Photo courtesy Chris TannerBy Heidi Tanner
Special to The PREVIEW
The seventh annual Band-O-Rama is just around the corner. This year’s concert will be held on April 21 at 7 p.m. in the Pagosa Springs High School auditorium.
The Band-O-Rama concert is hosted by the Pagosa Springs Community Band and features our middle school and high school bands along with our own band.
The Band-O-Rama concert was the brainchild of alto sax player Bill Gottschalk, a founding member of the Pagosa Springs Community Band and a retired music educator from Texas. One of the missions of the Community Band is to promote music education in our schools and the Band-O-Rama concert is our primary vehicle to fulfill this goal.
The evening is filled with a variety of concert band and jazz band music as each band performs a short set of its own pieces. The grand finale of the evening is our combined band number, where all the bands are on stage together playing a patriotic number to conclude the concert. At this point, the high school auditorium’s stage is filled to the brim with musicians and the auditorium itself is booming with the sound of 100-plus concert band instruments. This year, our combined band finale piece will be John Philip Sousa’s “The Thunderer,” a famous march that all will recognize and enjoy.
The Community Band will be led during our set by three conductors. First is Larry Elginer, a music educator from the Los Angeles area who retired to Pagosa Springs some years ago and has been conducting our band for several seasons.
Second is Malinda Burnett, a graduate of Fort Lewis College who has also conducted our band for many years and serves as the music director at Pagosa Springs Middle School.
Our third conductor, Dan Burch, is the music director of Pagosa Springs High School and has acted as a guest conductor for our group in the past.
All three conductors join our group playing in their respective sections, which are trumpet for Elginer, saxophone for Burnett and trombone for Burch when they are not leading the band on the podium. Of course, Burch and Burnett will be leading their respective school bands during the evening as well as the Community Band, making for a busy evening for our music educators.
The Community Band and all the members of our student bands look forward to playing for you at Band-O-Rama on April 21. This is a free concert, though donations will be accepted with gratitude and a receipt can be provided to you for tax purposes.
Proceeds collected from this concert are shared equally between the Community Band, the Pagosa Springs Middle School Music Department and the Pagosa Springs High School Music Department. Your donations will help to build a stronger music education program in our Pagosa schools.
Thank you in advance for your assistance and we look forward to seeing you at 7 p.m. on April 21 in the high school auditorium. The doors open at 6:30 p.m.
