NEWS RELEASE

The Willamette Valley Concert Band will present a free concert, “South of the Border,” featuring music from Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Panama, at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 14, at the Russell Tripp Performance Center at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany. Sponsors of the concert are Russell and Duffy Tripp.

Though there is no charge for the concert, donations will be gratefully accepted. Because seating is limited, tickets to reserve a seat will be available at Mid-Valley Gems and Jewelry and the LBCC box office in Albany, Gracewinds Music in Corvallis and Stainthorps Music in Lebanon. Patrons with tickets are asked to arrive by 2:45 pm. Remaining seats will be made available at 2:45 for those without tickets.

Among the featured soloists will be trumpetist Gary Haworth. Haworth is an Albany pharmacist and president of the band’s board of directors. He will be be playing Granada, by Augustin Lara.

Trumpetist Steve Iverson, of Lebanon, a Linn County deputy sheriff, and clarinetist Christine Barreto, of Lebanon, a retired music teacher from the Lebanon School District and assistant director of the WVCB will be featured in La Virgen de la Macarena, also known as The Bullfighter’s Song, made popular by Mexican musician Rafael Mendez, a virtuoso trumpetist of the mid 20th Century.

OTHER MUSIC:

MEXICO

• Marcha Provinciana from Mario Chavez’s suite, Chapultepec, is a setting of the Mexican national march, Zacatecas.
• La Fiesta Mexicana, by American composer H. Owen Reed, portrays a Mexican fiesta complete with tolling church bells, fireworks, Aztec dances, parades with bands, a church service and a carnival with a circus. It also portrays a public market, a bullfight, a town band, and cantinas with mariachi bands.
• Mosaico de Mexico, by American composer George Gates, features three Mexican folksongs and dances: Alma Llanera, Azteca (Subo Subo) and Huapanago (De Veracruz).
• Santa Ana’s Retreat from Buena Vista (1848), by Stephen Foster, is a band arrangement of a piece originally written for piano that was inspired by the battle of Buena Vista in northern Mexico. General Zachary Taylor’s troops defeated the Mexican army led by Mexican president Santa Ana during the Mexican/American War.
• Estralita by Ponce is a popular Mexican love song.

BRAZIL:

• Tico Tico, by Zequinha de Abreu, is a classic samba from Brazil made famous by Brazilian singer and movie star Carmen Miranda in the 1940s.
• Il Guarani Overture, by Carlos Gomes, is from his opera, Il Guarani, which was the first opera by a Brazilian composer to be produced successfully in Europe. It premiered in La Scala in 1870, but never became popular. The opera is based on Amazonian Indian songs and stories. Gomes was a 19th Century composer who gained much fame in Brazil writing popular music. He studied in Italy but came back to produce several operas in Brazil.
• Brazilian Festival is an arrangement of popular songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim using the Brazilian dances, the bossa nova and the samba, which became very popular in America in the 1960s. Three songs are included in the medley: The Girl from Ipanema, Corcavado (Quiet Nights), and One Note Samba.

PANAMA:

• The Pathfinder of Panama March, by John Philip Sousa, was written in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, held to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal.

PUERTO RICO, PERU, VENEZUELA:

• A suite of Latin American Dances from Puerto Rico, Peru and Venezuela will include Yaravi Peruano a Yaravi dance from Peru, La Perla del Sur, a Puerto Rican dance celebrating the Pearl of the South and Canta, Canta Llanerito, a Venezuelan Joropo dance celebrating the Llanos people on the plains between Venezuela and Colombia.

The Willamette Valley Concert Band, a community band based in Albany, was formed in 1970. Its membership includes about 55 musicians ranging in age from teens through senior citizens from Benton, Linn, Marion and Polk Counties.

Directors of the band are Dr. Richard Sorenson, emeritus director of bands at WOU, and Christine Barreto, a retired Lebanon music teacher.

For further information, go to the band web site, www.wvcband.org, or contact Sorenson at 503-838-3474.