|
It’s time for the third and final 2009 Pioneer Park
Picnic & Pops Concert by Nevada County Concert Band (NCCB). This time the theme is “Victors and
Villains,” held at Pioneer Park in Nevada City on Sunday August 23, 2009 at
5:00 pm in the newly painted band shell.
The audience will be treated to Broadway tunes, popular songs,
classical favorites, movie classics, and more. The ”Go West” medley depicts the concert theme through the
Wild West period of American history with the good guys, the white hats,
marshals, and sheriffs or just plain honest citizen verses the bad guys, the
robbers, cheating gunfighters, and other banditos. This medley includes tunes from “The Magnificent Seven,”
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, and “Hang ‘Em High.”
The featured number will be “Rhapsody for Flute” by
Stephan Bulla, performed by our own very good flutist and band president
Cathy Harding. It’s a
surprisingly playful and jazzy modern composition, that doesn’t follow with
normal expectations. Instead it
opts for a sneakier sound at the beginning, a placid middle section, and a
wonderfully heroic ending.
|
But the program starts with a tribute to Michael Jackson
with his song “Bad,” and then continuing with the stormy number “A Night on
Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky which appeared in DIsney’s
“Fantasia.” The band’s vocalist
Sarah Pressler will make it sound very good to be bad with “I Want to Be
Evil,” a song made famous by the sultry Eartha Kitt. And don’t forget the soundtrack music
from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” plus a selection from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
“Phantom of the Opera.”
And then there are those that waver between good and
evil, as heard in the Broadway show “Wicked” about what happened behind the
scenes in the land of Oz.
Not only will there be phantoms, witches, cowboys, and
pirates, but some good guys too.
“Mobbusters” will remind you of the old radio shows’ mystery
themes. The band will pay
tribute to the rock group, The Who, with a medley of tunes borrowed from the
UC Berkeley “Cal Band” for this concert which includes the theme from
television’s “CSI.”
And to see that good triumphs, the band will conclude
with the fast-paced military march from
“William Tell Overture” by Giacchino Rossini, which the audience is
sure to recognize as the theme music from the great American hero and victor,
the Lone Ranger.
|
