AWC Community Band to present free ‘Grand Serenades’ concert on Monday
Event will take place in the Schoening conference center at 7 p.m.
Monday, March 11, marks the Arizona Western College Community Band’s “Grand Serenades” concert.
The complimentary event is open to the public and will be held in the Schoening Conference Center at 7 p.m.
On top of the AWC Community Band, the concert will feature soloist Michael Becker, a trombone instructor at the University of Arizona who’s also a fixture within the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
“The Arizona Western College Community Band is our concert band at the college. We have a good amount of community participation in it, as well as AWC students, local band directors, retired band directors, high school students, and even some players from the Marine base come out and play for us,” said AWC music professor Dr. Shawn Pollard. “We typically do two concerts a semester, and this is our first one for the spring. And in the spring, I like to bring out a guest artist to play with us, and in this case, it’s Michael Becker.”
“In this particular concert, he’s going to be playing the bass trombone, and it’ll be a concerto that was originally written for tuba by British composer Edward Gregson,” Pollard continued, also pointing out, “There’s a number of different pieces in this concert.”
Notably, the concert will feature a tribute to Peter Schickele, a composer who penned various satirical pieces and passed away earlier this year.
Pollard also acknowledged that the title of the concert, “Grand Serenades,” pays homage to one of Schickele’s humorous compositions: “The Grand Serenade for an
Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion.”
“It’s a deliberately humorous piece, so that’s what gave me the idea for the title of the concert because we’re playing a number of multi-movement pieces,” he said.