Strike up the band
Time was, John Philip Sousa was both the brag and the bane of band music.
"We were once a little touchy about Sousa because people felt that's all we could play," says Arizona State University director of bands, Gary Hill. "Now, there's enough distance and enough band repertoire in the wind-band literature that we can look at Sousa as part of our history."
Heck, they're even writing shows about him. "Oh Mr. Sousa!", a blend of concert and theatre created by San Francisco Bay Area music enthusiast Ken Malucelli, will play the Sundome Center for Performing Arts, 19403 R.H. Johnson Blvd., Sun City West, at 7:30pm Tuesday. Tickets: $10. Details: (480) 965-6447 or herbergercollege.asu.edu/tickets/.
"In between each musical selection there will be vignettes acted about his life, from birth to death," says Hill, who will lead the ASU Wind Symphony. "The audience will get not only a lot of his popular music, but a sense of his life and personality."
The timing is right: Saturday was the 150th anniversary of the birth of the "March King."