Posted by Matt G on September 25, 2002 at 14:17:55:
In Reply to: Now, that's sad... posted by Dan Schultz on September 25, 2002 at 13:17:29:
The sad part is that the High school probably has the stuff in their library, but the director doesn't want to pull it out. The community band I play in has a lot of marches and patriotic stuff. We play at two Fourth of July related concerts every year that we hold contracts on. We don't rehearse the patriotic things a lot as most people know them fairly well already. We just need to put together a sense of "ensemble".
The high school director is probably too worried about marching band or concert band things to worry about patriotic music. Unfortunately, a lot of directors are more worried about getting a good score at contests than being able to support the community with good music. Pieces like the America the Beautiful arranged by Carmen Dragon are both patriotic and great music. Most of the JP Sousa marches are great music as well. As well as a lot of the marches from Bagley and King. I think the problem is that they are too easy to conduct, but to hard to rehearse. A lot of music educators would rather have a marching band playing stuff in 3/4 and 5/4 on the field and mixed meter and duple against triple in the hall. Marches sound too easy because they are familiar along with the other patriotic stuff.
Sorry to rant, but I think we fool ourselves as musicians at times about what the public really wants to hear. Hence the reason a good Top 40 band can gig more regularly than a great brass quintet.
Hopefully the director feels bad about having to turn down this opportunity for his group to gain another performance venue.
Matt G