Some forms of music flourish because they are perfectly matched to the way society is organized during their heyday. Thus, band music blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when people strolled to small-town parks to sit in the shade and listen to bands — wind instruments and percussion, that is — playing on Sunday afternoons or on summer evenings at the end of the work day.
The heritage of military bands from the Civil War found peacetime outlets, playing marches, waltzes, concert pieces featuring virtuoso wind soloists of the day. John Philip Sousa, the March King, was a popular music star on the order of Elvis Presley.
The comparison comes from Charles Conrad, music director of the Indiana Wind Symphony, who has organized the first Carmel Festival of Bands, “to encourage interest in band music,” particularly among young people involved in school bands who may wonder how they will extend their active interest in music once they enter the work world.
Conrad points out that band music was common coin in the entertainment marketplace for our grandparents and great-grandparents.
“Before radio and before there were orchestras outside the biggest cities, it was through band transcriptions that orchestra music was known,” he told Current. “The Sousa band played selections from (Richard Wagner’s last opera) ‘Parsifal’ in Rapid City, N.D., 10 years before the Met produced it.”
In the days when traveling circuses were an important leisure-time attraction for Americans, “the circus bands did half-hour to 45-minute classical concerts in the center ring” before the circus entertainers took over, Conrad said.
Though exposure to concert band music declined in the course of the 20th century, Conrad noted, a renaissance of new music for such ensembles picked up steam in the 1950s, attracting the interest of major composers, and has continued fairly strong up to the present.
It’s this variety of music that will be on parade, with 15-minute breaks between bands, in the Minnie Doane Gazebo at Carmel Civic Square on June 22. Conrad asked every bandleader to include at least one number by an Indiana composer, but otherwise put no restrictions on programming. There were no duplications in nine submitted programs, which amazed Conrad, who didn’t have to ask anyone to make a change.
Music from Broadway (“The Impossible Dream” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” for example), local composers (James Beckel’s “American Dream”) and recognized masterpieces of the repertoire (Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E-flat for Military Band) will be included among popular songs ranging from George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart to Sting and the Beatles. The extensive American concert band repertoire will be well represented.
Of course, there will be plenty of Sousa (“Comrades of the Legion,” “Golden Jubilee March,” “Fugue on Yankee Doodle,” “Liberty Bell March,” among other selections). The hosting Indiana Wind Symphony, out of whose budget the festival expenses are met, has three Sousa pieces in its set, ending with “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Admission is free; food will be available for purchase from several food trucks, prepared to satisfy appetites that go beyond the musical feast that will be spread before the attendees. Here’s the schedule:
- 11:00 am Lake Area Community Band, conducted by Marty Becker
- 12:00 pm Pride of Indy Concert Band, conducted by Nathan Voges
- 1:00 pm Indianapolis Brass Choir, conducted by Robert Grechesky
- 2:00 pm Zionsville Concert Band, conducted by John Richardson
- 3:00 pm Lapel Community Band, conducted by John Parshall
- 4:00 pm Greater Greenwood Community Band, conducted by Tom Dirks
- 5:00 pm Barton Rogers Big Band, led by Jane Poio
- 6:00 pm Bloomington Community Band, conducted by Ron Sebben
- 7:00 pm Indiana Wind Symphony,conducted by Charles Conrad