Community Band comes of age in spring concert this Saturday at Orcas Center

The Orcas Island Community Band. Photo courtesy of Gail Johannes.

The Orcas Island Community Band is set to perform perhaps their most ambitious program yet this Saturday night, June 6. Its membership is united in the fun and  love of music — a love that many have returned to years since they last picked up their instruments.

Joe Babcock, Band Director, says of the group he took over about two years ago, “We’ve made huge improvements in lots of areas. This concert is really challenging, and that’s not a bad thing.”

The program includes: John Phillip Sousa compositions,  The Thunderer and The Glory of the Yankee Navy;  Third Suite by Robert E. Jager (including a march, waltz and rondo; Ojo de Aguila (Eagle Eye) by Dr. Everett Maxwell; An English Sea Song Suite by Phillip Sparke; Polly Oliver, by Thomas Root; and  The Magnificent Seven by Elmer Bernstein.

Babcock praised his musicians: “They work so hard; I’m real pleased with the work they’ve done to present this program. We’re reaching way outside of our little comfort zone. We’re right at the edge of our technique, but the band is a whole lot better than they think they are.”

Of  the 40-member band, Babcock says, “We have a nice-size group, considering that we have exactly the right number of every instrument.”

John Crandall plays with Joe Boucher and Dmitri Stankevich in the trombone section. Crandall joined the band this winter, after a career as a college bio-chemistry professor that took him all over the country, and even to the Caribbean island of Grenada, where he was living when the U.S. occupied the country in 1983.

He  played trombone in his high school and college bands, but it’s been 25 years since he last shouldered his trombone. The Community Band “is very comparable to the college band, in that the school didn’t have a music major, so you were in the band strictly for the fun of it.”

Like many of the band members, he favors the march music that the band plays at summer events such as the 4th of July parade and Fireworks, but he also anticipates playing  Polly Oliver,  “When it comes around, I find it very enjoyable.”

“This is a great group to play with, we have a lot of fun,”  he says. Some of that fun will be evident when Crandall joins Russ Harvey, Gil Blinn and Wayne Haslett in a slow Dixieland rendition of Just a Closer Walk with Thee.

Rebecca Earnest, one of the band’s seven strong flute players, hadn’t picked up her pipe in 40 years until she came to Orcas Island from Seattle, where she’d worked as an editor of books and magazines. Although she hadn’t played since high school, when band member John Evans’ wife Wanda found out she’d played the flute, Rebecca was recruited into the band. “I’m still playing catch-up, but it’s good to have the experience,” she says.

Tammy Grantham joined the band’s clarinet section in  January after not playing for 20-odd years. She says, “At first I joined just to please my dad, but now I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”  Grantham’s dad is band member Ron Myers, and her daughter is Kailley Grantham, one of several accomplished young musicians in the band.

Kailley, a sophomore, plays the flute and saxophone; Brittany Crowe,  a senior, plays the clarinet and is a board member for the band. Joe Boucher, also a senior, plays trombone.

Boucher’s dad Rick had played the trombone asaa youngster, and Joe picked it up and played with the school band in elementary and middle school.  Most of his technique is self-taught, Joe says, and he has played with the community band  for 5 years, having joined the as an 8th-grader. He says that although the trombone plays more of the bass line than the melody, “everything’s important in a band.”

Joe says that what most attracts him to playing music is “the expression — other people can’t do it for you —  when I get that feeling that I’ve given everything I could. I want to give that experience to others.”

He plans to attend Eastern Washington University in Cheney on a music scholarship and to major in music education, with his sights on being a high school or private teacher. His studies will require that he learn to play the piano, but “otherwise, I’m going to stick with the ‘bone,” he says.

Another twist on the “returning musician” theme that characterizes the band are members Sue Kimple and Russ Harvey, who were Orcas Island school students themselves.

Kimple is part of the band’s flute section. She played in the band at Orcas High School, under the direction of Wally Gudgell, Senior.

Then she put down her flute for 20-some years, until she tried to interest her children in playing an instrument, but “none of them stuck with it for long.”  Sue, however, picked up her daughter’s flute and joined the band when Kirke Muse was its director and has been with it ever since.

“It’s a great organization, a great group of people, and we have a lot of fun playing music, especially in the summer when we play informally.” Kimple’s favorite piece is the march Footlifter, which has kind of become our signature piece.”

Kimple recalls the band’s first formal concert, at the 10-year anniversary of Orcas Center, where the band played The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

“It was a little nerve-wracking, but soon we had the crowd singing along.”

Perhaps that experience will be repeated at the Community Band’s Spring Concert, this Saturday, June 6,  at 7:30 p.m. at Orcas Center.  You’d hate to miss that!