‘Celebration’

What: Combined concert featuring Sequim City, Band, Navy Band Northwest

When: 3 p.m. Sunday, March 1

Where: Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.

Cost: Free

More info: www.sequimcityband.org

With about 90 musicians between their two combined groups, the Sequim City Band and Navy Band Northwest are bringing a cavalcade of music from various eras and origins to the Olympic Peninsula for their “Celebration” concert.

This free event comes to Port Angeles High School’s Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave., at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 1.

The concert sees combined performances from the 30-musician Navy Band Northwest’s Wind Ensemble, along with about 60 musicians from the Sequim City Band, at times under the direction of Sequim director Tyler Benedict and at others under Lt. Christopher Cornette of Navy Band Northwest.

“They (city band musicians) are are excited to do something new with professional musicians,” Benedict says. “It’s something we don’t get to do very often. It will be great to have them here.”

Navy Band Northwest and the Sequim City Band have played together back in 2014 at Sequim High School but haven’t played as one band.

With about 90 musicians on stage, Benedict says, the groups needed more room.

“That’s why we’re at Port Angeles,” he says.

Benedict says he hopes to see a big crowd for the concert, to see the Sequim and Port Angeles communities support the troops through Navy Band Northwest.

“They don’t expect huge crowds … (but) it’d be nice to see people come out,” he says. “We’re also trying to encourage families to attend.”

Musical stand-outs

A particular highlight of the concert’s first half, Cornette says, is “A Klezmer Tribute,” a piece that will feature soloist MU1 Deanna Brizgys on clarinet.

Klezmer music — traditional, secular music played by Ashkenazi Jews for joyful celebrations such as weddings — is made for dancing and includes fast and slow tempos, Sequim City Band members note. Under Cornette’s direction, the band accompaniment replaces traditional klezmer instruments of violin, cello, hammered dulcimer, accordion and drums.

“It’s just absolutely a stunner,” he says.

For Cornette, a native Washingtonian who is based with the Navy Band Northwest in Kitsap County, a particular highlight for this concert comes in the second half with “March Indienne,” a piece composed by 19th-century French composer Adolphe Sellenick.

“Just because it’s so rare; to hear it live, that doesn’t happen (often),” Cornette says.

He says he found the piece while poring through military band recording archives years ago in Washington, D.C.

“It’s a gem; it’s a slow march, not your up-tempo, ‘Stars and Stripes’ (kind),” Cornette says. “It’s got a kind of heartbeat pace to it.”

The concert

“Celebration” includes a first half with Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture,” a piece originally composed for orchestra. In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the piece in just three days, to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ 1917 October Revolution.

“Festive Overture” is a piece that many Sequim City Band musicians will remember playing back in college some 30 to 50 years ago, Benedict says.

Also included in the first half are pieces from Richard Wagner’s romantic opera “Lohengrin” and “A Klezmer Tribute.”

The combined band will perform other celebratory music through the first half of the concert.

Following intermission, the Navy Band Northwest will continue the theme with “Colonial Song,” a piece that Percy Grainger composed in 1911 during his service in the United States Army. The piece is based on original melodies celebrating his native Australia and is mostly played by military bands.

Along with “March Indienne,” the second half includes Michael Kamen’s 2001 composition “Band of Brothers” — a concert band adaptation of the miniseries of the same name. The TV series commemorated the experiences of the soldiers of “Easy Company” (part of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment) assigned to the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division during World War II.

The concert wraps up with a U.S. military service song medley.

The players

An all-volunteer community concert band, the Sequim City Band boasts 70 musicians, with 55-65 on stage for any given concert. Members hail from across the North Olympic Peninsula; current members reside in Sequim and Carlsborg, Port Angeles, Forks, Port Townsend, Port Hadlock and Poulsbo.

Under the direction of Benedict since 2013, the band has a mission “To Perform, Preserve, and Promote Concert Band Music.”

Sequim City Band’s rehearsal space and summer home for free concerts is at the James Center For The Performing Arts, 350 N. Blake Ave., and has two concert seasons: the outdoors “Concerts at The James” series during the spring and summer months, and the “Indoor Concert” series (held at Sequim and/or Port Angeles high school facilities) during the fall and winter.

Following the March 1 event, the city band’s next concert is its first “Concerts at The James” performance of 2020, set for Sunday, May 3, during the opening weekend of the 125th Sequim Irrigation Festival.

For more information about the Sequim City Band, see www.facebook.com/Sequim.City.Band or www.sequimcityband.org.

With various iterations and ensembles spanning a variety of musical genres, Navy Band Northwest is composed of all active duty personnel … with an emphasis on active.

In 2019, Cornette notes, the band — in all its forms — played 352 performances to 1.63 million live audience members and an estimated broadcast audience of 4 million.

The band played shows from: Cordova, Alaska, and Calgary, Alberta, to the north; as far east as Boulder, Colo., and south to Sacramento, Calif.

“We have the largest area of responsibility of all the bands in the continental U.S.,” Cornette says.

Band highlights from last year include playing at the U.S. Consulate in Calgary and an international concert in Olympia, he says.

But Cornette says he’s happy to bring Navy Band Northwest to the rural, Northwest corner of the state.

“I absolutely love coming out to small town America,” he says. “We love getting out in the audience, talking to folks and building relationships.”

Noting his background with the Poulsbo Community Orchestra, Cornette says, “I love community bands; I have all my life. It’s a whole group of people come out for nothing more than the love of making music.”

Cornette grew up on the outskirts of Redmond before the town swelled to anywhere close to the size it is now, cutting his musical teeth on piano and trumpet before finding his passion for the French horn. While studying music at Central Washington University in Ellensburg he performed as a freelance artist around the state, appearing with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra and the Seattle Mahler Festival Orchestra as well as being a regular performer with numerous chamber music ensembles.

He joined the Washington Air National Guard in 1995 and served for two years as the principal hornist of the 560th Air National Guard Band before joining the U.S. Navy Music Program in 1997. Working with various bands in the U.S. Navy over the years, including international stints, he received a commission as a Naval Officer in the late 2000s and has been Director of Navy Band Northwest since 2018.

“I do enjoy conducting, particularly in those rare moments when everything is connecting,” Cornette says. “But I also miss playing; my heart is with the french horn; that’s also part of the reason I play with community bands.”

Serving on stage

Playing music isn’t a side job for Navy Band Northwest musicians: this is their military career.

“They’re all active duty military; their full time job is this band,” Cornette notes. “We often say we’ve got the best career in the Navy and best career as musicians.”

That means that in addition to performances, each musician is responsible for taking care of their own supplies, administration, instrument care, transportation and more — each piece that makes the band function.

For a typical performance such as the March 1 event with the Sequim City Band, Cornette says the Navy Band Northwest’s wind ensemble will have four half-day rehearsals plus some sectional rehearsals as needed; in all, the band will see 20 to 30 hours of rehearsal.

While the wind ensemble plays eight or nine times per year, the smaller Navy Band Northwest ensembles play more often and have what Cornette calls a constant rehearsing schedule, as they prep for performances for everything from schools and retirement homes to town square celebrations and ceremonies.

Based at Navy Base Kitsap Bangor, most Navy Band Northwest musicians joined the service specifically to play music, Cornette says. Some service bands see a 10-15 percent lateral conversion rate (someone with previous music experience switching to the band after doing some other job).

“It’s getting less and less common, partly because the caliber of player, and the standard that we require to bring in a new player has gotten higher over the years,” he says.

Out of the 30 in the wind ensemble playing in Port Angeles this March, none came from other positions in the service, Cornette notes.

Most of these musicians joined because they heard about Navy bands from another musician, the Navy Band Northwest director says. That was his story, too. While working on his performance degree at CWU, he met a trombone player working on his master’s degree and the two began playing in a brass quintet together. He invited Cornette to check out the National Guard band over a weekend, and Cornette was hooked.

“I absolutely loved it; I played with them for two and a half years.”

Cornette says the band has a large outreach mission that extends to even community’s with no U.S. Navy presence, in towns such as Boise, Idaho, and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“The idea behind it is, whether you have any experience or know the Navy or not, your taxpayer dollars go into what we do,” Cornette says. “You have a right know what were’re doing on your behalf.”

Check out Navy Band Northwest at www.youtube.com/user/NavyBandNW, www.facebook.com/NavyBandNorthwest, or on Instagram, @navybandnorthwest.

Lt. Christopher Cornette leads the Navy Band Northwest’s wind ensemble at a joint concert with the Sequim City Band on March 1. Photo by MU3 Jaclyn Skeweris

MU1 Deanna Brizgys is the featured soloist (clarinet) for the Navy Band Northwest’s wind ensemble at a joint concert with the Sequim City Band on March 1. Photo by MU3 Jaclyn Skeweris

Director Tyler Benedict leads the Sequim City Band in some holiday classic tunes at the annual Home Town Holidays event at Centennial Place on Nov. 30. Benedict helps conduct a joint Sequim City Band/Navy Band Northwest concert on March 1 in Port Angeles. Sequim Gazette file photo by Michael Dashiell