Water Music to take the stage in Lunenburg
On Sunday, Nov. 6, the Bridgewater Fire Department Band (BFDB) returns to Lunenburg’s Central United Church to perform its 2022 fall concert, Water Music.
“This concert has been almost three years in the making,” explains music director Wendell Eisener. “We were scheduled to play a nauticalthemed concert in the spring of 2020, and — for reasons I’m sure we don’t have to explain — it has simply taken us this long to get back to it.”
The featured work on the programme is Frank Erickson’s masterful arrangement for concert band of music from Handel’s Water Music Suites. Handel’s music was originally performed by 50 musicians placed on a barge, playing in the middle of the Thames River in July 1717. King George I was so pleased with it that the entire performance had to be repeated several times.
Trombone soloist Caroline Leverett is featured in an arrangement of Allister Macgillivray’s Song for the Mira and members of the BFDB’S “dive team”— Laura Allen, Adam Aulenback, Allison Grant, and Jana Beazley — make an appearance as soloists in Under the Sea from Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador is recognised with a special arrangement of David Martins’s Bluenose, and Frank Ticheli’s gorgeous setting of Shenandoah pays homage to the river of that name that flows through the southern United States.
The band is pleased to welcome back as MC the incomparable Dan Hennessey, whose insightful narration, coupled with his unpredictable harassment of the band’s conductor, is a perpetual crowd-pleaser.
Originally formed as the Bridgewater Brass Band and doubling from its inception as the Band of the 68th Infantry Regiment, the BFDB has been part of Nova Scotia’s civic and cultural life since 1868. Decommissioned as a regimental band in 1912 and rebranded the Bridgewater Citizens’ Band, it came under the auspices of the Bridgewater Fire Department in 1952.
The BFDB is Canada’s only volunteer fire service brassreed band and is one of the oldest continuing musical ensembles in the country, with a mandate to provide quality musical support to the fire service and to all levels of government at parades, military and civic ceremonies, as well as in public and private concerts.
Eisener joined the BFDB in 1983. A graduate of Acadia University’s School of Music, he was the founder and conductor of the Lighthouse Chamber Orchestra and has been the organist for a number of churches on the South Shore. He was appointed director of music of the BFDB in June 2003. In addition to his duties with the band, he teaches part-time at Saint Mary’s University and is the training officer of the Italy Cross-middlewood & District Fire Department.
The concert begins at 3 p.m. Admission is by donation at the door.
For more information, see the band’s Facebook page or their website www.bfdband. com.