Award unveiled at community band concert

The St. Albert Community Band will honour one of its founders next Wednesday with the debut of the Jerry Wennes Award and a tag-team performance with the Saint City Big Band that is sure to produce an eclectic evening of mellow concert music and hit jazz.

The dynamic duo will gather at the Arden Theatre for its official Spring Concert. In addition to a buffet of music, the community band will debut the newly created Jerry Wennes Award that will be presented to a team player who goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Wennes, now living in British Columbia, was co-founder of St. Albert Community Band along with Gerry Buccini. Wennes was the band’s first conductor from 1970-71 while Buccini took on the role of president, a title he holds to this day.

“Unfortunately Jerry can’t be with us. He is battling cancer and is in the fight for his life. But he was a great inspiration and we want to recognize him,” Buccini says.

The community band leads the concert with a challenging repertoire selected by current conductor Dr. Angela Schroeder. The centrepiece is Gustav Holst’s majestic, almost hymn-like Jupiter from The Planets suite. Recently played at Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee, this eight-minute showpiece delivers a very regal mood.

“The music is exciting and lively, but it’s challenging with contrasting sections. There’s a need for clarity and rhythmic change and in this piece there’s more rhythmic changes than I’ve experienced in a long time,” says Buccini, a band clarinetist.

Schroeder also programmed other assorted works from Gioachino Rossini's sweeping Italian in Algiers Overture, Jacob Dehaan’s slow moving and expressive Ammerland, and Julius Fucik’s The Florentiner March. Although John Philip Sousa is revered as the American king of marches, the band performs The Gliding Girl, one of his lesser-known tangos.

Conductor Tom Smythe of the Saint City Big Band picks up the groove in the evening’s second half with a solid cross-section of sultry Latin, driving rock, upbeat swing and a few slower ballads.

On the 18-piece band’s radar is Body and Soul, the last recording Amy Winehouse taped as a duet with Tony Bennett in 2011. However, the band lets loose with an arrangement from a Coleman Hawkins original recording.

“Coleman Hawkins was a tenor sax player from the 1930s. He went to Europe, but when Hitler rose to power he came back. Everyone thought he was a has-been, but he did a recording of Body and Soul that blew everyone away,” Smythe says.

The jazz continues to spin it with a Chuck Mangione piece, Children of Sanchez, a Buddy Rich composition Big Swing Face, and Gordon Goodwin’s more experimental Work in Progress.

It’s an evening of solos, but one to watch is Jordan Backs from Bellerose High who is playing a sultry solo in Harlem Nocturne.

“He has a strong tone. He’s quite inventive with his improvisation. For someone as young as he is, he has a good feel for the music.”

And then there’s the heartfelt Amazing Grace that morphs from a church hymn into a pick-up-the-pace gospel rock rendition.

“The players we have now are some of the my favourites that I’ve worked with. Everything you ask, they give to you and they don’t give up trying. They are the ones who make this concert special.”