Marches, classical pieces, jazz pieces and novelty tunes are set for the El Camino College Concert Band’s concert Nov. 21 at Marsee Auditorium.
“We’ve been working on this since the beginning of the semester,” Teter said. “We sight read through a lot of different songs and then narrowed it down to the ones that we wanted to do in this concert.”
The pieces for the concert were selected by the students as they worked on the tunes in band practice, Teter said.
“Some of the pieces were specifically suggested by the students, so they have a direct input into the selection of the music,” Teter said. “One of the pieces, Xerxes, was requested by several students who heard it at another concert by a marine band.”
Teter said that the composer of Xerxes, John Mackey, described the piece as an angry march. The piece is a lot of fun for the band whenever they perform it.
“It’s a march in its form, like a Souza march, but it has a very angry spirit to it,” Teter said. “It’s a lot of fun. A lot of percussion sounds which keeps the percussion section busy. It actually requires eight percussion players to play it.”
Steven Davis, an undeclared 20-year-old percussion player, said he loves playing “Xerxes,” because it keeps him really busy.
“In ‘Xerxes,’ I have to play a part really quietly,” Davis said. “It’s percussion solo. It’s gentle sounding and there’s an ambience, so it’s tough to keep the dynamics at a lower level. It’s pretty hard strokes, but it makes it interesting.”
Other students appreciated the broad range of pieces that they are performing at the Sunday concert. Michael Trinidad,18, liberal studies major, said that the repertoire that they are playing is beautiful and musical.
“The compositions that we get to play, they’re challenging,” Trinidad said. “Some of the challenges are playing it musical, phrasing the lines right, backing up the soloist.