Brass Band Offers A Joyful Tradition Charming Concert Even Includes Yo-Yo Performance

Spokane Falls Brass Band Friday, Dec. 19, The Met

Every city needs some tradition associated with Christmas.

Some are quite grandiose - building an ice palace on a lake or turning on massive festival of lights. The Spokane Falls Brass Band provides a quieter tradition, a concert that underlines the great qualities of the Christmas season - the beauty, the reverence and the fun.

The brass quintet’s “Christmas in Old Spokane,” heard in three performances last weekend, was a real winner with the group’s usual combination of charm, humor and good music making.

The band was excellently assisted by soprano Ann Fennessy, pianist Sarah Logan and percussionist Martin Zyskowski.

The opening of the program sounded as though it were going to be “Christmas with Charles Ives,” with Fennessy attempting to sing a half dozen or so familiar seasonal songs to the background of Pachelbel’s Canon.

None of the combinations quite worked, of course, and Fennessy scattered sheet music all over the stage as she tried in vain to find the “right” music to fit.

Fennessy pretends to be ditzy, but her high-wattage appeal is soundly based on high-quality singing. She had the opportunity to show her virtuosity in the soaring lines of “O Holy Night” and her sensitive musicality in such subdued songs as “Mary Did You Know?” and wordless vocalese in “Greensleeves.”

Speaking of virtuosity, trumpeter Chris Cook showed off on his horn, all right, but he made, perhaps, an even greater impression with a nonmusical instrument. He flung a yo-yo (making patterns with two at a time, at times) to the tune of “Linus and Lucy.”

Cook’s skill with the little gizmo is as formidable as a fine violinist playing Paganini.

Much of the program was familiar to those who have attended “Christmas in Old Spokane” in the past. New to me, though, was John Rupture’s “Donkey Carol” with its lurching 5/4 rhythm and the enchanting “Premiere merci” describing the visit of a moth, a spider and a mouse to the infant Jesus.

It seemed impossible to avoid tapping my foot or humming along to “The March of the Three Kings,” “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” or “Sleigh Ride.” And I laughed along with others at William Berry’s arrangement of “The Hat I Got for Christmas Ees Too Beeg” as sung in the inimitable bear-tone - uh, bare-tone - of trombonist Dave Matern. (Thomas Hampson, look out!)

This concert was a welcome return engagement of a great Spokane musical tradition.

, DataTimes