Notes from the Concord Band

Since 1959	P.O. Box 302, Concord MA 01742 978-897-9969 www.concordband.org	Winter/Spring 2005

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Winter Concert

Saturday, March 5

Saxophone virtuoso Lynn Klock will be the featured guest artist at the Concord Band's upcoming Winter Concert, which will take place on Saturday night, March 5th, at 51 Walden Street in Concord. In addition to several works featuring Mr. Klock, the Concord Band will present an exciting program of great music from the concert band repertoire.

The Concert will open with Joseph Willcox Jenkins' classic work, American Overture for Band. This exciting overture was written for the U. S. Army Field Band and dedicated to its conductor at the time, Chester E. Whiting. The work calls for near-virtuoso playing by several sections, especially the French horns. The Concord Band's outstanding horn section — Kathryn Denney, Peter Maaser, Cameron Owen and Jean Patterson — is sure to be up to the task.

The second work on the program is Vincent Persichetti's Divertimento for Band. Persichetti studied composition with Paul Nurdoff and Roy Harris and conducting with Fritz Reiner. His works, in virtually every form and for all media, are played throughout the world. The Divertimento is a six-movement suite with rhythmic and contrapuntal savoir-faire blended neatly with tongue-in-cheek humor and lyrical nostalgia. Divertimento was Persichetti's first composition for concert band and is still one of his most popular compositions.

The Band will close the first half of the program with performances of two pieces associated with Ireland — a setting of Irish Tune from County Derry by Percy Grainger, and Ireland: Of Legend & Lore by Robert W. Smith. Irish Tune from County Derry, familiar to many listeners as the song "Danny Boy," has been described as the "perfect" melody. Grainger's rich sonorities in this arrangement have kept the Irish Tune a favorite in the concert band repertoire for decades. Ireland: Of Legend & Lore is an original composition for wind band that draws upon the vast riches of traditional Irish melodies. The composer has chosen three castles and/or colorful characters from Irish history and folklore and put the legendary deeds to music.

The second half of the concert will open with Samuel Barber's stirring Commando March. One of America's great composers, Barber is perhaps best known for his orchestral composition Adagio for Strings. He composed Commando March in 1943, in the midst of the Second World War. It was first performed by the Army Air Corps Band.

Saxophonist Lynn Klock will perform two compositions with the Concord Band. The first, Woodland Serenade and Rondo, is a six-minute concerto for alto saxophone by Catherine McMichael. Its premiere performance was presented at the prestigious Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago in 2002 by The Woodlands, Texas, High School Band, Brett Johnson conducting, with Mr. Klock as the soloist. The second piece featuring Mr. Klock will be Catch Me If You Can by John Williams. This work is based on the music from the film of the same name. The film takes place in the 1960s and Williams attempted to capture the spirit of the time by writing a jazz style piece featuring the alto saxophone.

The concert will close with a performance of selections from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, featuring such great tunes as "Maria," "I Feel Pretty," "Something's Coming," "Tonight" and many others. Don't miss the opportunity to hear some great band music, as well as one of America's great saxophone virtuosi.

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Lynn Klock: Saxophone Virtuoso

Lynn Klock Saxophone Soloist

Lynn Klock is in demand as a soloist and Selmer clinician throughout the United States and abroad. As a featured artist in Great Britain, the British and American Virgin Islands, Canada, and Poland, he has the distinction of being the first saxophonist to be presented on the Warsaw Philharmonic Recital Series in Warsaw, Poland. His Carnegie Hall debut received great acclaim from the New York Times. He has been a guest soloist with several professional orchestras and bands, in addition to his numerous engagements with university, community, and high school bands. As a chamber musician, he has been a guest artist at the Monadnock, Musicorda, North Country, Mohawk Trail, and Marlboro music festivals, where he was the first saxophonist to tour with Musicians from Marlboro.

In 2002, in addition to appearing as a guest soloist/clinician at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic and the Music Educators National Conference in Minneapolis, Mr. Klock appeared in Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Washington and throughout New England. In 2003, he was a featured soloist with the Belgian Air Force Band at the 13th World Saxophone Congress held in Minneapolis, and guest soloist and clinician at the English Saxophone Congress in Cardiff, Wales.

As an advocate for new music on his instrument, Mr. Klock has had dozens of new works dedicated to him, including a work by recent Pulitzer Prize winner Lew Spratlan. He has premiered works by other Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, including Gunther Schuller, John Harbison and Michael Colgrass as part of the World Wide Commissioning Project.

Mr. Klock has recorded three solo CDs with pianist Nadine Shank for Open Loop Recordings. Recent releases include an Albany Records CD of Mr. Klock performing the Colgrass Concerto with Gary Green and the University of Miami Wind Ensemble, and a Gasparo Records CD of music for saxophone and tenor voice written for Lynn Klock and tenor Jon Humphrey. Mr. Klock can also be heard on the CRI, Mark, and Orion recording labels.

Graduates of Mr. Klock's saxophone programs are having great success as performers and teachers. His students have won international competitions in Europe, are members of professional saxophone quartets, and have received appointments to the military bands in Washington D.C. and West Point. His students have been appointed to tenure-track professorships in saxophone at James Madison, Central Florida and Washington Jefferson (Pennsylvania) Universities. Graduates of his saxophone programs have received assistantships at schools including Eastman, University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Miami, University of Illinois, Arizona State University, Ithaca, University of Minnesota, Louisiana State University, University of Houston and Western Michigan University.

Mr. Klock is currently Professor of Saxophone at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has also held teaching positions at the Interlochen National Music Camp, The Hartt School of Music, University of Toledo, and Olivet College (Michigan).

A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Interlochen Arts Academy, he studied with Larry Teal, Donald Sinta, Jack Kripl, and William D. Revelli.

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Almost Everything You've Always Wanted to Know about Saxophones and the Concord Band's Saxophone Section

At a recent concert, the Concord Band's saxophone section, left to right: Jerry Kriedberg (alto), Gwenn O'Keeffe (alto), Judy Piermarini (tenor), Dave Southard (tenor) and Larry Rubin (baritone).

According to the Instrument Encyclopedia, the saxophone is a relatively young instrument, having been invented by Belgian manufacturer, Adolphe Sax, and exhibited to the world for the first time at the 1841 Brussels Exhibition. It is classified along with the clarinet as a single-reed woodwind, but is actually a hybrid, borrowing elements from both the clarinet and double-reed oboe. The saxophone was originally available in fourteen different sizes and keys. Currently, four sizes and keys of saxophone have been standardized — the soprano (B♭), the alto (E♭), the tenor (B♭), and the baritone (E♭) — see insert below.

All four members of the saxophone instrument family appear in Concord Band concerts. However, the three larger (lower-pitched) instruments are always scored by composers for concert band, while the soprano saxophone is used much less frequently. The saxophone and one other conventional concert band instrument are the only band instruments that are not normally also part of the symphony orchestra, though both are used occasionally. The other is the baritone horn, usually referred to as a tenor tuba when used in an orchestra. When the saxophone appears in the orchestral literature, it is intended to provide a sound that is unusual or special. In the concert band, the saxophone section is a mainstay, but it is special, nevertheless.

Which brings us to the five members of the Concord Band saxophone section. All five are excellent musicians. Four have played solos with the Band (as has the section as a whole), and the fifth, whose low-voiced instrument is rarely favored with the solo role, does double duty during the Band's summer season as announcer for all of our outdoor concerts.

All of the Concord Band saxophone players are accomplished musicians, but only one has a degree in music. Judy Piermarini was a music educator for a time, and now satisfies her need to make music by playing with the Concord Band and several professional groups. In addition to our former music teacher (who is now an element crucial to the smooth operation of the US Postal Service), we have in our saxophone section two members of the health community and two practitioners of the "hard" sciences: Dr. Gwenn O'Keeffe is a board-certified pediatrician who has fallen (please pardon the pun) into pediatric emergency medicine over the years. Dr. Jerry Kriedberg is an independent psychologist with a specialty in neuropsychological testing and evaluation, affiliated with a number of local hospitals and human service agencies. Dr. Dave Southard is a computer scientist who specializes in avionics (flight displays and navigation systems) for general aviation (non-commercial, generally small, aircraft). Finally, our senior saxophonist/announcer is physicist Larry Rubin, who has been an MIT Visiting Scientist since retiring from the National Magnet Laboratory at MIT about a decade ago. These days he writes a column for the magazine Physics Today.

If you have a friend or relative who is a member of the Concord Band, you know all too well that in addition to weekly rehearsals and many hours of personal practice time, it takes an immense amount of non-musical effort to make the Band the success that it is. The members of the saxophone section have made — and continue to make — enormous contributions of this kind. We clearly do not have enough room to talk about all the things they do. You already know about Larry, the announcer. If you attended the Band's Holiday Pops in December, you know the kind of job Gwenn did as chairman. Have you ever visited the Concord Band website (concordband.org)? It is a virtual treasure trove of useful information about the Band and was initiated in 1995 and managed for five years by Dave Southard. Some believe that it's one of the finest websites associated with any community band organization, anywhere.

Jerry's special talent seems to be drawing a crowd. Somehow he got most of his old Dorchester neighborhood to buy tables at Pops. He probably just had to tell them that he was playing a solo. Finally, if you have ever given money to help run the Concord Band (and in the next and last paragraph of this story we're going to suggest that you do just that), then you received a handwritten thank-you note from Judy, who has also been involved with Pops and helped frequently to get newsletters like this one into envelopes and then into the mail.

While none of the Concord Band's instrumentalists (saxophonist or otherwise) is paid, it still costs about $40,000 a year to run the Band. If you'd like to help out financially, please write a check for as much as you can afford and mail it in the enclosed envelope. If you have no return envelope, simply send your check to the address at the top of this newsletter.

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Calendar of Upcoming Events

Concerts will be held at 51 Walden, Concord, at 8:00pm.

Winter Concert

Spring Pops

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