Brass Band Rings In Season With Concert

Thu., Dec. 19, 1996

William Berry Correspondent

The Spokane Falls Brass Band, with Ann Fennessy, will present “A Musical Journey,” its 15th “Christmas in Old Spokane” concert, as a tribute to the group’s longevity.

The opening of tonight’s Met performance will be the same as at the first Christmas performance at the Glover House in 1982. Favorites from years past will be mixed in generously with some new material.

The band’s legacy is worthy of a tribute - there has essentially been only one personnel change since its founding. Ann and the boys - Larry Jess and Chris Cook on trumpets, Verne Windham and Roger Logan on horns and Dave Matern on trombone - will be joined for this holiday concert by pianist Sara Logan and percussionist Martin Zyskowski.

Zyskowski recently returned from Ghana, where he has been exchanging drum knowledge for the past several months. During the performance, he will share some of the festive music he has learned.

Smatterings of Christmases past will be culled from long ago and more recently. From the SFBB’s “Christmas in Old Spokane” recording, released in the previous decade, Fennessy’s Cockney accent will once again grate out the humorous escapades of “The Carol Singers.” Logan’s setting of “Appalachian Folk Tunes,” which I thoroughly enjoyed at last year’s debut performance, will receive its first encore.

New material will include a merging of jazz trumpeter Thad Jones with Alfred Bert, the minister whose mission was to write a new Christmas carol every year. The Spokane Falls Brass Band will combine the former’s “A Child Is Born” with the latter’s “Some Children See Him.”

Variety will extend to the baroque for a performance of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets, the classical for a rendition of the King’s Singers play on Mozart and wind up with a Christmas-around-the-world tour with “A Little Christmas Music.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: The Spokane Falls Brass Band will present “Christmas in Old Spokane” with Ann Fennessy at The Met at 7:30 p.m. today through Saturday, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $10, $13 or $16, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets, or call (800) 325-SEAT.

This sidebar appeared with the story: The Spokane Falls Brass Band will present “Christmas in Old Spokane” with Ann Fennessy at The Met at 7:30 p.m. today through Saturday, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $10, $13 or $16, available at G&B; Select-a-Seat outlets, or call (800) 325-SEAT.