Winter Concert Livestream

Music from Warm Places

Saturday, March 8, 2025 • 7:00 PM
The Concord Band
James O‘Dell, Music Director

View Livestream

Program

Little Mexican Suite	Nubia Jaime-Donjuan
Ahuehuete Ayacahuite Sahuaro Ceiba
Volver A La Montaña (Return to the Mountain)	Shelley Hanson
Fantasia Latina	Terry White
Commissioned by Neil Tischer, Concord Band percussionist
Intermission
Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Band	Óscar Navarro
Jerry Vabulas, clarinet
Area 9 Saxophone Quartet
Bennett Parsons, Cara Hachten, John Rabinowitz, Seychelle Corbin
Saxophone Quartet	Aldemaro Romero
Fandango Choro y Tango
Concord Band
Con Sabor Español (With a Spanish Flavor)	Lew Buckley

Spotlight: Clarinet Soloist Jerry Vabulas

Jerry Vabulas
clarinet

Jerry Vabulas will be the featured clarinet soloist at the Concord Band’s winter concert, themed “Music from Warm Places.” The performance will be 7pm, March 8, 2025, at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center in Concord MA.

Jerry Vabulas is a native of New York City and grew up on Long Island. He took up clarinet in grade school, on the assumption that the clarinet was among the smallest of instruments and easiest to carry. “That was a miscalculation. Little did I know I would later be carrying around a double case of A and B-flat clarinets, along with a separate E-flat clarinet and basset horn cases on occasion.”

His family had a few phonograph records that interested the young musician. “Two pieces attracted me and have remained close to me ever since. The first was the Shostakovich ‘Polka’ from the ballet The Age of Gold. I learned from it how outrageous and utterly humorous music could be. The second was the Prokofiev ‘March, Op. 99.’ That taught me how music could simultaneously express multiple levels of seemingly contradictory emotions. Music is an art that strikes deeply into a listener's heart, and the best music seems always to have a touch, or more, of sadness while simultaneously expressing the highest joys and the laughter of life: tragedy and comedy at the same time.”

Jerry began private instruction in high school and started performing with the school band, which often played transcriptions of famous classics such as Semiramide Overture, the 1812 Overture and the Zampa Overture. He became principal clarinet during his sophomore year. The band also ventured into popular musical styles, performing Rhapsody in Blue, and even touring to Puerto Rico for a production of West Side Story.

In more ways than one, music has played a pivotal role in Jerry's life. “I met a very nice Korean girl playing violin in Brooklyn. I decided to ask my pianist friend how to say ‘hello’ in Korean. That girl became my wife, Seung-Won. She had played in the Seoul Philharmonic before coming to this country, and her sister had played in the KBS Symphony. At our wedding it turned out that a number of friends on my wife's side knew my pianist friend from his days in Korea, a pleasant surprise for all.”

Over the next forty years, Jerry and Seung-Won raised a family comprising a son and two daughters, instilling Jerry’s passion for both America’s Pastime and America’s great outdoors, having visited many Major League ballparks and National Parks on summer road trips.

Professionally, Jerry became conversant in certain matters of telecommunications and computers, and consulted for a number of large organizations. “Receiving respect in the business arena is no different than in the orchestra. Respect is earned by being an able participant and going beyond what is simply required, helping others and solving problems. One of the founders of Bloomberg told me, ‘You know what we need before we know we need it.’ It is the same as in performing music: try to do your best, and help everyone around you as best you can.”

Music Director James O'Dell introduced Jerry to Navarro’s Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Band when he was searching for a performance piece with another concert band. Óscar Navarro is a wonderful Spanish composer. He has written music for feature films as well as concert works. His works have been performed by orchestras throughout the Americas and Europe. He has been awarded a number of awards for his scores in the film industry. Although rehearsal constraints precluded that performance, “to my great appreciation, Jim asked me if I would perform it with the Concord Band. I immediately agreed.”

“I want to express my thanks to Jim O'Dell and the members of the Concord Band for the hard work and enthusiasm they have put into the rehearsals.  I hope the audience will share our enjoyment of this multifaceted Concerto.”

Music From Warm Places

The Concord Band Celebrates Latin Rhythms, Dances, and Harmonies

The Concord Band presents Music From Warm Places on Saturday, March 8, 2025, 7:00 PM at the 51 Walden Performing Arts Center in Concord MA. Under the baton of Music Director James O’Dell, the program includes captivating works by Lewis Buckley, Nubia Jaime-Donjuan, Shelly Hanson, Terry White and Óscar Navarro.

Jerry Vabulas
clarinet

A highlight of the program is the Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Band by Spanish composer Óscar Navarro, masterfully performed by Acton resident Jerry Vabulas, an outstanding soloist and member of the Concord Band since 2012. Jerry has also soloed with Leominster Colonial Band, the Fitchburg Military Band, the Carlisle Chamber Orchestra, the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lincoln-Sudbury Civic Orchestra. Navarro’s composition displays the full range and virtuosity of the clarinet, along with extended delicate pianissimos and an irresistible touch of jazz.

Jaime-Donjuan’s four-movement Little Mexican Suite is based on traditional Mexican musical genres. Each movement is inspired by a species of tree native to Mexico that has touched the composer’s life. Volver A La Montaña (Return to the Mountain), by Shelly Hanson, is based on the folk music of the Quechua people of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Terry White’s Fantasia Latina, a composition commissioned by percussionist Neil Tischler that premiered in March 2020, is based on four Latin dance styles—tango, danzon, songo and samba—and is full of unexpected rhythmic and harmonic twists. Con Sabor Español (With a Spanish Flavor), composed by the MetWinds' former director, Lew Buckley, also features numerous rhythmic and time changes.

Area 9 Saxophone Quartet

The evening also features a special guest performance by the distinguished Area 9 Saxophone Quartet playing Saxophone Quartet by Venezuelan composer and pianist Aldemaro Romero. Area 9 is a Boston-based ensemble committed to performing rich, diverse, and ever growing chamber music repertoire for saxophone. Its members, two of whom are also Concord Band musicians (*) , include Bennett Parsons (soprano), Cara Hachlen (alto), John Rabinowitz* (tenor) and Seychelle Corbin* (baritone).

Admission is free to the public; donations of $20 are requested. The Concord Band serves the Concord community and surrounding towns. Additional information about the Concord Band can be found at concordband.org, and for the Area 9 Saxophone Quartet at this link.

Music from Warm Places

2025 Winter Concert Poster

Saturday, March 8, 2025 · 7:00 pm

Our Winter Concert celebrates Latin musical themes with Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Band by Óscar Navarro featuring soloist Jerry Vabulas, Little Mexican Suite by Nubia Jaime-Donjuan, Volver a la Montaña by Shelley Hanson, Fantasia Latina by Terry White (2020 commission), and a guest performance by the Area 9 Saxophone Quartet.

Concord Tree Lighting

Small ensembles from the Concord Band will play holiday music at 51 Walden Performing Arts Center on Sunday, December 5th between 3:00–5:00 pm. If you are attending the Tree Lighing and Holiday Parade in Concord Center, be sure to stop by!

3:10-3:30

Woodwind Quintet

3:30-4:00

Concord Players sing carols

4:00-4:15

Clarinet Sextet

4:15-4:30

Flute Trio

4:30-4:50

Saxophone Quartet

Call for Performers

The Concord Band performs at 51 Walden Performing Arts Center.

Do you have the right stuff to perform with a highly respected wind ensemble? The Concord Band has openings in the percussion and clarinet sections. We are looking for adults with a background in performance and recent playing experience. To be admitted, players may expect to attend several rehearsals on a trial basis and gain the consent the Music Director. To request an interview, please email Music Director James O'Dell <director@concordband.org> or call 978-897-9969 and leave a voice message with your contact information.

Concord Band Performs to Nearly Full House

Review by Grant Anderson

To a nearly full house on October 22, the Concord Band gave a very musical and unusual concert at 51 Walden in Concord center. Musical because of the skill of the band’s Music Director Jim O’Dell and the band’s many skilled musicians. Unusual because the marches were both embedded within larger compositions: the Third Suite of Robert Jager and the Suite on Celtic Folk Songs of Tomohiro Tatebe. I missed Sousa, but these two movements tapped my feet and tickled my ears—including the unmistakable bagpipe sounds in the Celtic march.

The concert started with Boston Liberties, a band commission from 2002. Many band members were featured here by composer Julie Giroux—especially Ken Troup on orchestra bells, Carol Messina on trumpet, David Southard on alto sax, and Dave Purinton on clarinet. The entire brass section really bounced in the final movement, "A Penny a Ton."

David Purinton
clarinet

Being a clarinet player myself, von Weber’s Clarinet Concertino was my favorite of the program. That’s biased, isn’t it? Dave Purinton bravely attacked and performed this difficult solo piece. I admire him for that. Bravo, Dave: lyrical and musical playing throughout.

Dan Diamond
percussion

The night’s second soloist was Dan Diamond, on snare drum in Ravel’s Boléro. Ravel once said that his Boléro theme has an “insistent quality,” and Dan’s snare drum emphasized that insistence. Dan’s forty-seven years in the band have not reduced his percussion stamina, that’s for sure. Bravo, Dan. In addition to Dan’s overarching snare, the whole composition was beautifully played by the full band, especially the solo licks that start it out and the rousing full-band conclusion.

La Fiesta Mexicana of H. Owen Reed was another audience favorite. The entire percussion section played with full confidence to start the composition’s "Prelude and Aztec Dance." The joint solo by bass and contra-bass clarinets had a chilling and throaty blend to it. Cam Owen performed well on French horn in the "Mass" section, while the "Carnival" section was bouncy, syncopated and fun.

Concertino for Clarinet

Carl Maria von Weber’s Concertino, Opus 26, was first performed in 1811 and is one of the great works that make up the vast clarinet repertoire. Transcribed for band by noted arranger and composer Alfred Reed, the single-movement work features principal clarinetist and long-tenured Band member David Purinton. After a slow and “cantabile” (in a singing style) introduction, the main theme is simply stated and traverses a series of distinct, virtuosic, and complementary variations. (Source: JRO)

David Purinton, Clarinet Soloist

David Purinton
clarinet

David likes to think of himself as a classic example of the value and importance of music education in the early years. David started clarinet in the fourth grade in the Concord school system, continued through high school, and went to Lowell State College as a music major. A career in music did not follow, but because of his background in instrumental music, he joined the Concord Band in 1973 and has played with the band for the past 42 years. David became principal clarinetist and concertmaster of the band about 20 years ago, and enjoys the challenge of playing difficult music well, and also the camaraderie of the group. He is grateful for all of his experiences with the band and would like to see parents support music education programs and encourage young students to take up an instrument or choral music. The skills they learn can provide a lifetime of enjoyment as they have for David.

Band Members Featured in Fall Concert

By Ken Troup

The Concord Band begins its 2016-17 season with a concert entitled "Suite Spots". The concert, led by Music Director James O'Dell, will take place at 51 Walden, The Performing Arts Center in Concord, MA, at 8:00 PM, Saturday, October 22, 2016. Admission is free; contributions are welcome at the door. Two long-time band members are featured in solos: Dan Diamond, the longest serving member of the Band, percussion section leader, and member of the Board of Trustees, will play the snare drum solo in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. David Purinton, a member since 1973, will play the clarinet solo in Carl Maria von Weber’s Concertino. The program also includes four suites written for band and three transcriptions for band to round out the “suite spots.”

Dan Diamond
percussion

Boléro is one of Ravel’s most recognized works and is based on the musical form and Spanish dance of the same name. With a repeating ostinato and snare drum accompaniment, featuring percussionist Dan Diamond, this arrangement by Jay Bocook slowly builds from piano to fortissimo, all the time adding variations in instrumentation. The final climax brings all musical forces to bear as the work crescendos to a dynamic conclusion. Dan Diamond played in bands and orchestras in Springfield schools and MIT before settling in the Boston area and joining the Concord Band in 1970. He is a Concord Band Lifetime Service Award recipient, honoring his decades of service to the band as percussionist, board member, fundraising chairman, newsletter editor, and video executive producer and editor, just to name a few.

David Purinton
clarinet

The Weber Concertino, Opus 26, was written in 1811 and was arranged for band by Bruce R. Smith. This single-movement work features solo clarinet in a series of distinct and complementary variations. Weber composed two clarinet concertos the same year in his native Germany and was a prominent opera and orchestra composer until his death from tuberculosis in 1826 at the age of only 39. David Purinton, the clarinet soloist, is a Concord native who now lives in Devens and is the concertmaster of the Band.

Boston Liberties, by Julie Giroux, a prominent band composer originally from Massachusetts, was commissioned by The Concord Band in 2003. Most significant for this fall, the fourth movement of the suite pays tribute to Boston Light, the oldest lighthouse in the U.S., which just celebrated its 300th anniversary in September. Titled “A Penny a Ton,” the movement notes the early tax on cargo that helped pay for and maintain Boston Light. The other movements depict images of Boston Harbor and the Old Granary Grounds Cemetery, as well as a tribute to John Adams’ role as defense counsel for the British soldiers following the Boston Massacre, when he said “Facts are Stubborn Things.”

Memoir: The Music that Made Me Love Symphonic Band

by Adena Schutzberg, Clarinet
(Author's note: If possible, read this while listening to the audio.)

A Rather Poor and Unmotivated Musician

May 1975 En-ka Parade. I'm the one with
black hair whose clarinet is obscured.
(Photo by Christopher Brown)

Like many of the other kids in my town, I started music lessons in fourth grade. Like many of those kids, I didn't practice much. I really enjoyed the participatory part of music. That's fifth grade me in a clarinet rank in the Winchester, MA elementary school 1975 All Star Band. I played in junior high, too, but really I was a rather poor, unmotivated musician through ninth grade.

The summer after ninth grade my mother signed my brother and me up for the University of New Hampshire's Summer Youth Music School (SYMS). We didn't know what to expect, but we did know that the first day everyone, all 350 or so students, had to audition. By that evening everyone was assigned to one or more ensembles for the two week school.

Campers graced the cover
of the 1979 double album.

There were four wind groups: two concert bands, a symphonic band and a wind ensemble. While all the groups were good (better than our high school band, certainly) it was clear musicianship rose in that order. My brother, a year old and far more talented than I, was placed in the wind ensemble and one of the jazz bands. To my great surprise, I was assigned to the symphonic band. I was seated about where I now sit in the Concord Band, one of the last clarinets in the last row of clarinets.

Let's Tune to Adena!

The first day of rehearsal we took our seats and picked up our folders. I looked through the music and it looked really hard. Then, the conductor, Walter Pavasaris (I remember his name to this day) said it was time to tune to.... Adena. I have no idea why he chose to tune to a third clarinet, but he did. And, once or twice more during the two weeks we tuned to me. I thought it was awesome. I was "somebody."

Meet the Clarinet Section

The clarinet family:
Contrabass (BB♭), Bass (B♭), Alto (E♭), B♭, E♭

The Instruments

The origins of the modern clarinet, according to the Instrument Encyclopedia, can be traced back to the 14th century. By the late 17th century, this single-reed instrument was an established component of ensembles of many kinds. The clarinet reed, like that of the saxophone, is referred to as a "beating" reed that vibrates against the instrument's mouthpiece, as is distinguished from the double or "free" reed employed on the oboe and bassoon.

The clarinet continued to evolve until the late 1840s, when it was revolutionized through the application of a fingering system that had originally been developed by Theobald Boehm for the modern flute. The Boehm system made the clarinet easier to play, improved its tone quality and expanded the range of each member of the clarinet family (see graphic). Today's set of clarinets, as used in symphonic wind ensembles such as the Concord Band, consists of the five instruments shown, and a few others (e.g., instruments in A and C), more commonly called for in orchestral music, the ranges of which extend above and below that of the most common B♭ clarinet. Before the introduction of the Boehm system, frequent changing of instruments was often a necessity during the course of performing a single piece.

Of the five instruments shown in the graphic at the right, the upper (smaller) four are used in virtually every piece the Concord Band plays. The Band owns a contrabass instrument for those situations in which it is required. The B♭ instrument is without doubt the workhorse of the family. The Band's instrumentation usually consists of one E♭, one alto, two or three basses and as many as 15 B♭ clarinets. Clearly the clarinet section is the most populous in the Concord Band, representing nearly one third of our players.

The success of the clarinet as an instrument is attributable to several factors: the ability of its sound to blend well with that of every other instrument and its flexibility and comfortable fit with every kind of music from folk and jazz to concert music that ranges in time from the pre-Baroque to the most arcane of contemporary works.

The Concord Band clarinet section, gathered at a rehearsal for one of the Band's concerts during the summer of 2007. Left to right, front row: David Purinton, Yvonne Dailey, Claire Napoleon, Karen Whitehead, Adena Schutzberg, Len Schatz and Bob Tyler. Second row: Paul DeWolfe, Paul Silver, Judy Piermarini, Charlie Learoyd, Jeff Leiserson and Elliot Finkelstein. Not present for photo: Lorraine Chase, Gina DePaoli, Anne Kandra, Alvin Lipsky, Linda Menkis, Louis Sinoff and Ann Wirtanen.