A musical opportunity for those in the Four Corners area

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When you see March coming up on your calendar, what comes to mind?  First day of spring? St. Patrick’s Day?  MLB spring training?  Swallows coming back to Capistrano?  All good, of course.  For the Four Corners Community Band, we think about returning to Shiprock, NM, for a concert with the Shiprock and Newcomb school bands at the Phil L. Thomas Performing Arts Center. Our concert this year will be March 12, 7:00 p.m.  We look forward to our drive from Cortez and seeing the impressive monolithic formation looming in the distance.  This is, of course, Shiprock, called The Needle in 1860, it later was named Shiprock by Anglo-Americans noticing the similarity of a 19th century clipper ship.  Even if you think you can climb it, sorry,  no longer allowed. Please see http://www.lapahie.com/Shiprock_Peak.cfm   for the Navajo story "Rock with Wings". You will, henceforth, always think differently of this outstanding landmark.        

The town of Shiprock, 13 miles northeast of the formation on the Navajo Reservation, is home of the annual Northern Navajo Fair held every October and to Dine College, a tribally controlled community college. It is also the site of a Chapter House for the Navajo, a Bureau of Indian Affairs agency.  Shiprock is located at a junction where travelers connect with highways to other Four Corners sights, Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon, and you know, if you didn’t already by a compelling lunar landscape, that you are Out West. Many trading posts in the area afford excellent shopping of native southwest art:  rugs, jewelry, pottery, baskets and other objects of Navajo culture.

          

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiprock,_New_Mexico   

The Performing Arts Center, known as “The Phil,” is a state of the art auditorium, named for Phil L. Thomas, an esteemed music teacher for 37 years in the Central Consolidated School District, who hoped to see the Center showcase local public school performances and professional out-of-community performing groups.

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  With the Shiprock and Newcomb school bands and our Four Corners Community Band composed of musicians of all ages, we demonstrate what is possible when communities offer music instruction to students who then may carry it on, as has Phil Thomas, into a lifetime of pleasure.      

     So let the music begin!  We introduce our concert conductors, followed by a sampling of the playlist, including world renowned music by Mozart and our American band master, John Philip Sousa. 

 

The bands from Newcomb, New Mexico are under the direction of Mark Allen

Mark Allen is the music director for Newcomb Middle School and Newcomb High School, in Newcomb, N.M. The schools are part of the Central Consolidated School District. He is in his 30th year of teaching public school band and chorus in Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. Allen received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1981. He also earned his Master's of Music Education degree from Northern Arizona University in 1991. In late 1999, after going to work on the Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, N.M., he began forming the Four Corners Community Band. He led this band for 3 years, as well.

 

The Four Corners Community Band is under the direction of Dani Long

Dani Long became director of the Four Corners Community Band in 2006. While an anthropology major at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, she also studied music theory, classical guitar and cello, and participated in the collegium musicum, Grinnell's early western music ensemble. She resides in Montezuma County, Colorado, where she is fire lookout at Mesa Verde National Park and continues to play the cello with the Silver Echoes flute ensemble at scheduled area events.

 

Below is the playlist for Monday's concert:

Newcomb Playlist
Apollo 13.......................... arr. Vinson
25 to 6 to 4....................... arr. Story
Korean Folk Rhapsody........arr. Curnow
Kentucky 1800........................ Grundman
Land of the Free.........................Harris

Four Corners Community Band Playlist
Semper Fidelis........................ Sousa
The Magnificent Seven............ E. Bernstein
Washington Post .................... Sousa
Canyon Passage .................... Traver
American Patrol..................... Sousa

Combined Bands will perform
Peter Gunn Theme................................arr. Warrington
Selections from The Lion King.............. arr. Lavender
Eine Lleine Nachtmusik from "A Mozart Celebration......arr. Erickson

 

 

See you @ The Phil!  March 12, 2012~~7:00 p.m.