Marine Band plays patriotic pieces

On Wednesday night, the President’s Own United States Marine Band produced a colorful and patriotic performance underscored by brass notes punctuating rapidly paced reeds and roaring percussion to pieces arranged by some of the nation’s most well known composers. The audience, housed in the Frank “Buck” Shaffer Theatre was pleased, evidenced by their hearty applause and standing ovations throughout.

“It has a feeling to it, you want to just get out there and join them,” Granite Hills High School sophomore Jessica Suggs said.

The Marine Band, established in 1798 at the request of congress, provides music for the president and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

With the boisterous beat of a drum and the clashing of a symbol, Director Col. Michael J. Colburn, his navy blue jacket laced with gold piping and fringes, took to the stage and dove into John Philip Sousa’s “March, ‘The Pathfinder of Panama’” — a piece that set the tone for the night’s consistently noble performances. The score was pieced together at the request of a San Francisco newspaper for the opening of the Panama Canal.

This led into a second composition, an overture to an 1886 unfinished opera “The Free Judges” by Hector Berlioz. The drama was evident as deep tones seemed to signal the onset of whatever danger would have played out on the opera’s stage, abruptly turning playful, reverting back to an air of risk and returning to sprightly once again.

James M. Stephenson’s “Allegro con brio from Trumpet Concerto” followed, an arrangement Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Bennear called “quite challenging indeed.”

After a unique performance of a suite from “The Reivers,” a movie based on American author William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, wherein Bennear narrated a script as Ned McCaslin’s character amid the musical performance, the brass players rose from their seats and filed into a line at the edge of the stage and faced their audience.

They stood perfectly erect, a stance emphasized by their red square-shouldered jackets, blowing into their trumpets, tugging on their trombones and bracing their tubas for Sousa’s “Semper Fidelis” march.

The two hour performance entertained a packed theater, with an enormous number of high school students in attendance.

Suggs was impressed by the instrumentalists ability to play rapid tempos and high notes.

Similar to major symphony orchestras, the musicians are selected at auditions, 60 percent of those selected hold advanced degrees in music and most graduate from the nation’s top music schools. They enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps for duty with the Marine Band only.

The rich, identifiably American sounding tunes, were best captured in the second half of the band’s performance that launched with Aaron Copland’s “Emblems.” Copland, who set out to make music that was “distinctly American,” slowed down the band’s tempo with a piece that maintained a relaxed pace and concluded with a loud thud of percussion.

The titles of the concluding two movements also embodied the sounds of the night, “Pride of the People” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The latter was a trio of familiar American melodies that Bennear said are a “part of the very fabric of our country.”

The audience clapped along in rhythm to the recognizable tunes, such as “Grand Old Flag.”

Then, in an ultimate display of patriotism, the band performed a salute to the Armed Forces, prompting local Marines, Army, Navy and Airforce personnel to stand and be recognized.

The Porterville Unified School District, the Porterville High School Panther Band and The Porterville Recorder sponsored the concert which was part of the Marine Band’s 2009 national tour.   

Contact Jenna Chandler at 784-5000, Ext. 1050, or jchandler@portervillerecorder.com.