Children’s Concert 2021
Sunday, October 3, 2021 in Wakefield.
The History of Music – a Musical Journey Through Time
Wakefield, MA – Children who learn music at an early age have been shown to perform better in most other areas of development. Hoping to help ignite that creative spark in our local youth, the Middlesex Concert Band presents its annual children’s concert on Sunday, October 3, 2021 outdoors at the Dolbeare Elementary School Athletic Fields. The rain date for this concert is Sunday, October 17 at the same location.
Each year, this free concert, which is geared toward children four to nine years of age, focuses on a different aspect of music—demonstrating for the audience how tempos, rhythms, instruments, etc. are combined to bring a composer’s vision to life. This year’s theme is A History of Music, exploring people who have inspired or composed the most important pieces over the years. Music spans a time period from 1560 to 2010. Music selected for each time period represents musicality from that period.
Music Director Mark Olson has put together a thoughtful program that will stir the imagination of listeners of all ages. The concert will explore a brief history of music composed and arranged for the wind band. We will be featuring works composed for the military band in the early 1900’s such as Ralph Vaughan Williams Folk Song Suite, as well as music composed for other instruments and transcribed for the wind band such as the William Byrd Suite by Gordon Jacob and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor. The Shaker tune Simple Gifts has been a popular tune in American history and has been used by many composers. We will perform an arrangement of that tune composed by John Zedeclik. We will also feature music that was popular in movies and pay tribute to one of history’s great jazz composers, Duke Ellington. And, as we always do at our children’s concert, we will play the famous Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa.
The setting of this concert, presented in the athletic fields of Dolbeare Elementary School, puts the children on the same level as the band where they can get a unique, up-close perspective. Children may play in the field while the band is playing.
Halfway through the program, the children will be invited to participate in a parade of flags, which gives them a chance to burn off a little energy while they march around the band to the well-known strains of the “Stars and Stripes Forever” march. Continuing a popular tradition, one lucky child from the audience will win the honor of conducting the band during this march.
Children are also invited to stay after the music stops to visit with the musicians for a question-and-answer session, where everyone can further investigate the various instruments of the band. Due to recent developments regarding Covid, we wanted you to know that all members are fully vaccinated and will not be having an instrument “petting zoo” at this time.
The Middlesex Concert Band is a nonprofit community band based in Wakefield, Massachusetts that regularly performs concerts in Wakefield and surrounding communities, striving to bring affordable entertainment to all. Originally founded in the 1950s is a marching band, the group later evolved into a concert band which gave its first performance in the spring of 1975 at Memorial Hall in Melrose. Since then, it has become one of the area’s outstanding community musical organizations, performing in various indoor venues from September through June and presenting a number of free outdoor concerts during the summer months.
A History of Music —A Free Children’s Concert, takes place at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 3, 2021 at the Dolbeare Elementary School Athletic fields, with a rain date of October 17th. Funding for this concert is provided in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, as administered locally by the Wakefield Arts Council. For more information about the Middlesex Concert Band, go to www.mcbconcertband.org.