The Great Mother Lode Brass and Reed Band, conducted by Hank King, performs an exciting season finale concert, Saturday, Sept. 10, 7:30 p.m., at the Sonora Opera Hall. This concert is offered as an opportunity to extend Second Saturday Art Night fun by hearing live traditional and contemporary band music. Fun for the entire family, the admission is free.
The concert, which spans 200+ years of music, will begin with John Williams’ rousing arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner composed for the 2004 Rose Bowl. Other music to be featured includes some lively Latin music – Congo del Fuego Nuevo by Marquéz with its driving rhythms and Amparito Roca, a Spanish march influenced by the world of bullfighting. Other pieces on the concert are The Incredibles from Disney, a rollicking arrangement of The Drunken Sailor, and a touch of the old west with On the Overland Stage to El Paso. Trumpeter John Hanson will perform the lyrical Come Back to Sorrento with the band, and local band member and flute virtuoso Sandra Betti will take the stage as soloist in Chaminade’s Concertino for flute and band. And no band concert is complete without marches by John Philip Souza. This time the band plays The Black Horse Troop.
The band begins rehearsals in May, performs two traditional July 4th concerts – one at Columbia State Historic Park and another at the Sonora Hills retirement community. The group plays a band concert for Calaveras Big Trees Annual Family Day in August, and concludes the season with this fall concert. The group frequently travels to San Francisco to perform in the Golden Gate Park Band Festival. The 35-member band is made up of woodwind, brass, and percussion players from high-school age to 80-year-olds with a passion for playing together “for the love of it” and sharing their music with others.
Hank King, conductor, performs and conducts widely in the foothills and in the valley, is a member of several small performing ensembles, and is currently playing clarinet with the Stockton Concert Band and the Mother Lode Friends of Music Orchestra. He retired after 36 years of teaching music in the Amador County Schools mostly at Amador High School. He has played clarinet in the Merced Symphony, the Sierra Symphony, Placerville, the Folsom Symphony, the Camellia Symphony, Sacramento, and the Gold Country Orchestra, Sacramento. Highly regarded as a conductor, he has conducted the Mother Lode Friends of Music Orchestra in its early years, the Sierra Symphony, Placerville, the Mother Lode Youth Symphony and the Great Mother Lode Brass and Reed Band. Currently he also directs the Amador County Unified School District Jazz Band. He lives in the Stockton area.
Flutist Sandra Betti graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Musical Performance on the Flute. She has performed with the Berkeley Symphony and the Artesian Pops Orchestra in Los Angeles. Since college she has worked for several musical instrument manufacturers, selling these instruments to music stores and distributors throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has relocated to Sonora to be closer to family and is now the Executive Director of the Sonora Bach Festival as well as working as Music Director at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Sonora. Tickets for this concert are free and are available from band members.
For more information, call 209 532-5463.
