From the Podium - 2015 Concert
Resplendence - Brilliant Radiant Beauty
Resplendence -
The theme for the 138th Annual Concert of The Quakertown Band, March 22, 2015.
One interpretation of resplendence is nobleness. This concert recalls the over 50 years of contributions to The Quakertown Band made by Joseph Blewett, the 11th conductor of the band. The nobleness of Joe's 20 year tenure as conductor from 1975 ' 1995 was evident in the legacy of his superb programming for the band and still continues today. Lynn (Blewett) Hasson has chosen several of her father's favorite selections to be recalled in a tribute to Blewett who passed away in July. They include: The Pearl Fishers Overture from Bizet'™s opera, That'™s Entertainment with melodies from old MGM movies and A Tribute to Stephen Foster, conducted by Joseph Santanello, conductor of Strayer Middle School Band in Quakertown, PA.
Musicians who have performed under Mr. Blewett'™s baton in any band are invited to join The Quakertown Band in the Old Berks March by Althouse. Contact Lynn lhasson@quakertownband.org. if you are interested in joining the band for this performance.
Another selection that portrays nobleness in music will be a medley of tunes that commemorate the beginning of WW I and nobleness the soldiers felt as they joined the "war to end all wars'. The medley includes portions of There'™s a Long, Long Trail, Bing! Bang! Bing 'Em On The Rhine, Keep The Home-fires Burning (Till The Boys Come Home) Keep Your Head Down, Fritzie Boy, and George M. Cohan'™s Over There!. Much of this arrangement has been put together from one hundred year old band music books from the Bauman Music Library, of Philadelphia'™s Liberty Concert Band.
A second interpretation of Resplendence is brilliance. Lee Hauslein, a member of the band since 1987, performs Debussy'™s Premiere Rhapsody for Clarinet and Band. Also, Teresa Scarlatella and Bruce Walters will be featured in the xylophone duet Texting Holiday, based on the melodies of Leroy Anderson'™s The Typewriter. Another brilliant selection is River of Life by Steven Reineke conducted by Al Zwart.
Finally, a third definition for resplendent is 'sublime' or 'awe-inspiring.' The band ends the concert with an awe-inspiring rendition of Praise to the Lord by Vaclav Nelhybel, an arrangement of Praise To The Lord The Almighty, Now Thank We All Our God and the Doxology.
Selections include:
Resplendent Glory
Rossano Galante was born, raised and received his first college degree in Buffalo NY. He was accepted into the Film Scoring Program at the Univ. of Southern California where he studied with the famous composer Jerry Goldsmith and has worked as composer or orchestrator for various Hollywood films.
The publisher describes the work: 'Written in a romantic/heroic style, this impressive overture from Rossano Galante features sweeping and lush melodies along with brilliant brass fanfares and woodwind flourishes. For the mature (advanced) ensemble, here is a dynamic concert opener.'
Galante has worked as composer or orchestrator for various Hollywood films. This is why his selections sound like film scores and why it is appropriate that we include this inspiring composition in a tribute to Joe.
Pearl Fishers Overture
Bizet composed the Pearl Fishers opera in 1863 at the age of 25 and although at its premiere, the opera was an audience favorite, it was not liked by the critics and it was not performed again in his lifetime.
Set in ancient times on the island of Ceylon, the opera tells the story of how two men's vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman, whose own dilemma is the conflict between secular love and her sacred oath as a priestess. The friendship duet Au fond du temple saint, generally known as The Pearl Fishers Duet, is one of the best-known numbers in Western opera.
Premiere Rhapsody For Clarinet and Band
From the publisher: Claude Debussy entered the Paris Conservatory when only ten years old. Written in 1910 and scored for orchestra in 1911, Premiere Rhapsody is a perfect example of his avant-garde approach to musical composition.' The art world'™s term 'impressionism' is applied to that style. The tonality of the work slides effortlessly from one key to another and travels from the following concert key signatures: Gb, D, Db, Gb, Cb, A and back to Gb. The Quakertown Band has played very few works with this 'shimmer' in sound and is pleased to offer its audience this unique sound. (we even include a cello as part of the instrumentation.)
While the solo is widely used as an audition piece and studied in universities, audiences are rarely treated to the work in performance.
Lee Hauslein, has been a member of the Quakertown Band since 1978. He has been a soloist with The Quakertown Band on two previous occasions, and was a guest soloist with the United States Navy Band in Washington at the age of 16. Lee earned a degree in Music Education from Temple University in 1978 and a Masters in Music from the College of New Jersey in 1987. He taught high school band in Alberta, Canada for two years, and has been a band director in the Council Rock School District for 35 years. For the last 10 years, he has also been Music Curriculum Coordinator in Council Rock. In 2004 he won the William G. Carr Award from the National Education Association for excellence in teaching that promotes international understanding. Lee has presented workshops for PMEA in Hershey and at the MENC National Convention in Minneapolis.
River of Life
Steven Reineke was Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, where for fifteen years he served as a composer, arranger and conducting protege of the late celebrated pops conductor Erich Kunzel, creating more than one hundred orchestral arrangements.
He is the Principal Pops Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and the New York Pops where he leads the orchestra in the televised Macy's 4th of July Fireworks.
The publisher writes: 'this is an incredible composition...the highs, the lows, the development, the scoring, the transitions, the themes...all point to a piece that must be given a place in the band repertoire. Best of all, is that this work will appeal on several levels, the melodies and rhythms immediately grab you, but on a deeper level, the composer's skill is quite evident.
Fanfare and Theme
Fanfare for Saxophone Ensemble and Septet are works premiered at Susquehanna University where Coleman Rowlett is a composition major. At the request of Mr. Karschner, Coleman has expanded these works for performance by The Quakertown Band with the work receiving its premiere at this performance.
The Fanfare, at a quick pace, serves as the opening and closing melodies for this work in ABA form. The slower, lyric melody is used in the middle section.
That's Entertainment
The 1974 movie That'™s Entertainment' contained many of the songs that had been featured in their long list of famous films. Elliot Gilman'™s arrangement for concert band includes:
'Singin'™ In The Rain' from the movie Singin'™ In The Rain (1952); The movie is spoof of the turmoil that afflicted the movie industry in the late 1920s when movies went from silent to sound and a chorus girl is brought in to dub the speaking and singing part of one of the former stars. It starred Gene Kelly , Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor.
'The Trolley Song" and 'The Boy Next Door" - Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); were made famous by Judy Garland from the movie, still popular today.
"Be My Love" - The Toast of New Orleans, (1950); - lyrics by Sammy Cahn and music by Nicholas Brodzsky. Published in 1950, it was written for Mario Lanza who sang it with Kathryn Grayson in the movie. Lanza's recording of the song was his first million-seller, eventually selling over two million copies.
"Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" - Lili, (1952); The movie starred Leslie Caron as a touchingly naive French girl, whose emotional relationship with a carnival puppeteer is conducted through the medium of four puppets. It won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Music. Wikipedia shows 24 recordings of the song.
"On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" - The Harvey Girls, (1946) refers to the ATSF Railway Sung by Judy Garland it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year. Written by Harry Warren, and the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, the most popular recordings were made by Bing Crosby, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and Judy Garland.
"You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)" The Jolson Story and Broadway Melody written by James V. Monaco, the lyrics by Joseph McCarthy. The song was published in 1913. It was introduced in the Broadway revue The Honeymoon Express and used in the 1973 revival of the musical Irene.
One of the earliest recordings (1913) by Al Jolson was from the soundtrack of the 1946 film The Jolson Story.
Roger Edens wrote additional lyrics for Judy Garland, in the role of a teenage fan of Clark Gable. She sang the song to Gable at a birthday party thrown for him by MGM whose executives were so charmed by her rendition that she and the song were added to the film Broadway Melody of 1938. Garland recorded the "Gable" version as a b-side in 1939, opposite her recording of "Over the Rainbow" for The Wizard of Oz.
"Honeysuckle Rose" is a 1929 song composed by Fats Waller and lyrics were written by Andy Razaf. Waller's 1934 recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The song has appeared in a number of movies.
"You Are My Lucky Star" - Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) The film starred Jack Benny, Eleanor Powell, Robert Taylor, Frances Langford and Buddy Ebsen. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1994 Ann Miller stated that MGM was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time Broadway Melody of 1936 was made, and it, along with subsequent films starring Eleanor Powell, were so successful the company was rescued. "You Are My Lucky Star" by Brown and Freed played during the opening credits.
"Broadway Melody" - The Broadway Melody of 1929 ( 1929) (Brown and Freed) Played during the opening credits and throughout the movie.
"It's A Most Unusual Day" - A Date With Judy (1948); The film was photographed in Technicolor and largely served to showcase the former child star Elizabeth Taylor, age 16 at the time. Taylor was given the full MGM glamor treatment, including specially designed gowns and also features the soprano singing voice of young Jane Powell and Wallace Beery.
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ' Wizard of Oz (1939) This Academy Award winning song of Arlen and Harburg was one of the songs that first made Judy Garland a star. It continues to be recorded and performed live.
'San Francisco' - San Francisco, (1936); Written by Kahn, Kaper and Jurmann, it was introduced in the film by Jeanette MacDonald.
A Tribute to Stephen Foster
From Wikipedia:
Stephen Collins Foster known as "the father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Among his best-known are "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer". Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them and are included in the selection performed today.
Many of Foster's songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time. Foster sought, in his own words, to, "build up taste ... among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order." Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once in 1852, by riverboat voyage on his honeymoon down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
Foster attempted to make a living as a professional songwriter and may be considered innovative in this respect, since this field did not yet exist in the modern sense. Due in part to the limited scope of music copyright and composer royalties at the time, Foster realized very little of the profits his works generated for sheet music printers. Multiple publishers often printed their own competing editions of Foster's tunes, paying Foster nothing. He received $100 ($2,653 in 2012 dollars) for "Oh, Susanna" and barely made anything for his many other, popular songs.
Foster moved to New York City in 1860. About a year later, his wife and daughter left him and returned to Pittsburgh.
Foster had become impoverished while living on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Reportedly confined to his bed for days by a persistent fever, Foster tried to call a chambermaid, but collapsed, falling against the washbasin next to his bed and shattering it, which gouged his head. It took three hours for a doctor to be summoned and get him to Bellevue Hospital. In an era before transfusions and antibiotics, he succumbed three days after his admittance, aged 37. Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. One of the best loved of his works, Beautiful Dreamer, was published shortly after his death.
The work is conducted by Joseph Santanello, conductor of Strayer Middle School Band in Quakertown, PA.
Texting Holiday
Leroy Anderson wrote many works that were featured by The Boston Pops. One of them was called 'The Typewriter'. Back in the dark ages, the typewriter was a device people used to communicate with each other. Today the younger generations text their messages. Not to let a good melody go to waste, we'™ve arranged Anderson'™s work to feature our xylophone soloists: Teresa Scarlatella and Bruce Walters in A Texting Holiday.
WW I Medley
In July 2014 many Europeans commemorated the start of World War I which began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo. The US became involved in 1917 by sending raw material and money and in 1918 troops arrived on the Western Front.
The Quakertown Band has recently obtained music from the Bauman Music Library, of Philadelphia'™s Liberty Concert Band.
Steve Bogdon portrays an old veteran as he pages through the music, remembering some of the old tunes.
The band book used during WWI contains many interesting titles, including:
'There's a Long, Long Trail A-winding' Although written in 1913 by two seniors at Yale, it was published in London in 1914 and became one of the early popular songs of the war. John McCormack made a popular recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WdCCNXL6Uc&list=RD9WdCCNXL6Uc
'Bing! Bang! Bing 'Em On The Rhine', (1918) by Mahoney and Flynn became a popular song recorded on a cylinder.
Bing Bang - sung
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/5000/5700/cusb-cyl5700d.mp3
Bing Band ' Wurlitzer Band Organ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EFLaFDgwcI
'Keep the Home-Fires Burning ('Till the Boys Come Home)' is a popular melancholy British song composed in 1914 by Ivor Novello with words by Lena Gilbert Ford.
Another popular recording of John McCormack (not sure why his picture is upsidedown)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8UokgVqWs&list=RD5P8UokgVqWs&index=1
"Keep Your Head Down Fritzie Boy" "Inspired by a Brave Tommy and written at the Battle of Ypres 1915" was one of the first of Lieutenant Gitz Ingraham Rice'™s songs.
Rice, a Canadian soldier, is most closely associated with the patriotic songs he wrote during the First World War, where he was posted to active service in Europe, and where he fought in several battles. Rice was one of the many Canadian soldiers and army officers who soon found themselves taking on the additional important service of organizing and performing in home-grown "concert parties", stage shows, to entertain their fellow soldiers on the front lines between battles, for which Rice sometimes played the piano.
Rice and the other soldiers who took part in the shows were better suited to these activities than were professional entertainers, as they did not require extra pay and they were already trained for the dangers of the front lines. Unlike many songs written at the home-front, these soldier-entertainers wrote and rehearsed new material during lulls in active duty. In another song, "Dear Old Pal of Mine", a soldier laments his absence from his girlfriend. The first line states, "All my life is empty, since I went away"; and the refrain affirms the soldier's loneliness: "Oh, how I want you, dear old pal". Rice's song was popularized by the singer John McCormack, who adopted it as his signature tune.
Keep Your Head Down, Fritzie Boy ' Bill Murray and American Quartet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx7DgDEh5mw
'Over There!' is one of the many patriotic songs of George M. Cohan. It was popular during World Wars I & II and after 9/11. In 1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Cohan the Congressional Gold Medal for this and other songs.
It was written by George M. Cohan at that time when Americans believed that the war would be short and the song reflected that expectation. He later recalled that the words and music to the song came to him while travelling by train from New Rochelle to New York shortly after the U.S. had declared war against Germany in April 1917.
The most famous of many film appearances is in Yankee Doodle Dandy starring James Cagney in his Oscar-winning performance. ( clip below) 1968 Broadway musical George M! starring Joel Grey which also included many of his other memorable tunes like "Give My Regards To Broadway", "You're A Grand Old Flag", and "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
Interview and song by Cohan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGsVguiM5ao
Lyrics with nice tpt and piccolo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v33jF5TGLw
From the movie - the tune used again in WWII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5oWH6JWBJY
Love Cagney tap dancing down the steps! Really corny! But I love it !
Many of the marches of John Philip Sousa had connections to WWI and will be programmed by the band in the future.
HOW I KNOW THESE OLD SONGS OF THE WORLD WARS by R. Karschner
In the 1950s churches sponsored banquets or dinners. The 'father and son' and 'mother and daughter' banquets were annual affairs. At these and other events where people gathered, a period of group singing was typical. Song books were distributed for the ten to fifteen minutes of community singing of traditional or patriotic songs. In my library there are at least 10 well-worn copies of 'Everybody'™s favorite Community Songs (over 150)', 'Favorite Songs of the People' and several editions of 'The Golden Book of Favorite Songs'.
At the 'father and son' banquet, there would be prizes given to 'the oldest father', 'the family with the most generations present' etc. Then the men would call out page numbers of their favorite old songs which would be accompanied at the piano, by the only woman in the room. And as I now remember, these men were veterans of both World Wars, who recalled these songs during the time of the Korean conflict. And the singing, with harmonies, was done with great enthusiasm. The Quakertown Band will perform several of these old songs, especially at the retirement homes, where these songs may inspire fond or poignant memories.
I was also fortunate to become more familiar with the music of George M. Cohan after seeing the Broadway show, watching the movies and later directing the musical George M. in high school.
So in future years, who will remember the words and music of Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan or other songs of early America? Will they be passed on, or forgotten? Perhaps they, like the typewriter, are only nostalgic things of the past.
Praise to the Lord
Vaclav Nelhybel was born the youngest of five children in Polanka, Czechoslovakia. He received his early musical training in Prague and in Switzerland. In 1957 he came to the United States, where he taught at several schools, including the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. He served as Composer-in-Residence at University of Scranton for several years until his death.
He wrote extensively for wind instruments or concert band, however The Quakertown Band has not previously performed many of his compositions.
Nelhybel received numerous prizes and awards for his compositions, and four American universities honored him with honorary doctoral degrees in music. He died in 1996 at the age of 77.
Composed in 1974 Praise to the Lord by Vaclav Nelhybel, is an arrangement of some traditional hymns that are 350 to 450 years old. They include: Praise To The Lord The Almighty (1665), Now Thank We All Our God (1662) and the Doxology (1551) . This selection, which includes an antiphonal brass, combines these melodies individually and simultaneously.
We welcome brass players from the Quakertown Community High School Band, directed by Mr. Frank Parker.
Old Berks March '
As a young man Monroe Althouse toured with Buffalo Bill'™s Wild West Show. Other than that he spent most of the rest of his life in around the Reading area of Berks County, Pennsylvania. There he conducted the pit orchestra for the Rajah Theater and the Ringgold Band. Althouse and Sousa had become friends and Souse came to Reading eight years after his death to pay tribute to him and help celebrate the band'™s 80th anniversary. After a rehearsal and dinner Sousa retired to his hotel where he died later that evening. Joe used to tell the story of how his uncle helped carry Sousa'™s casket to the train in Reading. The march pays tribute to the county where Althouse lived.
Resplendent from Qband March 22
Resplendent Glory ' HS honors, Boonshaft conductor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcziRpDChBo
Stephen Foster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7utT1MdxWE
Clarinet solo already (our cut is in the middle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLVxj2YQuJ0
River of Life
http://www.barnhouse.com/product.php?id=012-2692-00
Pearl Fishers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT_8PIg-p0U
The famous duet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-v-DZjZ9iY
WWI stuff as links in write up.
