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122 and Still Going Strong!
In June 1887, National Commander Ballington Booth commissioned the New York Staff Band to showcase the Lord’s music in a variety of settings. For the past 122 years, from outdoor meetings, to Sunday services, to concert halls, the NYSB has rendered faithful service. But this isn’t Ballington’s band!
Just like then, the NYSB continues to play with expertise as well as feeling from simple hymn tune arrangements to the most technically demanding pieces that would challenge even virtuoso musicians. From the brilliant opening strains of Handel’s Allegro from Music for the Royal Fireworks, to the festival–closing bombast of Sousa’s, Stars and Stripes Forever, the 122nd annual festival was a definite crowd pleaser for die-hard brass aficionados and casual listeners alike.
The festival, held at the new Montclair Citadel corps featured the premiere performance of Dorothy Gates’ Hope; her first major work for brass band. This evocative and imaginative piece inspired by critical world events—war in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the persecution in the Sudan—attempts to address haunting questions such as “Why are some children born into such horrific circumstances?” to try to make sense of the senseless. The hope she expresses even amid music that at times sounds eerily like a firefight or mortar barrage in those world conflict regions, is that “In Christ there is no east or west,” or any other man-made division. The Lord is there throughout our odyssey of despair and hope.
Euphonium soloist Steve Mead was special guest for the festival. Mead, on tour around the world much of the year, has been described as one of the “world’s most recorded solo brass artists” with nearly 50 CD’s of his work produced since 1990. From solos, The Ransomed Host and Harlequin, to joining with NYSB euphonium players Aaron VanderWeele and Ryan McCrudden to perform The Heralds—a trio written for cornets, to other virtuoso work, to pairing with Chris Ward to play the “piccolo” part in The Stars and Stripes Forever with the euphonium and the Eb Soprano cornet, all were performed with consummate skill and engaging good humor.
Other crowd pleasing selections included a decidedly upbeat arrangement of the 1927 Showboat classic Old Man River that featured Robert Jones on the trap set working every item of percussion equipment to the maximum in the best tradition of classic big band drummers, and a Dorothy Gates arrangement David Danced with a decidedly Latin flavor. The well–received festival concluded with Turris Fortissima, Latin for “the strong tower,” by Stephen Ponsford that combines the best of two worlds of worship music—the traditional and the
contemporary, the old and the new—blending tunes such as “Blessed be the Name of the Lord” and “Shout to the Lord,” with Martin Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” By the time the band reached the end of this magnificent paean of worship, one could see Bandmaster Waiksnoris relax just a bit as he waited for final note of praise—a magnificent explosion of sound felt as well as heard.
Ballington would have been thrilled.
- Major A. Kenneth Wilson
