts Center has recently installed an upper-room convection ultra-violet light active disinfection system in the main hall and lobby, HEPA professional air purifiers in lobby areas, and enhanced fresh air circulation throughout the building.

We believe these precautions and the small number of players at any one time will provide a safe environment for both audience and musicians. The Concord Band will live stream both concerts to YouTube for those who may not be comfortable attending an indoor concert. More details about the performing groups and live stream will be forthcoming. Whether in person or online, the Concord Band sincerely hopes patrons will afford the opportunity of these unique performances.

Community Band Challenges

Like all the community music groups in the area, The Concord Band was unable to rehearse or perform live music during most of the pandemic. Our last concert as a full ensemble with a live audience was March 2020.

Clarinet quartet at
Fruitlands Museum, Harvard MA.

Despite lockdowns, the band worked hard to stay engaged and keep our musical skills active while staying safe throughout the long year. We held several Zoom meetings to educate each other on various musical topics. We individually recorded and mixed a virtual premiere of a newly commissioned march, The Diamond Baton.

Woodwind quintet at
Hastings Park, Lexington MA.

This summer, we organized ourselves into a wide variety of small ensembles to play some live outdoor concerts at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, and Hastings Park Gazebo in Lexington. Unfortunately, multiple rain cancellations cut into that potential income.

Due to the lack of usual concert income and continuing costs of rent, insurance, and other unavoidable fixed costs, we anticipate being about $15,000 in the red this fiscal year. We are hoping to make up some of that shortfall through donations. We plan to return to a full season of live music starting in October at 51 Walden in Concord and would like to start that season on a firm financial footing. If you can help support us, all contributions of any amount are appreciated and tax deductible.

Video Featurette: The Diamond Baton

In 2020, Roger Cichy wrote The Diamond Baton in recognition of Dan Diamond’s 50 years of service to The Concord Band. While the band has not yet had a chance to premiere the piece as a full ensemble due to the pandemic, Roger recorded most of the players individually and combined all the audio recordings. Ken Troup provided videos of players who recorded their parts at 51 Walden and Jean Patterson overlaid these videos with the audio track. The opening video clip features Dan Diamond playing a percussion solo at a previous concert. The video of our virtual creation of The Diamond Baton is now available on the Concord Band's You Tube Channel. The Concord Band has been thrilled to be involved in such an interesting virtual project.

Video Featurette of The Diamond Baton

Summer Performances at Fruitlands Museum

Dixieland Ensemble performs
at Fruitlands Museum

There is light (and music) at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel!

This spring, the band has started to rehearse in small groups in preparation for a summer series at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard (June 17, 24 & July 1, 8 @ 7:15 pm) . Each Thursday concert will feature three groups from a diverse mixture of ensembles: brass, saxophone, horn, and clarinet quartets, a flute choir, a woodwind quintet, the Concord Band Jazz Ensemble, Dixieland and German Bands, a percussion ensemble, and a nonet. There should be plenty of entertainment to appeal to all musical tastes.

This year you must purchase your tickets online in advance from the Trustees of the Reservations. Tickets are $10 for members, $15 for non-members, children 12 and under are free. More information is available on the Fruitlands' website. We are looking forward to seeing you all again!

Virtual Quartet Performs Palestrina's “In Festo Transfigurationis Domini”

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Concord Band Virtual Quartet

After the Concord Band brass quintet virtual recording of Die Bänkelsängerlieder early in the pandemic, Concord Band members Peter Norton (trombone) and Cam Owen (horn) looked around for more music they could collaborate on virtually, and found a four-part hymn by the Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni da Palestrina: “In Festo Transfigurationis Domini”, arranged for three trombones and horn.

An interesting thing has happened during this pandemic year, as musicians turned from large-ensemble playing such as the band. During the fall and early spring, small ensembles have rehearsed and recorded outdoors. The winter months call for truly virtual groups, with individuals recording their parts indoors at home. With this situation has come the learning of new technology, and creative opportunities such as Peter taking on all three trombone parts. For this virtual performance we utilized an audio editor, Audacity, to bring together the different parts, and a video editor, Pinnacle Studio, to combine the finished audio, video recordings for each of the parts, background photos and other effects.

The far greater challenge than the technology, however, was working out the musical part of this project, getting away from the rigidity of the mechanics and finding a means to bring the give and take of an expressive performance, attending also to aspects of performance such as intonation and balance that come automatically and dynamically with a live performance. It took many iterations and a lot of experimentation and elbow grease!

On the music side, we take a lot of pleasure with the mixing of the four voices. This is a quiet work, rich in musical color and interest as parts come in and out. There are passages that start with the horn and dovetail to one of the trombone parts, which come through so nicely that there is only the change in timbre with the transition from horn to trombone. For us, the images forming the background should be rich in color, and soft—the grasses and early spring growth of our area.

Sicut Cervus by Giovanni da Palestrina

Peter Norton

Musicians from the Concord Band have been finding ways to keep their music going. Here is a story from trombonist Peter Norton:

“During the pandemic, I have partly made up for the loss of playing live music by taking part in recording projects with the Concord Band and other groups. I was introduced to Sicut Cervus a few years ago at an event where I sang it in a group informally. I kept my copy of the music thinking it would make a good 4-part instrumental, and had entered the score into Sibelius [music scoring program], but didn't get a chance to play it with anyone before the pandemic. I was then able to transpose it on the computer to a range where I could play all four parts on trombone.  I made the recording using the [recording studio] program, Audacity. I recorded each part as a separate track, and then went back to re-record parts of it that needed more work. What made it a rewarding experience was that once I had some tracks recorded, playing new ones gave a sense of playing with other people.”

Sicut cervus is a motet for four voices by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The motet is a setting of Psalm 42:2-3 “My soul thirsts for God,” written for four voices, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Roger Cichy Composes The Diamond Baton

Dan Diamond

The Concord Band would like to announce a special project the Band has been doing to help keep its spirits (and lips) up and that will provide a lasting memento of The Concord Band. At our December 2019 Holiday Pops, the Band board announced plans to commission a new march in honor of its longest serving member, Dan Diamond, which was to be premiered at the April Pops 2020 concert. Roger Cichy, who has composed two pieces for The Concord Band in the past 10 years, provided The Diamond Baton for the Band’s March 9 rehearsal, just before the pandemic shutdown changed all our plans. Since we were unable to rehearse together as a large ensemble, we had to explore other creative options to perform this piece virtually. See and hear more about The Diamond Baton later in this newsletter. We look forward to playing it live for our summer audiences or whenever we can resume performances again.

Richard Given and Roger Cichy
during recording sessions.

Roger Cichy wrote The Diamond Baton in recognition of Dan Diamond’s 50 years of service to The Concord Band. In addition to being the percussion section leader, Dan has been a board member for more than 45 years, headed fundraising, managed the newsletter, and countless other voluntary contributions to The Concord Band. Roger regretted that the march had only one rehearsal and was never able to be performed. As fall 2020 approached, Roger reached out to Jim O’Dell and volunteered to bring his professional recording equipment to Concord to record each interested player. Using a computer-generated “click-track” recording of the march, 40 Concord Band members learned their parts and one at a time came to 51 Walden to play The Diamond Baton for a socially-distanced Roger Cichy. An additional 7 players made their own recordings which they provided to Cichy. Roger combined and edited the individual recordings into the premiere recording of The Diamond Baton. Roger Cichy and Jim O’Dell did the final editing in Roger’s Scituate, Rhode Island studio.

The resulting audio premiere of The Diamond Baton is at this link:

Jim O'Dell and Roger Cichy
crafting the final mix.

Plans to overlay video are in progress and will be available in a future newsletter. The Concord Band is eternally grateful to Roger for his yeoman efforts and thrilled to honor their fellow bandsman Dan Diamond.

The Diamond Baton recording project at 51 Walden was extraordinary because it was the first time many of the Concord Band members experienced playing their part accompanied by a digital audio click track. Musicians typically spend the majority of their time in ensembles listening and adjusting to others, watching and receiving instructions from the conductor, marking the music, tuning and balancing across all instruments, and a multitude of other tasks including those that engage the ears, eyes, breath, and fingers. The challenge of playing a part "solo" in absence of many of the skills mentioned above is very foreign to most musicians, but the Concord Band musicians embraced the challenge with flying colors. Our final mix of the project truly trumpets (pun intended) our members' courage and commitment to bring a premiere of this new composition to fruition during uncertain times. Congratulations to all in making The Diamond Baton come to life!

Concord Band Brass Quintet Goes Virtual

Concord Band Virtual Brass Quintet

In mid-April, a few weeks after The Concord Band had been forced to suspend rehearsals due to the COVID-19 pandemic, trumpeter Cindy Blanchard began looking around for musicians to play with virtually. She recruited brass players from the Band, and soon a virtual brass quintet was formed. Rich Given joined Cindy on trumpet, Cam Owen on horn, Peter Norton on trombone, and Chi-Sun Chan on tuba.

The group chose Die Bänkelsängerlieder, a classic in brass quintet literature by an anonymous 17th century itinerant musician (a bänkelsänger or "bench singer"). Ken Troup, President of the Band, helped connect the quintet with Bryce Denney (former Band member and husband of Band horn player Kathryn Troup Denney), who provided the technical expertise needed make the separate recordings and combine them into one performance.

Bryce coached the group on how to prepare their individual recordings, and Rich and Sun provided practice tracks to get everyone playing at the same tempo and in the same style. After some test runs, Bryce combined and edited the audio and video to create the final version. This is a time-consuming process, and the quintet would like to thank Bryce for his time, dedication, and expertise! The Concord Band would like to thank them all for a splendid gift.

If you enjoy the quintet and the Concord Band, consider making a donation to the Band to keep it going during these uncertain times.