Daily Sitka Sentinel

Holiday Crescendo: Annual Brass Concert

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

“Sitka, great music, great friends and great camaraderie” is the combination of factors that keeps performers – and audiences – returning to the Holiday Brass Concert year after year, says Roger Schmidt.

Holiday Brass Concert in 2013 at the Performing Arts Center. (Sentinel file photo)

“We get to play works that are really challenging and really exciting,” he said in an interview this week.

Schmidt is the organizer and plays trombone in the annual concert, which will go onstage for its 11th year at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 18, at the Sitka Performing Arts Center.

Professional musicians from all over the country come to Sitka each year to play a program that combines classical music with modern and seasonal selections.

Schmidt said planning for the next year’s concert starts right after the latest one ends.

“I work all year,” he said. “When I’m planning the concert, I’m listening to music, and I put things in a folder of ideas for next year. I keep thinking about things I want to do. I think this is going to be our best program I’ve ever done.”

One of this year’s highlights, he said will be Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, by Bach.

“Bach was a big improviser,” Schmidt said. “They say he would sit down for hours and improvise pieces of music.” He said this piece sounds as though it was created in this manner, starting simple, and “getting wilder and more elaborate.”

“It’s just this brilliant epic piece,” he said.

Schmidt is also looking forward to “Pie Jesu,” with Rhiannon Guevin of Sitka as the vocalist. Usually the Gabriel Faure piece is done with a full orchestra, but Schmidt found a brass arrangement that he likes as well.

“It’s a really well-known melody,” said Guevin, who earned her bachelor’s of music degree in vocal performance from the University of Puget Sound in 2012.

“It’s very simple, but a moving melody, and a very tranquil piece,” she said. “The lyrics talk about, ‘Give them rest, give them everlasting rest.”

Guevin sang the piece at her senior recital in college.

“It worked out pretty well for me, when Roger said we wanted to do it for the Holiday Brass Concert,” she said.

“It’s always fun to come back to a piece,” Guevin said. “Your voice changes, and you get new perspectives on things.”

She said she has found the most difficult aspect is that it is a “very sustained piece.” “You have to be thinking about breathing a lot. That is something I’ve been focusing on while practicing it, and producing a richer timbre while singing it.”

The Holiday Brass Concert is a fundraiser for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, which Schmidt heads as director. Guevin is the program manager for the camp, and another musician, Donna Parkes, was an instructor at the camp this year.

Parkes, a principal trombone player in the Louisville (Kentucky) Orchestra and the Colorado Music Festival, is returning for her sixth year as a performer in the holiday concert.

She said Schmidt does a good job putting together a high-level group of musicians.

“It’s always artistically a very satisfying concert to play as well,” Parkes said.

She said among her favorites on this year’s program are a Kleinsuite from the Nutcracker, featuring “Chocolate,” “Coffee” and “Trepak.”

“It’s fun to have it just for brass instruments,” she said. “They’re fantastic pieces.”

Parkes said she’s also looking forward to hearing some of her young Fine Arts Camp students, who will be performing a short selection.

Schmidt said the friendships that develop over the years and the appeal of Sitka are other attractions to the visiting musicians. He added that scores of local volunteers turn out in the week leading up to the concert to make treats and organize meals and rides and other things that will make the visitors feel welcome.

Parkes said the musicians rehearse for most of their brief time together before the concert, but she tries to get in some kind of hike or walk on the local trails.

“The other thing I love to do is eat,” she said. The main food event is a seafood dinner, usually put on by Schmidt’s family.

Schmidt said he and others have worked hard to build the reputation of the concert.

“I think we have a huge network of artists – they’re great artists who come from all over the country, who have a relationship with Sitka,” he said. “I know it’s not hard to find great artists to come to Sitka for the concert. ... There’s a lot of excitement about the show. Each year, we’ve been fortunate to have people who are literally considered the very best in the country as classical musicians. It’s pretty neat to build that out, and to see people rearranging their schedule so they’re free.”

Besides the full-time professional musicians, the concert will showcase members of the Sitka music community, including Ross Venneberg, a master’s student in trumpet at Manhattan School of Music; Sitka High music teacher Sarah Martinson, trumpet; and George Jones, who is studying trombone at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. 

Former Sitkans Wade Demmert, bass trombone, and percussionist Ed Littlefield will also be returning to play in the concert.

Other music on the program includes:

Badinerie from the B Minor Orchestral Suite by Bach

Minuet I and II, Courante from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major by Bach

Brandenburg Concerto No. 2,” by Bach

Sacrae Symphoniae: Canzon Septimi Octavi Toni a 12, by Giovanni Gabrieli

A Prelude and Fugue for Christmas, by Simon Will

Kleinesuite from “The Nutcracker,” by Tchaikowsky

“Sussex Mummers’ Christmas Carol,” by Percy Grainger

Rhapsody in E Flat Major, Op. 119 No. 4, by Brahms

O Magnum Mysterium, by Morten Lauridsen

“Farandole” from L’arlesienne Suite No. 2, by Georges Bizet

“The Christmas Song,” by Robert Wells and Mel Torme

Tickets for the show are $25 for adults, and $20 for students and seniors, available at Old Harbor Books and the SFAC office. Call 747-3085 for further information.