The outdoor concert

Bela Bartok; The Miraculous Mandarin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conducting

Now and then, on any given summer Sunday, Mom would suggest that we pack a picnic after church, head to Sioux Falls and listen to an afternoon band concert at Sherman Park on the west edge of town near the Great Plains Zoo. We had a formula: Dad would drive us to the park, we kids would take a ride on the swings while Mom unpacked the picnic, we would eat the picnic, Dad would stretch out on a blanket on the grass to take a nap, my sisters and I would have a round at the playground while keeping an eye on the band concert site, we’d alert Mom and Dad when the concert was about to begin, we’d find a spot in the shade, the concert would start and Dad would fall into his second nap.

The very first concert of the Sioux Falls Municipal Band occurred on July 11, 1920 in McKennan Park and they say that several thousand people attended. A year earlier, in the city’s first election allowing women to vote, Sioux Falls citizens approved a proposal to support a city band. They keep a very busy schedule. In 2009, the SFMB performed 38 themed concerts from May 16 until August 2. It is one of the few municipal bands in the United States that is supported by tax dollars.

About the time my sister D. and I were in high school or in college, our own hometown of Brookings announced the formation of the Brookings Community Band. No auditions; anybody that wanted to play could take a seat in their particular section. About half way through the first rehearsal all players in each section of the new ensemble had made assessment the each other and reseated themselves accordingly. Middle school students sat next to retired collegiate math instructors, collegiate music majors played together with United States Postal Service employees. The audiences that summer heard marches, Broadway musical medlies, overtures, pop tune arrangements, jazz charts and maybe a children’s march. It was mid-western small town living at its finest.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland exists, of all places, in St. Mary’s City in southern Maryland. The four-year public, secular liberal arts college enrolls about two thousand students and shares much of its campus with Historic St. Mary’s City, the fourth site of colonization in British North America. On Friday evenings in June and July, the River Concert Series offers the best ticket in town and for miles around, except that nobody needs a ticket. This is an absolutely free event.

For eleven years, the Chesapeake Orchestra, led by Maestro S., has brought an inestimable wealth of classical music and pops performances to a captivated southern Maryland fan base whose numbers have snowballed into the thousands since its first season. The performance shell sits at the broad end of the college’s Townhouse Green overlooking the St. Mary’s River. Audience members often arrive one to two hours early to stake out a good spot on the grass and enjoy a picnic. An army of vendors serves to gastronomically arm the “picnic preparationally challenged”. Falafels, kabobs and smoothies abound. So do hotdogs.

Doesn’t this sound wonderful? We have, laid before us, the Sunday afternoon band concert on steroids. Splendid music with amazing musicians, astounding backdrop with a stunning sunset, mouth-watering pork barbeque sandwiches with extra sauce. Where do you go from here?

Here: My cap comes off when the audience stands on its feet following a stirring performance of some ugly, unharmonic, rhythmically jolting, formless, keyless, break-all-the-rules-if-you-can-find-‘em, brilliant 20^th or even 21^st century masterwork. Maestro S. doesn’t have the Chesapeake Orchestra subsist entirely on Leroy Anderson, Gilbert and Sullivan, John Philip Sousa and Enya. To the delight of audience member and orchestra musician alike, the Maestro doesn’t back away from the standard orchestral repertoire just because there are hamburgers.

I’ve played with the Chesapeake Orchestra many times. But the concert I remember is one where three of the four previous concerts had been rained out. The orchestra rehearses on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons with the concert in the evening. On this particular concert, we had rehearsed all week, tenaciously and doggedly, on Bela Bartok’s concert version of his ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin”. And the rains came at two o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. And Maestro S. said, “No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. Not this time, no. We’ve got something special for the audience that we’re all a little proud of. Let’s go inside.” So, for the first time in its history, the Chesapeake Orchestra went into the gym, like a high school band, and set things up for an afternoon rehearsal and then a concert. And when we got to the Bartok, we played every single ugly, unharmonic, rhythmically jolting, formless, keyless, break-all-the-rules-if-you-can-find-‘em, yet brilliant measure of the 20^th Century masterpiece while sitting in wooden chairs in a featureless room with boomy acoustics. Our standing O was immediate.

I may be a little fickle. Concerts should be for everybody to enjoy. And I suppose everybody is free to enjoy them if they can. But it’s nice to play for an audience that enjoys the performance of a piece, even if it doesn’t necessarily enjoy the piece itself. When you hear music like this outside, though, you can also enjoy the birds, the clouds, the sky, the smell of food, the sunset, the view, the grass, the trees and the kids playing on the grassy knoll behind the performance shell. If you don’t like the music, life’s still pretty good.

Credits: To the Sioux Falls Municipal Band, for ninety years of music. Good for you. Here’s to ninety more.