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US Navy Concert Band delights sold-out crowd at Stambaugh Auditorium
By Sean Barron
YOUNGSTOWN
U.S. Navy Band In Youngstown
Gallery
The U.S. Navy band performed at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown March 14, 2017.
Not many 10-year-olds know definitively what they intend to do as adults, but chief musician Emily J. Dickson knew one thing: She wanted to play the harp.
“I’ve always loved it and wanted to give it a try, and it worked out for me,” Dickson recalled.
Over the years, Dickson, who also has served 19 years in the Navy, has delighted many audiences with the sounds and style she’s derived from her stringed instrument. She did it again Tuesday with the Washington, D.C.-based United States Navy Concert Band, which gave a free, sold-out concert Tuesday evening at Stambaugh Auditorium.
The two-hour performance was the second of the band’s 23 concerts scheduled for its 2017 national tour.
The program featured a pleasing mix of classical music and patriotic marches, along with a French horn and saxophone solo, said chief musician Adam Grimm, public affairs officer, who noted that the prestigious musical unit has been playing every year since President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation that established the band in March 1925.
Dickson recalled having auditioned for a seat in the band in 1998, when she was studying music at the University of North Texas in Denton. After making the cut, she joined the band, which has played at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, White House functions and numerous ceremonies, protocol gatherings, dinners and dignitaries, she said proudly.
“We play everywhere around D.C.,” Dickson added.
Tuesday night, she joined her 55 fellow musicians at Stambaugh for a performance that opened with a 10-minute rendition of “Overture to Die Fiedermaus,” an operetta by Johann Strauss that featured at one point a high-energy call-and-response between the horns and reeds. Also honored was composer Richard Strauss with the musicians’ interpretation of “Concerto for Horn No. 1 in E-flat Major, Opus 11, which offered a French horn solo by chief musician Jason Ayoub.
Another delight for the audience were 11 members of the Stambaugh Youth Concert Band, consisting of students from area high schools, who joined the others for the famous John Phillip Sousa number “Washington Post March.”
In its tip-of-their-caps salute to singer Barbra Streisand, the band featured vocalist Kristine Hsia of Long Island, N.Y., who performed a medley of Streisand songs, perhaps the most popular of which was her mid-1970s hit “The Way We Were,” before the first half of the show came to a close with “The Incredits” from “The Incredibles,” a song from the 2004 Disney Pixar film of the same name.
The show ended with “Armed Forces on Parade,” a patriotic tribute in which those who have served in the military were asked to stand as their services songs were played, Grimm said.
“Every show takes the opportunity to honor vets and thank them for their service,” he added. “They built the great Navy we have today.”