32ND SEASON | DECEMBER 15 - MESILLA VALLEY JAZZ ORCHESTRA
December 2nd, 2019
The Mesilla Valley Concert Band’s second free concert of the season is at 3pm on Sunday, December 15, 2019, in the Atkinson Recital Hall in the Music Center at NMSU. On the podium will be MVCB Director William Clark, assistant directors John Schutz and Jim Young, and guest conductor Rose Verlinde, band director at Mayfield High School. The band will present a diverse program of Christmas and Hanukkah music, a Fantasia by J.S. Bach, and an original march, The Omaha World-Herald, by Las Crucen David Beasley.
The concert will feature Alfred Reed’s Russian Christmas Music, which he commissioned when he was just 23 years old to promote Russian-American relations at the end of the war in 1944. The concert includes two Christmas medleys, And the Mountains Echoed: Gloria! and A Holiday Rhapsody, conducted by the band’s assistant directors, John Schutz and Jim Young, respectively. Rose Verlinde will conduct Steve Reisteter’s The Eighth Candle, written in 1997 for America’s oldest civilian concert band, the Allentown (PA) Band.
The program will al
so include a guest appearance by the Mesilla Valley Jazz Orchestra, founded in 2011 out of an interest to put on a performance celebrating Stan Kenton’s 100th birthday. That performance was also a part of the MVCB December concert that year. MVJO is spearheaded by trombonist Karl Tonander, with assistance from co-founder and saxophonist Jamie Fee, both of whom are long-standing members of MVCB. The MVJO’s selections include Stan Kenton’s Malaga, Pat Metheny’s (It’s Just) Talk, and a Dave Wolpe arrangement of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, featuring MVCB’s own Autumn Haeker on vocals.
We look forward to seeing you for another outstanding MVCB program. The concert is free and open to all ages. Seating is first come, first served.