Municipal band continues summer concert series with movie music

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Kristen Gleason
Director of Marketing
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434.979.1922 ext. 103
kristen@theparamount.net

For Immediate Release

June 27, 2008

Movie music will be the theme as Steve Layman and the Charlottesville Municipal Band take the stage for the third free concert in their 86th Annual Summer Concert Series, Tuesday, July 1 at 8 pm. The eighty-member ensemble will tackle a program of selections written for or inspired by the movies.

The program will open with Blue Ridge Overture by Frank Erickson. Written by one of America’s greatest composers of band music during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the overture’s original melody is one the listener might expect to hear accompanying a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Leroy Anderson’s Blue Tango, written in 1951, is a simple melody. Without the flash of traditional tangos, the composition has found its way into the background music of many cartoons and feature-length movies.

Composer James Barnes wrote the five-movement Sorcery Suite after reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with his young son. Each of the five movements depicts a scene or character from the novel. The group will perform the opening and closing sections, which depict Harry Potter’s arrival at Hogwarts and the excitement of a quidditch match.

Henry Fillmore’s march The Crosley was written to honor the founder of Cincinnati radio station WLW. Many people in the know see this station as the model for that in the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.

Whether from Saturday morning cartoons or a feature-length program, generations of kids are familiar with the themes from the Looney Tunes Cartoons featuring Porky Pig, Donald Duck, Sylvester, and Tweety. Arranger Bill Holcombe’s rollicking collection of cartoon favorites includes: This Is It, The Merry Go Round Broke Down, and Merrily We Roll Along

Native Texan, band conductor, and composer Charles Wiley has traveled extensively throughout south Texas and Mexico. His La Companera from 1977 is an outstanding example of the pasadoble or double step Spanish March.

Actress July Garland will be honored in a second Bill Holcombe arrangement entitled A Tribute To July Garland, featuring The Trolley Song and the title song from the 1944 feature The Boy Next Door, as well as her signature song Somewhere, Over the Rainbow from the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.

Film composer John Williams is himself an American classic, having penned the scores to eighty-eight major motion pictures since 1958, and won five Oscars for his efforts. One of his most popular scores is the music to the 1977 blockbuster Star Wars. The band will perform the main theme -- with a little help from one of the movie saga’s favorite characters.

The program will close with a traditional Sousa march. This concert’s selection is The White Rose, written in 1917 for the Flower Festival in York, Pennsylvania. Sousa endeared himself to the locals by including music from a popular local opera, Nittauniss, in the final version.

General admission seating for all free concerts in the Municipal Band of Charlottesville’s 86th Annual Summer Concert Series will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis each concert night. Lobby doors will open at 7 pm. Seating will begin at 7:30. Free parking for concert goers is available in the upper Lexis/Nexis lot at the east end of the mall behind the Pavilion.

The band will also perform a free concert of patriotic music at the annual Monticello Naturalization Ceremony on Friday, July 4 at 9:30 am.

Additional Tuesday concerts in the Summer Series will take place on July 15 and 29 as well as August 12. For more information about the Municipal Band of Charlottesville, please visit charlottesvillemunicipalband.org.