Northport Community Band to End Concert Series With a Bang

If you look at the sheet music cover (pictured above), you can recognize the Thompson Book tower that’s standing on Woodbine today.

The Northport Community band will is nearing the end of its free concert series held on Thursdays in July.

The final concert is the highlight of the series. It features Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” complete with dueling cannons and a brass choir of local high school students.

Another highlight of the concert is a march, composed in 1896, which has historical significance to the Village of Northport. (scroll down to learn more about the march).

The concert will be held this Thursday at Robert W. Krueger Bandstand in Northport Village Park.

Also on the program for Thursday:

• Guest Conductor: Izzet Mergen (Northport Schools)
• Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”, conducted by a raffle winner who contributes to the Long Island Cares “bring a can to the concert” food donation campaign
• A salute to Frank Sinatra on his centennial
• The traditional exit music featuring Leroy Anderson’s “Forgotten Dreams” and an army of bubble blowers
• Many more musical surprises

Don’t forget to bring blankets and lawn chairs to enjoy the show in front of the bandstand, or even watch the show from a boat in Northport Harbor.

This year’s concert theme was “Hometown Harmony,” which featured a blend of marches, overtures, classics and popular favorites.

Northport Community Band Programs Historical Curiosity

Information provided by Northport Community Band and Northport Historical Society:

Composer George H. Bishop, a Northport resident, provided the music for “Pleading and Practice”, a Grand March for solo piano, which was distributed as a free sheet music premium to potential buyers of the Encyclopedia of Pleading and Practice, published by the Edward Thompson book company between 1895 and 1902. The Thompson Law Book Company building, with its signature steeple, is located at 24 Woodbine Avenue; it was later occupied by the Davis Aircraft Company and now houses several businesses.

Copies of the sheet music are preserved in several collections of 19th-century American music, at Johns Hopkins University, Indiana University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and others. The decorative cover depicts a contemporary parade complete with horse-drawn carriage, musicians and marching books. The Thompson Building steeple is visible in the background.

Little is known of composer Bishop; apparently he was also an inventor, and was granted patents for a chicken incubator in 1890 and a combination broom and dustpan holder in 1891.

The music was brought to the attention of Northport Community Band Director Don Sherman by audience member Christine Oster, by way of Band charter member Mario Gatto. Sherman prepared a band arrangement and will conduct the premiere on Thursday. “It’s a pleasant march that sounds like it was written by a fan of Sousa and his contemporaries,” he said. “Adapting this music for a contemporary band was an enjoyable challenge. As several of our musicians are attorneys by trade, the legal connection intrigues me, too.”

For more information, contact Don Sherman at 631-261-6972, 631-456-8143 or dndsherm@optonline.net.

Images via Northport Historical Society