Concert celebrates sister-city alliance

Kelowna, Dutch bands share stage in joint performance

A Dutch band played O Canada and Kelowna musicians performed Wilhelmus van Nassouwe, the Netherlands’ national anthem, at a unique concert Saturday in Kelowna.

More than 450 people attended a joint performance of the Veendam Winkler-Prins Harmonie Band and the Kelowna City Concert Band at the community theatre.

“It was a wonderful event, a really terrific night,” Tim Watson, president of the city band society, said Sunday.

The joint performance celebrated the sister-city link between Kelowna and Veendam, a town in the Netherlands’ northeast, where troops from the Okanagan were stationed after the end of the Second World War.

The 39 members of the Harmonie, who range in age from 12 to 68, played a half-dozen pieces and were then followed on stage by City Band musicians.

“It wasn’t a competition, but it was interesting to see the different styles and techniques of the two bands,” Watson said. “The Harmonie is a younger band than ours, made up of a lot of high school students from Veendam.”

An emotional highlight of the night was the performance of the Hymn to Loved Ones Lost, accompanied by images on the theatre screens of destruction caused in the Netherlands during the war, along with images of people murdered by the Nazis.

After the separate performances, the nearly 100 members of the two bands performed on stage together for two pieces, Walking to the Sky, and Rocky Mountains.

The Dutch band is on a six-city tour of Canada to mark the group’s 40th anniversary. The Kelowna City Band was founded in 1894.

The Kelowna City Band usually performs in the 324-seat Mary Irwin Theatre but chose the larger community theatre for the special joint concert.

In related news, the Kelowna City Band is taking over responsibility for a popular Canada Day concert at Prospera Place the evening of July 1. After 26 years, the Kelowna Canada Day Concerts Society has folded.