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2023 marks the 155th season of the Michigan City Municipal Band.  The 2023 concert series will consist of ten free Thursday concerts, beginning June 8, and ending August 10.  All concerts begin at 7:30p and last about an hour. The band plays a wide variety of music, with concerts designed to entertain audience members of all ages. The MCMB also plays for the annual Memorial Day ceremony at Greenwood Cemetery, and in the Michigan City Patriotic Parade.

Highlights of the summer concert series include special guest soloists and two commissions by award-winning composers. Soloists will be GySgt. Hiram Diaz, euphonium, from the US Marine Band (August 3); and Anne Marie Bice, soprano (June 22 and 29, and July 13). Other soloists and special events will be announced during the season.

The world premiere of Blue Water, Blue Sky by Catherine McMichael will take place on August 3. Also on August 3, the Concerto for Euphonium and Band by Tom Davoren will showcase the band with world-class euphonium soloist GySgt. Hiram Diaz, in three beautiful and dazzling movements.

In addition to being outstanding performers, many of the band members are also successful conductors. Some of those conductors will be featured on individual compositions throughout the summer.

Jeffrey Scott Doebler is the conductor for the MCMB, and Quincy Ford is the assistant conductor. Dr. Doebler serves as director of music education and bands at Valparaiso University. He is a past president of the Indiana Bandmasters Association and the Indiana Music Education Association. He is founder and conductor of Windiana: Professional Concert Band of Northwest Indiana. Mr. Ford, principal saxophone in the MCMB, is retired director of bands from Michigan City High School.

Thursday, August 12, 2021 Concert

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The tenth and final concert of the 153rd season of the Michigan City Municipal Band (MCMB) will be held Thursday, August 12, 7:30p, at the Guy F. Foreman Bicentennial Amphitheater in Washington Park.

The August 12 concert repertoire will be:

Stitches in Time: A Second Piece by Meredith Brammeier
Old Town Road by Lil Nas X
The Belle of Chicago March by John Philip Sousa
Highlights from Frozen II by Kristen and Robert Lopez
Irish Tune from County Derry by Percy Grainger
Shepherd’s Hey by Percy Grainger
Too Young by Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee
Beau Monde by Jack Stamp
God Bless America by Irving Berlin
The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa

Stitches in Time: A Second Piece was the MCMB’s 2020 commission. Composer Meredith Brammeier created each movement as her interpretation of quilting patterns.

Old Town Road, by rapper Lil Nas X, was the winner of two Grammy Awards in 2020. At 19 weeks, the song holds the record of staying number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

John Philip Sousa composed The Belle of Chicago in 1892, and he dedicated it to the “Ladies of Chicago.” The march was finished just before he completed his 12-year tenure as conductor of the US Marine Band. He spent the next 40 years touring with his own professional band. Among the Sousa Band’s first successes was playing for the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, where the band was sometimes acclaimed as the “World’s Fair Band.”

Highlights from Frozen II, by Kristen and Robert Lopez, contains the following songs:

Vuelie, All is Found, Some Things Never Change, Into the Unknown, Lost in the Woods, and Show Yourself.

Born in Australia, Percy Grainger was known as an innovative composer, virtuoso pianist, and folk music researcher & arranger, as well as one of the first to use the phonograph in the collection of folk songs. The MCMB will play two of Mr. Grainger’s folk song settings. First is Irish Tune from County Derry, which we all recognize as Danny Boy. Second is a Morris dance called Shepherd’s Hey.

In 1952, Nat King Cole topped the Billboard charts for five weeks with Too Young, a song by Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee.

Beau Monde is the MCMB’s 2021 commission. It is an exciting and creative adaptation of the well-known hymn For the Beauty of the Earth. Dr. Jack Stamp, the composer, served for many years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder and conductor of a professional concert band called Keystone Winds. In retirement, Dr. Stamp is teaching at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

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The Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

8-10-23 America the Beautiful

America the Beautiful

O Beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain;
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee.
And crown thy good with brotherhood
from sea to shining sea.

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