Reminder: The Milwaukee Festival Brass Christmas Concert is this afternoon at 3 PM in Schwan Concert Hall on the campus of Wisconsin Lutheran College, about 88th and Wisconsin.
Two more concerts are coming up in this Holiday season and they both look like a lot of fun.
The first is in Wauwatosa. The Wauwatosa Community Band presents Christmas On Broadway, combining the sounds of the season with music from some wonderful Broadway Shows. The concert begins at 7:30 this Tuesday December 16th at Longfellow Middle School in Wauwatosa, the corner of 76th Street and North Avenue. Tickets are $5, $3 for seniors and students and can be purchased at the door.
Some of the Broadway shows represented include Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, and West Side Story. The Christmas music includes one of my classical favorites, the Troika from Prokofiev's Lt. Kije Suite, as well as Leroy Anderson's Christmas Festival, maybe one of the best medley's of Christmas music written for band. (If you're not familiar with this arrangement, I have one thing to suggest for you listen for. Toward the end of the piece, Anderson completes Jingle Bells and goes into O Come All Ye Faithful. But if you listen carefully, you'll hear the low brass performing Faithful, and the trumpets (in the background) continuing on Jingle Bells. In fact, Anderson used the Jingle Bells rhythm in the background during the big ending. And yet it works...wonderfully! Keep an ear out for that one!
The second concert is Horns A Plenty Christmas performed by the Fox Valley Horn Choir, Saturday December 20th in Appleton, at the City Center Plaza Mall, 200 East Washington Street, across and up the street from the Paper Vally Hotel. The concert begins at 1 PM and if you would like to sit and listen to the concert, be sure to BRING YOUR OWN CHAIR! The chairs that the mall has will be used for the nearly 100 French Horn players who will perform. They literally take up the entire center court of the mall!
This concert was a big success last year, not only for the wonderful music, but also because the Fox Valley Horns set a Guinness World Record for the number of horn players performing in a Christmas Concert. This year they intend to break their own record.
And the concert will have a special guest. Bill Barnewitz from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra will be there, and will bring copies of his CD, proceeds of which benefit research on Parkinson's Disease. Wonderful music, a CD that would make a great stocking stuffer, all a few days before Christmas. It doesn't get any better than that.
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