By Dave Babbitt – Special to the Sydenham Current
In quoting the late, great, Kenny Rogers, “you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run”.
Yes, I’m a gambler.
Perhaps it’s hard to imagine a lifelong Baptist gambling, but fear not, I’m not gambling my money away.
However, I am taking a significant musical gamble which I will explain.
As a long-time member of the Wallaceburg Arts Council, my membership can be measured in decades as opposed to years.
As a member of the Arts Council, I’ve been a part of many planning meetings as we struggled to select who we should bring to town and feature.
I love my hometown, but I also know how difficult it is to attract an audience to something that isn’t a rock, country, or blues concert.
My experience has been that if people think a presentation might fall into a category I’ll refer to as “Fine Art”, they often run in the opposite direction.
From my perspective, it has always been a struggle who our organization should attempt to expose our citizenry to.
It’s a double-edged sword.
We’ve always wanted to expose people to artists that we in Wallaceburg aren’t exposed to regularly, but at the same time, don’t want to preach to people what we might think they should be listening to.
Most don’t like to be preached to, but there is so much untapped music out there that we (I) feel is worthy of at least a casual listen.
My musicianship can be easily questioned but IF I have a strength, it’s in programming.
I know what sells and what doesn’t.
Keeping that in mind, as our Wallaceburg Concert Band has matured, I’ve been very careful in programming our concerts.
I’ve attempted to keep our music offerings to those that I know people will come and listen to.
Our music to-date has largely been rock, pop, country, music from musicals and movies, and well-known theme songs.
This has worked so well that we have now reached our goal of attracting full houses to our concerts.
But in the process of building an audience, I’ve ignored a lot of other great music.
About a year and a half ago, I decided that we should attempt to present a concert that features much of the music I’ve ignored in my programming, and this is where my big gamble comes in.
What have I ignored?
We haven’t played any classical, sacred, easy listening, or music from the massive body of work written specifically for concert band that no one gets to hear.
That’s all music that has traditionally been a hard-sell here in Wallaceburg.
I’m also an avowed fan of the pipe organ and classic pipe organ repertoire.
I’ve long wanted to expose an audience to the pipe organ and experience how amazing it is to watch a classically trained organist play multiple keyboards (manuals), change stops, use both feet on the foot pedals, operate the swell pedal, and toe couplers.
It’s dazzling to watch, and I want to put cameras on the instrument and project it to our big screen.
For those reasons, I decided to gamble and program a concert unlike anything we’ve presented to date.
We started work on music for this concert a year and a half ago and have tackled it in fits and starts, fitting rehearsals in between our traditional “pop” concert preparations.
But twice my plans were derailed.
My problems started when I could not secure the church we needed to present this concert in Wallaceburg and unfortunately, was forced to seek out an appropriate venue elsewhere.
I’m thrilled to announce that we have managed to secure the use of St. Paul’s Congregational Church in Chatham for this concert.
If readers have never been there, the facility is gorgeous, and the perfect venue for our band to present the beautiful music we will be playing.
Unfortunately, the setting, acoustics, and seating may make you never want to attend another one of our concerts at WDSS.
Sadly, after much time being invested in finding the perfect location to present this concert, we have encountered last-minute problems securing the organist needed to present the concert that I had programmed, so we will have to save that experience for a future concert.
My gamble with this concert is multi-faceted as we are playing music that has traditionally been a difficult sell in Wallaceburg, we are playing the concert in Chatham instead of Wallaceburg, the concert is in the evening at a time of year when darkness comes early, and preparations for this concert will divert some of our attention from our Christmas preparations.
But don’t worry, we’ll be ready!
However, I don’t think anyone should miss this concert.
The music will be stunning, in a beautiful setting.
In addition to our full band, the Wallaceburg Brass Quintet and the Dolce Argento flute trio will be taking part.
Dan and I have both touted clarinetist Gavin Warren and his exceptional skills multiple times in this very space.
If you’ve never heard him, do not miss this concert!
When Gavin played at the final “Saturdays at Seven” concert in Chatham at St. Andrew’s church back in June, even amongst other excellent performers, when he finished, the audience leapt to their feet in a standing ovation that didn’t want to end!
Gavin will be joined by Dr. Tiiu Hammer on the piano and they will dazzle you.
Guaranteed.
Brent DeNure, a member of our band’s trumpet section has been hiding his exceptional piano skills and will be featured in an arrangement of a much-loved piece that we had commissioned specially for him.
The band itself will present some gorgeous scores and will feature Marcy Kennedy on flute and Karin Micheelsen on oboe.
If our “Rock, Roll, and Remember” concert in April hit you over the head, this one will soothe your wounds.
Come and hear a different side of our band.
We’ve titled our concert “An Autumn Adventure” and it will be presented at St. Paul’s Congregational Church on Saturday, October 19th at 7 pm.
Our extremely loyal Wallaceburg and area supporters followed us to the Chatham Capitol Theatre in droves for our 2022 Christmas show (and we’re back there this year on Dec 1st) and we’re crossing our fingers that this huge gamble will be rewarded with your attendance.
In getting back to Kenny’s song, we too are hoping to find “an ace that we can keep”, your support.
Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi
Photo license, here.
