By Dave Babbitt – Special to the Sydenham Current
For the recent marriage of my oldest son Ryan and now daughter-in-law Liza’s wedding, I hired a professional string quartet, a subset of the Sarnia-Port Huron International Symphony.
The incredible beauty of the music brought an air of class harkening back to an era of the past.
It was stunningly beautiful.
I recently accompanied a couple of our Concert Band members on a pilgrimage to Toronto to offer my ear and advice in their purchase of brand new, professional-level wind instruments.
Helping them spend many thousands of dollars on new instruments brought me a double helping of joy.
They purchased beautiful sounding high-end instruments to play in our band, and I was helping spend someone else’s money!
Differing from typical pop music “gear heads” who live a life of regular buying and selling of their equipment, wind instruments of this calibre are usually lifetime purchases, and I couldn’t be happier for them.
On a recent evening, I had the pleasure of hanging with local musician and former student, Jeff Black.
It was fun catching-up on a myriad of topics and sharing experiences.
Jeff is an over-the-top talent and one of the few locals who can pay the bills functioning as a professional, jobbing musician.
Most locals know of Patty Lee, her beautiful voice, her many past recordings, and special Christmas programs. I recently had the opportunity to assist Patty with a recording project and let me just say, “she’s still in very fine voice”.
Our Wallaceburg Concert Band will fire-up mid-September to start preparing new music for the upcoming Christmas season and there are still several talented wind musicians out there that I’d love to have join us.
You know who you are.
Please contact me so I can ensure that we have an instrument for you.
It may have been decades since you last played but trust me, it comes back!
Speaking of Christmas concerts, our Wallaceburg Concert Band has two dates to put on your calendar right now. Our annual Christmas concert presented at WDSS is planned for Saturday, December 3 at 7 p.m., but I’m thrilled to share with everyone that we have been afforded the opportunity to play the Chatham Capitol Theatre on Sunday afternoon, December 11 at 3 p.m.
This will be an entirely different concert than our offering here in Wallaceburg the previous week so hopefully, you will be able to attend both concerts.
Why are we so excited to play at the Capitol Theatre?
It’s our first opportunity to perform in a real concert hall with great acoustics, on a stage large enough to accommodate us, and with nice seating and sight lines for our audience.
We appreciate being able to use the Webber Auditorium at WDSS, for our concerts but it’s a gym, not a concert hall.
Any potential new members for our Learn-to-Play wind instrument program that will start later in September are encouraged to contact me as soon as possible via our website or Facebook page.
Like the many other commodity shortages these days, our regular instrument supplier has informed me that they won’t see any new wind instruments until at least January.
Knowing which instruments we will need this Fall will go a long way in helping us plan.
In a blatant rip-off of the Courier Press, the “young man on Elgin St.” tells me that it’s about time the many talents in Wallaceburg come together and present a full-blown musical.
There are many amongst us who have the skills required to direct, sing, act, choreograph, build sets, and sew costumes.
To top it off, our local Concert Band has the resources to pull together a great pit band. The thing we’re lacking is a venue to present such a production, but as Dan White reminds me, “the Stratford Festival started in a big tent”.
Who’s going to take this on?
On our trip to the Long and McQuade flagship Bloor St. store in Toronto, while my friends were test-driving some new instruments, I wandered over to the flute section.
At the end of the row of the many flutes on display was a discontinued model on sale for a mere $27,900!
I told the salesperson that I’d take two but he only had the one, so I had to walk away from the deal.
It was two or none I told him.
If you think the flute that I mentioned above was expensive, last summer I met a professional bassoonist in McKellar (outside of Parry Sound) playing at an outdoor weekend market.
The bassoon she was playing cost a mere $50,000 but said her “main axe” cost her over $100,000!
Take that guitar players.
Our Concert Band rehearses in the Community Fellowship Baptist Church on Elgin St.
In the early fall and later spring, we sometimes need to open the windows to keep cool.
In our early days of rehearsing there, I was concerned about potential noise complaints from the neighbours when the windows were open, but what a great bunch of neighbours!
Some of our neighbours tell me they sit outside to hear us rehearse in the nice weather and last week when we had an impromptu “Christmas in August” rehearsal, one neighbour texted me asking me to open the windows!
Thank you to our kind neighbours.
My previous column regarding the sorry state of music education in our Public Schools has unquestionably generated the most feedback of anything I’ve written to-date but unless people take School Boards to task, things won’t change.
I have a notion to offer free, mass music lessons for elementary students, keeping in mind that the Education Act permits students to miss up to “one-half day per week” for external music lessons.
Students leaving the schools en masse every week for music lessons would upset school scheduling immensely.
If that were to happen, I’d bet money that the Board would take notice and suddenly start offering the quality music education the curriculum sets out, and every child deserves.
