This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
I spent a good part of the week at Orillia Secondary School for the 3rd annual Sunshine City School Music Festival. My aim was to catch each of the bands from school here. Unfortunately I was not able to go Monday and missed the only appearances of Twin Lakes Secondary School’s bands, which I understand one, or both got gold ratings.
The first band I saw was OSS’s junior band. They had to play at the ridiculous hour of 8:10 a.m. The robins weren’t even up yet and usually musicians aren’t either, and if they are, they are still making coffee.
But these kids played great. Junior means Grades 9 and 10. Some of those kids have only been playing their instrument since September. They had such a full sound, blended from the bottom to the top of the note scale. They also played remarkably together.
They had a few moments that gave away they were beginners, but had good rhythm control and execution.
It makes me happy to hear any band playing with good blend and balance. It’s so important for musicians to learn how to do that, maybe the most important thing. A benefit is if you do play a wrong note, which is going to happen at this level, it won’t be so obvious.
So what do I mean by blend and balance. Blend is playing at the same level of volume as you neighbours in your section. We’ve all heard one trumpet player sticking out of the sound of the group of trumpets in a band or orchestra. This is not good. It should be hard for the listener to tell which trumpet the sound is coming from if they players have blended their sound.
Balance is how your section’s parts fit into the whole of the band. Sometimes your section is carrying the melody a flourish and you want to be above the overall sound of the band, but most of the time your section needs to fit in with the rest of the band; usually so long as you can hear the tubas and don’t over power them it’s good.
Even the untrained ear can tell the difference between a properly blended and balanced sound verses one where every player is the star of the number. It’s not a universal thing; I’ve got recordings of symphony orchestras that have bleating trumpets or shrill flutes marring appreciation of the tune I’m listening to.
So to hear a junior band play so effectively makes me think the teachers are getting the students to pay attention and listen to each other. They are also getting the students to count, which makes up for the rest of a good sounding band by getting rhythms and execution together.
On the latter, mistakes with the former affect the other with in sections. This is usually most evident with percussion when two players play a string of notes and one person is uneven with their playing. The other factor relating to execution is timing, starting and stopping notes, and again percussion is the most obvious especially when two or more players begin playing somewhere near beat one instead of on beat one.
These things carried over to the OSS symphonic band, which played at 11:35 and to the senior concert band, which played Wednesday at 4:40 p.m.
Laura Lee Matthie, one of the music teachers at OS, conducted the senior concert band and she mentioned on Tuesday I should not miss them because one of their pieces had a lot of percussion playing in it. She forgot to mention the band also had three tubas and three euphoniums and four trombones. I’m from the school of there can never be enough tubas and euphs, and as few trombones as necessary (that last bit is this drummer paying back compliments (jokes to pedestrians – years of them)). While bands do not have stringed instruments, or they’d be called orchestras, many high schools allow for upright basses of which OSS had one to help out the bottom end.
That bottom end and the percussion drove the piece of music, Primal Dances by Brian Balmages. Blamages has his own publishing company and was the first to sign Dan Austin as a composer. He also is assistant director of bands and orchestras at Towson University where the great Hank Levy (Stan Kenton, Don Ellis) also taught. He studied music at James Madison University where the former professor of percussion is an old friend of mine. Music is a small world.
At first I thought the piece was in 6/8 with a 2/4 bar every few measures, but it turns out most of it is in 4/4, but at a fast tempo. The kids don’t get off that easy because in the middle of the tune Balamages alternates 4/4 and 3/4 bars. Let’s just say the folks who study these things who also say learning and playing music helps math skills aren’t kidding.
The music could have gone off the rails in any number of places with difficult phrases, competing phrases, and a good dose of dissonant chording. This is only a Grade3 piece of music (music chart grading for bands does not reflect scholastic grade levels, it relates to skill required to play) there are still two levels of difficulty above that.
Just the same there are few high school bands playing this kind of stuff, and of the ones I heard during the week, I don’t recall any other bands playing a piece as difficult as this one.
As to the percussion I was tipped off about, the load fell to the timpanist who was punctuating many of the lower brass and full band hits. It a tough job with a lot more counting and feeling rhythms you aren’t actually playing. You either get it right, or leave the stage with your head hanging. He did a good job.
Patrick Fogarty’s band has a new teacher and is developing. Bands that earned gold and silver ratings in this festival are eligible for invitation to the national competition.
At the end of the day Thursday, everyone went home tired.
OSS music students are off to New York City April 9 for a few days. They will have a couple of performances and students will get to tour Carnegie Hall tour, see a concert at Birdland with either the High Society New Orleans Jazz Band or the Birdland Big Band, and they’ll also tour Radio City Music Hall. Their spring concert is May 22 at the school.
The spring play is April 28 and 29. More on that later.
Silver Band
The Orillia Silver Band had a concert last Saturday at St. Paul’s Centre. Billed as a preview of the music they will be playing and competing with at the North American Brass Band Association championships in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
At the concert, the OSB ended the first half with James Curnow’s Laude. This is the test piece all competing bands must play Friday April 4. The competition is live streamed and the OSB will play at 8:45 a.m.
The piece is a difficult work and it got a standing ovation from the audience.
The first tune after the break was Stephen Bulla’s Images for Brass. Bulla was the staff arranger for the President’s Own Marine Corps Band and Images is an impressionist piece written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima (you know, back when fighting fascists was a thing). As an impressionistic work it tries to create the mood per-battle, during and after. As you can imagine the battle scene is kind of bombastic. It is a complex and difficult piece of music. The OSB played these two pieces superbly, as they did they whole concert.
Say what you will about the current state of affairs, the Marine Corps bands and Drum Corps are the apex of all the service bands of the U.S. military and perform at a standard everyone else tries to match.
The OSB will perform this at 3:50 p..m. on Saturday April 5 and it too is live streamed.
As you might tell from what I said above about sound quality, The OSB performs with exceptional skill in this regard and the whole concert was a textbook example for others to achieve. Of special note the opener, Paul Dukas La Peri is the fanfare from the ballet of the same name. It’s a fantastic piece of music for bands, though I’d be a little uneasy about putting it first in the run order because of the difficulty. What is special about this piece is it was arranged by OSB member Rita Arendz.
Desire, It’s A Heavy Word
The Mariposa Arts Theatre is doing a streetcar Named Desire staring Thursday April 3 and running for two weeks, with Sunday matinees.
The cast includes leads Alyssa LaPlume (Blance), Stephen Dobby (Stanley) Veronica Va Muuyen (Stella) and Colton Farro (Mitch), along with Samantha Windover, Brad Kean, Mike Frustaci, Arlene Bell, Spencer Hipwell, Ted Fleming and Anastasiis Ziurkalva.
You can get tickets online.
On a sad note, long time MAT member and performer Rita Whiston passed away during the week. She also was a founding member of the Coldwater Village Players. If Rita wasn’t on stage, she was deep into backstage support, or producing plays.
Roots North
The Friday and Saturday shows at St. Paul’s Centre have full lineups now. Nicolina (she’s been on American Idol) will be joining headliner Royal Wood on April 25 and Gracie Ella headlines with Gracie Ella on the 26th. James Gray is also performing, though it’s not clear if it’s on Friday or Saturday.
Also, The Ronnie Douglas Blues Band will be upstairs at Brewery Bay Food Company on the 26th. The rest of the venue schedule will be coming soon. IN the mean time you can get festival passes online.
Suds
The celebration of Suds Sutherland’s fantastic life is June 22 at Hawk Ridge Golf Club from 1 to 4 p.m. There will be a graveside service at 11 a.m. at St Andrew’s St. James’ Cemetery the same day. The family also announced donations to the Suds Sutherland Music Scholarship for Twin Lakes Students can be made at Mundell’s Funeral Home (cash, or cheque made out to the Community Foundation of Orillia)
The Shorts
- Twin Lakes students are doing the musical Cinderella April 9, 10 and 11 at the school and you can get tickets at the school’s office.
- The Orillia Youth Centre cancelled sold out fundraising concerts scheduled for March 28 and 29 with Tim Barry, Nixon Boyd and Billy Pettinger because of the storm. Kevin Gangloff said two of the performers were travelling in from the U.S. and he felt it was best to keep them, and some of the ticket holders from out of town, off the roads. The show will be rescheduled and all tickets honoured. Last week tickets went on sale for another concert with Frank Turner and Nixon Boyd for May 14 and sold out in 14 minutes.
- I know a lot of you love the music of Murray McLauchlan, and you love Cindy Church and Marc Jordan and Ian Thomas, and you really love it when they get together as Lunch at Allen’s. They are splitting up and doing a last tour together. It stops in Orillia April 16 at the Opera House and you can get tickets online.
- OMAH has three exhibits – Four Seasons in Orillia , Nathalie Bertin’s Loup Garou and Mocassins, and Heritage in Hues: Orillia’s Story Through Textiles in the small gallery off the foyer; It’s not what I thought it would be (textile art like Molly Farquharson does), but clothing collected, some as old as 19th century, and arranged around the room according to the order of the colours of the rainbow… Peter Street Fine Arts has art by Judy McLaughlin featured this month.
- Quayle’s Brewery has Ashley Woodruff playing March 2; Chris Lemay plays March 30.… the Hog ‘N Penny has Sean Patrick and John MacDonald playing March 29 and every Sunday those tow and a few more have an afternoon jam session… Classic Lightfoot Live is at the Opera House May 3 (tickets)
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: The Orillia Secondary School junior band at the Sunshine City School Music Festival.
