How to Get your PSWE fix

Although you won't see PSWE as a whole in a public concert until May, we are keeping busy over the coming months. Here's what's going on:

A number of members of PSWE will be involved in Coquitlam's Water's Edge Festival on March 7th and 8th. The PSWE brass section has formed a group named West Coast Brassworks and will be performing a wide variety of music from 10-11am on the Lakeside Stage at Larfage Lake on Saturday, March 7th. You can then sprint down the path to Glen Pine Pavillion to catch Sax Noir at 11am. Sax Noir is a wonderful sax quartet made up of PSWE members Debbie Webb, Val Crocker and Chuck Currie and Ward Blair. Their performances are always captivating and entertaining.

A rare opportunity to hear an innovative work by Canadian Composer R. Murray Schaeffer is also part of the Water's Edge Festival. The piece Music for Wilderness Lake is in two parts and is performed by a trombone ensemble assembled around Lafarge Lake. Part 1 - Dusk - will be performed at 5pm on Saturday, March 7th and Part 2 - Dawn will occur at 7:30am the next morning. PSWE trombone players and our talented (and potentially very wet) Associate Conductor will be performing.

For More info on Waters Edge Festival, go to their extensive web site.

On April 2nd, PSWE will be working with the elementary band students of the North Vancouver School DIstrict. This is an annual event where PSWE members work directly with the students to teach them ways to improve their skills on their instruments and then all of the members of the band perform on a concert to help model those skills in a concert setting. If you have children in the North Vancouver Elementary School bands, you are encouraged to bring them to this event at Boundary School and Lucas Centre. More information is available through their school band teacher.

Busy times! If we don't see you before, make sure that you reserve May 9th or May 15th for performances of Moving Pictures at Evergreen Cultural Centre and Kay Meek respectively!

Guy's Gallimaufry - aka Music; The Food of Love - Part 2

Guy Woolfenden is another well respected english composer with a long history of creating wonderful music for a myriad of ensembles but his specialty is in theatre music - in particular, theatre music associated with Shakespeare. He as written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Comedie-Francaise, the Burgtheater, the Teatro Stabile and the Norwegian National Theatre.

The Woolfenden work that the we will present this weekend is Gallimaufry and is, as is quoted in The Winter's Tale, "a hotch potch made up of all the scraps of the larder." It is a collection of music that has been used in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Henry the IV in 1982. As one would expect, it is full of scenic imagery including the pomp of royalty to an all out tavern brawl.

So, join King Henry and Falstaff and other Shakespearean favourites in PSWE's musical celebration of the world of the Bard at the Evergreen Cultural Centre on February 21st at 8pm Tickets are available on line or at the Evergreen Cultural Centre Box Office.

Music: The Food of Love - Part 1

The Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble will be presenting an exciting concert of music that comes directly or indirectly from the inspiration of Shakespeare. Some repertoire is from the ballet, some from the theatre and some simply from the god of drama who would have inspired Shakespeare himself.

Rather than tell you about the music that you will hear and the background of each piece, I am going to give you a little background on the composers whose music we will present on February 20th.

Edward Gregson is a name that should be familiar to those of you who have followed PSWE over the years. Among other works, he is the composer of the title track of our "Festivo!" CD that came out in 2001. He is a prolific composer having written for band, orchestra, choir, chamber ensembles, theatre, film and television. He has taught composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and served as their Principal for 12 years before retiring in 2008. He was recently awarded an Honourary Doctorate from Manchester University to add to an impressive list of other honourary degrees and fellowships from other British universities.

His work is dramatic and exciting. It is accessable on a first listen but gives the audience member a reason to come back for multiple listens. Each time you will discover something new. "The Sword and the Crown" will be presented on February 20th and is drawn from incidental music that he composed for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It incorporates a number of sounds and effects that draw out the imagery of the plays they were written for. It doesn't take a very active imagination to be able to "see" the scenes that this music was written for.

I expect that you will enjoy listening to Gregson's "The Sword and the Crown" as much as we have enjoyed rehearsing it. If you do like it, you will also enjoy listening to our recording of "Festivo" available at the Evergreen Cultural Centre Gift Shop and on line at Amazon.com.

See you February 21st at 8pm at the Evergreen Cultural Centre!