Countries around the Baltic Sea are the next musical horizon for an adult concert band from London with strong ties to Western.
About 50 members of the University of Western Ontario Don Wright Faculty of Music New Horizons Band will travel to Stockholm, Sweden, Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland from July 2 to 12 to perform five free concerts and to promote this unique opportunity for adults to have fun as members of a concert band.
“This is our third trip to Europe in four years and as always we’re getting excited about visiting and playing there again,” says band spokesperson Mark Kearney. “The trips in 2005 and 2007 were a lot of fun for us, and we were thrilled by the audiences we had for our free concerts.”
Among the venues the band will be performing at this time around are Skansen Park in Stockholm, the historic centre square in Tallinn, and the famous Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki.
“We’ll be playing different repertoires in each venue, so that provides us the challenge of being able to play a range of musical styles throughout this tour,” says Kearney. “We’ll be playing Finnish and Swedish pieces, some tunes from Hollywood films, and Canadian music, including the piece Warburton Arms by London composer Jeff Christmas on this tour.”
The band is open to adult musicians of any skill level, including absolute beginners, but those playing in the European concerts tend to have seven or more years musical experience.
The London band was formed in 1999 so adults could learn music and play in a concert band with other like-minded adults. The concept was the result of a groundbreaking course by professor Roy Ernst at the University of Rochester, N.Y. Eastman School of Music in the early 1990s. Ernst was awarded an honorary degree from Western at this spring’s convocation.
The London program is celebrating its 10-year anniversary and will hold a special concert at Western in December to mark the occasion. The London NHB was the first one in Canada and is among the largest in existence.