Review of "Offbeat Marches" Concert, May 10, 2010
Concert a perfect metaphor for state of the arts in city
By Peter Jacobi, Bloomington Herald-Times Reviewer, May 12, 2010
A meeting and a concert partially overlapped on Monday late afternoon and early evening. Without intent but definitively and strikingly, the musical event served to highlight some of the points raised at the talkfest.
The meeting: Some 150 to 200 artists, arts administrators, and other dedicated parties gathered in the Auditorium of the John Waldron Arts Center to discuss the perceived need in Bloomington for a unifying body or agency to help give focus and cohesion to the area’s multitudinous cultural activities. Issues raised included funding, marketing, publicity, space availability, audience building, conflicting schedules, and advocacy.
The concert: Some 150 to 200 folks — among them, one is happy to report, families — gathered in the Auditorium of Bloomington High School North to hear the season closing program of the Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble, which featured “Offbeat Marches” and proved a fetching entertainment, thanks to the ensemble’s just short of 50 dedicated musicians and their music director, Eric Isaacson.
This reviewer shuttled from the meeting to the concert, leaving the former in midstream to make it to the latter. The words spoken at the meeting continued to reverberate in thought as the music played. Why? Because the Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble is a metaphor for the issues raised at the meeting.
It works on a small budget. The musicians serve without pay. Expenses are met through minimal grants and donations, undoubtedly along with out-of-pocket reimbursements from conductor Isaacson and his colleagues. SIWE could use funding.
With better marketing and publicity, requiring administrative help and expertise, the ensemble would most likely have attracted a larger crowd than that which showed up on Monday for an awfully well played concert, which, by the way, was free. The audience might also have been at least a bit larger had the public meeting, heavily attended by music lovers, been called for another night rather than one already reserved by SIWE.
Like other area arts institutions, the Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble struggles along while providing pleasures. Monday’s indeed pleasurable concert contained a rush of marches, nine of them, written by composers from eight countries. The works included those obviously designed for concert purposes, such as Englishman Gustav Holst’s uplifting “Moorside March” and German Paul Hindemith’s craftily orchestrated march section from his masterpiece, “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.”
One heard celebratory items: a very festive “Glory of Catalonia” by the Japanese Michio Mamiya and a circus-like “Athletic Festival March” by the Russian Sergei Prokofiev. From the Norwegian Edvard Grieg, Isaacson chose a somber “Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak,” a close friend of the composer. There was a rollicking “The Gum-Suckers” March by Australia’s Percy Grainger and a military-sounding “Commando march” by the American Samuel Barber.
Folk tunes form the basis for “Suite Francaise” by the French Darius Milhaud, written for a high school band. A second American, the remarkable musical adventurer Charles Ives, wrote what was probably the audience favorite, considering the enthusiastic response, his “Country Band” March, meant as a cacophonous parody of a community band warming up and performing.
In sum, the audience was treated to an interesting variety of pieces, played with energy, precision and musical know-how.
So, what’s next? The meeting is likely to prompt further meetings and, ultimately perhaps, some form of action. The metaphoric concert will be followed by more concerts: Isaacson announced that with SIWE’s season three completed, plans are under way for season four; whether problems are solved or not, there will be music.
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