Purdue Summer Band
brings music to Slayter slopes
Those who missed the grassy slopes of Purdue University’s Slayter Center
as the setting for Greater Lafayette’s annual Stars and Stripes concert can
get back to the grass for the Purdue Summer Band’s annual concert there on
Tuesday, July 9.
Director Bill Kisinger encourages
music lovers to bring picnic food, blankets and lawn chairs to Slayter’s slopes
for the free event set for 7 p.m. July 9. Music from three centuries, from
Handel to Ralph Vaughn Williams, and from opera to Broadway, fill the show.
With construction in the area,
Purdue couldn’t handle the massive parking demands of the July 4 event, but
music-lovers won’t have any problems on July 9, Kisinger says.
Each year Purdue’s summer band
opens its roster to community musicians, talented members of Purdue’s faculty
and staff as well as students. A month of twice-a-week rehearsals leads up
to the concert. Kisinger likes to use the opportunity to introduce musicians,
as well as the audience, to classic works from a number of different eras.
Louis Jadin’s “Symphonie for
Band” comes out of the Classical Period. “It was written during revolutionary
times in France and that was a good time for music,” Kisinger says. Kermit
Leslie’s “Night Flight to Madrid contains Latin rhythms while Ralph Vaughn
Willliams’ “Sea Songs” recalls British sea chanties.
There’s a bit of opera with
Richard Wagner’s “Rienzi Excerpts” and Broadway razzle-dazzle with a medley
that includes tunes from Hello Dolly, A Chorus Line and other famous
musicals. The concert traditionally opens with a Sousa march – Kisinger picked
“King Cotton March” for 2002 – and ends with “Hail Purdue.”