By Jim Bloch
Music for a Winter Evening.
That was the perfect title for the holiday program by the bands of St. Clair High School, performed Dec. 9 in front of a big crowd at the East China Performing Arts Center. The concert took place in a window between a morning snow squall and a late-night snowstorm.
“The kids have made great progress this year,” said director Micah Volz from the stage, introducing the Symphonic Band, which looked sharp in crisp black outfits with a sprinkling of Santa hats atop the musicians. The 44-piece band was augmented by a half-dozen percussionists.
The band opened with the march “Hosts of Freedom” by American composer Karl L. King, a foot-tapping piece that Volz contrasted with “A Santa Cecilia” by Italian composer Radaelli, performed by the school’s Wind Ensemble and its 54 players.
“Marches were the most popular musical form in the late 1800s, and composers put their own national twists on their marches,” said Volz.
If you imagined clowns, elephants and highwire artists while listening to King’s piece, it’s no wonder. He led circus bands in the 1910s, including the Sells Floto Circus and the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Volz described the song as more bombastic and faster than Radaelli’s march, which surged with his signature embrace of melody, a richer, fuller, more inviting piece.
In between, the Symphonic Band performed “Christmas Time with Charlie Brown” by Vince Guaraldi, a heavier, thicker, slower version than the light, swinging piano piece by Guaraldi that we’re familiar with.
The Wind Ensemble played Andre Jutras’s “C’est Noel,” which interweaves “He is Born, the Holy Child,” “Silent Night” and “Angels We Have Heard on High” in a way that suggests the world awakening early on a Christmas morning.
Volz proclaimed his love of chamber music and small groups. He noted that the six ensembles that followed the Wind Ensemble were largely student led and student driven.
Volz picked up his trombone and joined the 16-piece Low Brass Ensemble for the bassy, molasses-like “Where’er You Walk,” by Handel, which conjured up images of trekking to Grandma’s house along a muddy lane lighted by an intermittent moon.
The five member French Horn Ensemble, all women, played Handel’s “Joy to the World.”
Volz’s concerts always pack aural and visual surprises, and the Christmas show was no exception. When he moved to the lip of an empty stage with his conductor’s staff raised high, the audience wondered if it might be required to sing. Instead, Volz directed the 18-piece Trumpet Ensemble, sneakily assembled high up against the rear wall of the auditorium, in “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
The 13-member Percussion Ensemble’s “Arabian Dance” from The Nutcracker featured dancers Alexa Lambrecht and Ethan Murray leaping and whirling across the stage. Lambrecht was one of the stars of the night, playing drums in the Saxophone Ensemble’s “Let It Snow!” with Volz on piano, and switching between drums and trombone in the Jazz Band.
The six member Jazz Band opened with Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” which Volz described a Latin-tinged hard bop number, which featured Luke Magel’s slinky solo on vibes.
The Jazz Band managed to fuse together Detroit saxophonist Yusef Lateef’s “Revelation” and Sonny Rollins’ “Sonnymoon for Two” with a syncopated, drum-led bridge and Elijah Goff on her massive baritone sax.
The night ended with the combined bands filling the rostrum and spilling along the open wings on each side of the stage and onto the downstage main floor. They performed “Hooked on a Christmas,” complete with vocals, a take-off on the Swedish glam rock band Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling.”
“Imagine what might happen if Blue Swede and Weird Al had a baby,” said Volz.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
