The Sequim City Band will give a final concert of their 20^th anniversary season on Sunday, October 28^th at 3pm in the Sequim High School Auditorium. Admission is free as always.

The Band always opens with our National Anthem, but on this day there will be a special arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner sung by the Sequim High School Vocal Ensemble. Under the direction of John Lorentzen, these Select Choir members will demonstrate their top award winning talents.

The announcers will be Jim Dries and Carol Swarbrick Dries. They are no strangers to the stage. Both have recently performed in the concert version of “Titanic” in Seattle’s 5^th Avenue Theater. They have lived in Sequim since 2003 and love being involved in community activities. They founded Reader’s Theater + and are donating their time and professional expertise so that local thespians can indulge their habit while raising funds for worthy causes.

 

The concert opens with “Rolling Thunder” by Henry Fillmore. This is a “screamer”- a frenzied, energetic piece often used by circuses. Henry couldn’t “fill more” notes into the trombone parts if he tried! Fasten your seat belts and let the “Bones” take you for a ride. Another Fillmore march, “The President’s March,” will follow later in the program.

 

The Band will perform a version of the well-known “Amazing Grace.” John Whitehall commissioned Frank Ticheli to arrange the piece in memory of his father. He wanted a setting of the traditional spiritual that reflected the powerful simplicity of the words and melody. The different band sections weave in and out in turn but are inseparable and intertwined as a single expressive entity.

 

“Concert Rondo” for French horn by W.A. Mozart will feature Robert Nathan as soloist. Robert is a veterinarian by day and French horn player extraordinaire by night. He performs with the Port Angeles Symphony and The Port Townsend Community Orchestra and Band in addition to the Sequim City Band.

 

Another classical piece adapted for concert band will be “Variations on Themes by Tchaikovsky.” Audience members will be sure to pick out famous symphonies, music from “Swan Lake” and popular dances from “The Nutcracker.”

 

Not to leave out a Sousa March, the Band will play “Bullets and Bayonets.” John Philip composed this march during the height of WWI- listen for the machine gun fire replicated by the staccato rhythm of the percussion.

 

“La Virgen de la Macarena” is a traditional Spanish piece that will feature breath-taking (literally) solos by trumpeter Bob Hagan and clarinetist Miles Vokurka. This virgin was presumably a saint to whom the bullfighters prayed before risking their lives. The music will certainly conjure up images of the toreadors and flamenco dancers, the sounds of castanets and snorting bulls, and the scents of orange blossoms and olive trees.

 

If you’ve never been to Spain but feel more comfortable in Hoboken, you’ll appreciate “Highlights From ‘Jersey Boys’.” This Broadway musical has songs like “Walk Like a Man,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Ragdoll,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”

 

Henry Mancini’s “Pie in the Face Polka” is from the 1965 motion picture “The Great Race” with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Natalie Wood, who gets to wear the aforementioned pie. This lively dance features the clarinet section and will certainly get your toes tapping.

 

The Band will also perform “Selections From Les Misérables” to showcase the Grammy award winning music by Claude-Michel Schönberg.

 

Last on the program is “The Slavic Women’s Farewell” by V. I. Agapkin. This Russian patriotic March was written in honor of the Slavic women accompanying their husbands in the first Balkan War. The piece became popular during WWI and was almost voted in as the Russian National Anthem in the 1990’s. You can hear it in the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War”, set in the Soviet War in Afghanistan. This is The Band’s farewell to Sequim for 2012, but please join them again on Sunday, March10th, 2013 in the Sequim High School Auditorium.