"Spring Into Summer" with a Free Concert from the Middlesex Concert Band

Spring Into Summer on Sunday, June 5, 2016 with the Middlesex Concert Band in a free concert at the Galvin Middle School Auditorium, presenting a variety of music styles and featuring small ensemble performances interspersed with the full ensemble’s program. Doors open at 2:30 pm and the concert begins at 3:00 pm. Light refreshments will be provided.

Like most groups of this type, the Middlesex Concert Band presents a series of concerts each year, often featuring programs related to the season or to a particular theme. Following each concert, band members look forward to the next rehearsal to find out what is on the program for the next one. This time, Music Director Mark Olson turned things around and asked band members to tell him what they wanted to play. The result is a unique, eclectic mix of music that will delight concertgoers of all ages.

Folk songs are often used as inspiration for concert band compositions, and this concert features three unique folk song settings: Percy Grainger’s “Lincolnshire Posy,” a six-movement piece featuring adaptations of folk songs that Grainger heard during a visit to Lincolnshire, England in the early 1900s; Gustav Holst’s “Second Suite in F for Military Band,” a four-movement piece also featuring English folk songs; and Frank Ticheli’s “Cajun Folk Songs,” a two-movement piece composed as a tribute to the people of the original Cajun folksong culture.

Music from the stage and screen also regularly finds its way into concert band repertoires and this concert is no exception, featuring selections from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera “The Pirates of Penzance”; Henry Mancini’s “Pie in the Face Polka,” which provided the soundtrack to the climactic pie fight scene in the classic movie The Great Race; and music from the original dance phenomenon of the 1990s, “Riverdance.”

Rounding out the program is the majestic “Liberty Fanfare” written by John Williams for the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty and premiered by the Boston Pops in 1986. Concertgoers will also be treated to performances from various small ensembles made up of members of the full band. These small ensembles let the audience hear the featured instruments in a different, more intimate setting.

The Middlesex Concert Band is a nonprofit, community band based in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and made up of more than 50 musicians of all ages who come from throughout Northeast Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. Originally founded in the 1950s as a marching band, the group evolved into a concert band in 1975 and has been performing continuously around the region since then.

Spring Into Summer takes place at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 5, 2016 at the Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium in the Galvin Middle School, 525 Main Street, Wakefield, MA. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m. Admission is free and light refreshments will be provided. For more information about the Middlesex Concert Band, go to www.mcbconcertband.org.