By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Back in fall 1923, BGSU student Leo Lake and industrial arts faculty member Earl Claire Powell brought together 20 instrumentalistss to form the first band at BGSU.
The celebration of the centenary of band music on campus will culminate this weekend with two performances. On Saturday, April 6, at 5 p.m. the Symphonic Band directed by Kenneth Thompson and University Band directed by Jon Waters will perform. On Sunday, April 7* at 3 p.m. director of bands Bruce Moss leads an alumni band on the second half of the Wind Symphony concert. Both performances will be in Kobacker Hall in the Moore Musical Arts Center on campus.
The Sunday performance also marks Moss’s 30th year as band director. He took over from BGSU legend Mark Kelly, who had been director of bands since 1966.
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The performance will include the premier performance of “All the Earth and Air” by Tyler Grant. The piece was commissioned by the Band Alumni Association in honor of Moss.
The commission was a surprise, Moss said. He was informed of it at Homecoming last September. That homecoming, the biggest turnout for homecoming that Moss said he could remember, marked the beginning of the 100th anniversary celebrations.
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“All the Earth and Air” will be performed by a band of 80 alumni from the period Moss has been director of bands.
The piece, Moss said, was written so it could be played by a good high school ensemble. That level of difficulty was intentional. Many of the alumni band members are band directors and they want a piece they can perform with their ensembles.
That band will be joined by about 50 musicians who had played during Kelly’s regime.
Pulling the band together was a chore, Moss said. Organizers reached out using Facebook Messenger, and used contact information from the alumni band that was assembled to pay tribute to Kelly after his death in November 2017.
Care had to be taken to balance out the instrumentation of the band.
There’s a flute player coming in from New York and a trumpet player from Georgia. Several members of Washington D.C. based service bands will also participate. That includes saxophonist David Babich from the U.S. Navy Band, who will be featured soloist on “Premier Solo de Concours” by Gabriel Pares.
For a grand finale, a group from the Falcon Marching Band and other student musicians will join in for the alma mater and other BGSU pep repertoire. They’ll be lining the rafters of the hall.
“That’s going to be one huge band,” Moss said. But then “it only happens once.”
*an early version of this story had an incorrect date.
