Band will play music specifically written for or used at circuses
Published in the May 25 – June 7, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo courtesy Jim O’Briant
Members of the Pacific Brass Band play at a recent concert in Monterey.
Get ready for an old-fashioned afternoon concert in the park at Guglielmo Winery. The Pacific Brass Band will perform its inaugural “Music Under the Marquee” show featuring popular hits and familiar circus tunes.
Light-hearted music will be played under the large canopy at Guglielmo which looks much like a circus tent, or what the British call a “marquee,” said Jim O’Briant, the band master of the Pacific Brass Band.
People are encouraged to bring picnics to enjoy while listening to the music. No outside alcohol is permitted, but Guglielmo wine will be for sale on site as they listen to the brass band perform in a relaxing venue.
“We’ll play music specifically written for or music that was widely used by one circus on another for the last 130 years,” O’Briant said. “The Pacific Brass Band will play a variety of popular music such as marches, a couple of light classical numbers, we’ll have at least one soloist performing with the band, at least one Broadway melody, and generally recognizable tunes.”
The South Valley Symphony on occasion works with other musical groups to create concerts for the region that introduces people to other forms of music than classical pieces, he said. This helps develop a great appreciation for all musical arts.
“Sometimes people get intimidated by the idea of going to these symphony concerts, all those people onstage in their tuxedos or black dresses and the unwritten etiquette of what goes with a serious symphony concert – when do you clap, when do you not clap between movements and all that,” O’Briant said. “The South Valley Symphony itself is much less formal than that. A band concert in the park, on which this is patterned after, is even less formal.”
Pacific Brass Band was founded in 1990. At that time, it was one of only two brass bands in California. American bands traditionally have three types of instruments – brass, woodwinds and percussion – but a British-style brass band has brass and percussion, no woodwinds, giving it a different musical quality. In keeping with the British tradition, the Pacific Brass Band performers wear uniforms of a blue blazer and slacks and matching neckties.
“There’s a world-wide tradition of British brass bands because they were placed around the world during the days of the British Empire,” O’Briant said. “There are lots of British brass bands in Australia and New Zealand and India. The tradition has spread to continental Europe so there British brass bands in European countries. And now they’re spreading through the United States.”
The Music Under the Marquee concert will give a feel of small town America when on Friday and Saturday nights people use to gather around their community park band shells and spread out blankets or sit on lawn chairs on the grass and enjoy live music performed by fellow citizens. The music is family-friendly and so kids are welcomed to attend with their parents.
“A lot of people seem to have more fun listening to the music that they recognize,” O’Briant said. “There are going to be some things on our program that people won’t have heard before, but there are going to be tunes that you recognize such as a medley of selections from the Broadway play ‘Oklahoma’ or a version of the Irish tune ‘Danny Boy.’”
Other pieces at the concert will include “Entry of the Gladiators,” a military march composed in 1897 by the Czech composer Julius Fučík, which everyone will recognize, O’Briant said, and the Mexican waltz “Over the Waves,” composed by Juventino Rosas, which is often played for trapeze acts. Several ragtime compositions made for Barnham and Bailey will also be played.
The Pacific Brass Band is comprised of about 30 musicians from Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. The concert will last about two hours.
