Another season concludes

Herein marks my last blog post for the 2011 summer season of concerts by the Tri State Wind Symphony.  This marks our seventeenth year of music making at Eagle Point Park and other venues throughout the region and the state, including:

• A large number of performances at the Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens (including our very first concert in 1995!)
• Two performances at the Bill Bowe Bandshell, home of the Bettendorf Park Board Band.
• A performance in Riverside Park, Cascade.
• A concert, along with members of the Timber City Band of Maquoketa at the tenth annual Iowa Municipal Band Festival in Boone (it seems about time for a return engagement!)

It is amazing that the ensemble has managed to achieve our current number of players as well as the consistently high quality of the group, remembering that:

• At our first rehearsal on May 11, 1995, we had 15 players present, nine of whom were clarinetists (thank you Micki Marolf!)
• We have no auditions.  Membership is open to any and all who feel that they can keep up with the rigors of the repertoire and the rehearsal schedule (as well as my often bad jokes).
• Our first season included only three concerts, partly because of a rain-out.
• A near-crisis situation in Winter 2008, when we found ourselves without a rehearsal space, percussion equipment, and much of a library from which to select music.  It is through the dedication of our Board of Directors that we now have access to Westminster Presbyterian Church for rehearsals, equipment loans from the University of Dubuque (although much of our percussion battery is now owned by the group) and the gracious access to the music libraries of both Hempstead, Senior, Bellevue and Wahlert High Schools, the Maquoketa Community Schools and the now-infamous "Kahn Vault."  Who have I forgotten?  Oh yes!  Our good friends (at least mine) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Clarke University.

Of course, there are many others to thank for helping make our summer a success (and I will undoubtedly forget someone!)  Special kudos go out to Shopko as a season sponsor, American Trust and Savings Bank, for again sponsoring our "Star Spangled Spectacular," Mediacom, for sponsoring our Fanfare competition, and the many organizations and individuals who give of their time, effort and dollars and cents to let us pull this thing off year after year.

Our final concert of the season has always been based on the players' favorites of the summer and this year's concert promises nothing less.  The program will include:

Two works by award-winning composer John Williams, his Olympic Fanfare and Theme, penned for the games of the 23rd Summer Olympiad, held in Los Angeles and a medley of two themes from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Lest we forget, 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the premiere of the initial (and I submit the best) film in the Indiana Jones trilogy.  James Southall writes that this is "one of the few film scores which has genuinely entered into pop culture."  It is unfortunate that the medley which includes both the Raider's March and Marion's Theme does not include more of Mr. Williams's stunning score.

We will also reprise Robert Jager's highly inventive Third Suite.  Readers (and listeners?) may recall the March that doesn't feel like a march (due to its time signatures, often in either 7/4 or 5/4), the waltz for a limping dancer (in a kind of 5/4 itself) and the frolicking concluding rondo.  That this work remains as fresh sounding nearly 50 years after its 1965 premiere is a tribute to the composer's skill and finesse with the forces of the contemporary wind band.

A summer concert probably wouldn't seem right without a march by John Philip Sousa and we will not let our audience down.  Although we have concluded nearly every favorite's concert with the strains of The Stars and Stripes Forever, this year the band elected to play The Invincible Eagle instead.  One of my personal favorites, this march was written in commemoration of the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo.  Sousa had originally intended to give the march the moniker The Spirit of Niagara, but, feeling that it was one of his finest compositions, settled on the title we know today, truly expressing his feelings for his beloved country.

We will offer music that is both sublime--Percy Grainger's lovely Irish Tune and Alfred Reed's stunning Rushmore--and oft-times frightening:  Selections from Phantom of the Opera.  Buffalo Dances, an amazing work by Robert W. Smith will conclude the concert--sort of (but you'll just have to wait and see, or hear...)

I have to admit that the players staged a kind of bloodless coup on their conductor this summer and mounted up enough support to present Leroy Anderson's delightful novelty, The Waltzing Cat.  This we will present, with a nod and a wink to our late, great friend, August Knoll, who could never help but giggle whenever I put that piece in the folders (I can still hear him today.)  It was Augie who quite emphatically informed both Jay Kahn and I that Eagle Point Park is not arguably the most beautiful concert site in Iowa but that it is (with definitely no ifs, ands or buts!)

We hope that all of our friends and supporters are able to join us in concluding another successful summer concert season.  Remember:

WHO?  The Tri State Wind Symphony, of course!
WHAT?  Season Finale Concert
WHEN?  Thursday, July 28, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE?  Eagle Point Park Bandshell (or Westminster Presbyterian Church in case of rain)
WHY?  Because we like you!

Hoping to see you there.

Brian Hughes, Founder/Conductor
Tri State Wind Symphony

P.S.  Oh yes, and mark your calendars for 2012!  Our first concert of season eighteen will be MAY 31!