Canton Community Band will present free, public concert in Mansfield, Thursday, April 6

Canton’s longest-playing community band, the Canton Community Band, will honor its roots with a pair of free, public performances featuring music by New England composers. The concerts, titled Heritage of the Community Band, will be held on Thursday, March 23 at the Canton Public Library, 786 Washington Street, Canton, and Thursday, April 6 at the Congregational Church of Mansfield, 17 West Street, Mansfield. They will begin at 7:00 pm and continue for one hour. The public is invited. A discussion of the music and meet-and-greet with the band will follow each performance.

The Band is conducted by Elizabeth Leehey, a professional clarinetist and musician. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory and a faculty member at the Concord Conservatory of Music, Leehey is widely-known for her skills as a performer, teacher and musical arranger. She has directed the CCB since 2016.

The upcoming concerts will feature pieces by numerous New England artists, including: Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler and Lowell Mason of MA; George M. Cohan of RI; R.B. Hall of Maine; Rudy Vallee of VT; and others. The concert playlist will include many well-known pieces, such as:

• Somewhere (Bernstein)
• You’re a Grand Old Flag and Yankee Doodle Boy (Cohan)
• The Pops Polka (Fiedler)
• Stein Song (Vallee)
• The Commonwealth (Hall)
• Nearer My God to Thee (Mason)
• America Victorious (Bagley)

A brief history of each piece and its composer will be presented during the performances.

The concerts are sponsored, in part, by the Canton and Mansfield Cultural Councils, agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The Canton Community Band welcomes new members. Musicians of all nationalities, creeds, ages, and occupations are accepted. No auditions are required.

To become a Band member or to find out more about the upcoming performances, visit

www.Cantonband.org or email Band manager Robert A. Brown, robtabrown@gmail.com.

ABOUT THE CANTON COMMUNITY BAND

Founded in 1927, the Canton Community Band welcomes musicians of varying ages and abilities who want to enrich community life with live, musical performances. The Band rehearses every Thursday at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Canton and performs throughout the year at concerts, parades, fairs, special events and other community programs.

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