31st Season | March 3rd - Sousa Concert
February 25th, 2019
The Mesilla Valley Concert Band will perform a Sousa concert on Sunday, March 3rd at 3 pm at the (downtown) Plaza de Las Cruces. This will be a combined concert, featuring the NMSU Symphonic Band, directed by Dr. Steven Smyth. Admission is free, and seating will be provided on the Plaza.
A Sousa concert does not merely mean a concert of only John Philip Sousa pieces, but a concert programmed in the style of Sousa’s band concerts of the early 1900s. These concerts were generally fast-paced and consisted of a wide variety of music to provide an enjoyable program of both entertainment and culture. Sousa’s philosophy rejected “stuffy, uninteresting music” simply for the propagation of “culture-music”, which he said that the audience does not really understand, enjoy, or benefit from. The Mesilla Valley Concert Band's program will include marches, the 1812 Overture, Schubert’s Ava Maria, and many other familiar and contemporary band pieces.
Please note that the coordinators of the concert will be monitoring the weather situation over the course of the week. Should poor weather conditions be anticipated by the end of this week, the concert will be moved to the Atkinson Recital Hall at NMSU. We will post notice of that situation on this page, should that scenario arise.