Author: Caroline Olsen-Van Stone
On May 25, the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band will take the stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City with three other student bands as well as a student soloist.
The group of 55 musicians includes Caltech and Occidental students as well as community members. The two groups joined due to dwindling respective numbers about 15 years ago, inviting non-student community members to be a part of their ensemble. This way, the band can draw from talent at both schools and the community. This gives the group a lot of age diversity and provides a sense of communaity unparalleled in many college musical groups.
“We have everyone from undergrads, to grads, and members of the community in the band, and it’s nice to see everyone come together out of a common love for music,” Amber Fandel (sophomore) said. “When it comes down to it, we all have at least one, very important thing in common: we love music.”
The majority of the group is comprised of Caltech students and community members. Many of the musicians work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near the school in Pasadena. Working with musicians who are also scientists has created an interesting dynamic for the group. Flutist Jessica Gelzer (first-year), an aspiring Economics major and music minor, said she enjoys hearing about the projects that the Caltech students and JPL employees are working on.
There are six Occidental musicians in the group. Two of them are recent alumni who were part of the band while at Oxy and four are current students. Of the four of them, Gelzer, Fandel and Ali Caditz (first-year) play flute, while Dawn Gruber (junior) plays trombone. All six will be going to Carnegie Hall in May. Caltech student Lauren Porter (senior) is the active Band President at Caltech, where most of the monetary and public support comes from. She is organizing the Carnegie event.
Band Director Bill Bing has directed bands for 35 years at Caltech and joined the Occidental band as director when the two groups merged. Though he loves conducting, he also enjoys playing the trumpet and has been giving lessons for close to 45 years. For the Carnegie show, Bing will have the opportunity to play trumpet with the band for the two songs that are being guest-conducted.
Not preferring any specific genre, Bing has had a prolific recording and performing career. Though he has played with the LA Opera Orchestra and LA Philharmonic, in addition to soundtrack pieces for the movie Batman Forever, this will be his first performance at Carnegie Hall.
“I finally made it,” he said.
Bing is also known for making audiences laugh. He explained his music career with the following saying, common to musicians:
“There are four stages in the music business. First, ‘Who is Bill Bing?’ Second, ‘Get me Bill Bing!’ Then, ‘Get me someone who plays like Bill Bing.’ And finally, ‘Who is Bill Bing?'” Bing said. Chuckling, he said he is in his fourth stage.
MidAmerica, the group that books Carnegie Hall for student musicians, has been asking Bing to send in a recording of the band for years.
“Carnegie seemed daunting,” he said.
Finally, in November 2006, he sent in a sample CD. The recording includes pieces written by a variety of composers such as William Shuman, Frank Ticheli and Felix Mendelssohn. The recording that won the concert band a spot at Carnegie is available in the Oxy Bookstore.
A lot of hard work went into the making of the CD. The band had to have extra practices, and the majority of the recording took place at a live concert. Two of the pieces were world premieres. This means that the Caltech-Occidental band’s performance of these pieces mark the first time they have ever been played. In this case, the two recorded premieres were conducted by the composers.
The stakes for being accepted to play at the Ensemble Spotlight Series at Carnegie are high, as tickets will cost between $35 and $94. The band was invited to play with two other student bands this May.
Once the band received their invitation, the members had to begin the process of fundraising and selecting pieces for the show.The Music department at Occidental is already underfunded, Bing said. Because of this, the department was forced to allocate funding to the music groups on campus that need it most. He calls this a “benign neglect.”
“I’d say about 99 percent [of funding comes] from Caltech,” he said. “Out of the $100,000 it costs to take the band to New York, Oxy contributed about $1,000.”
Occidental does support the band by providing them with a venue-Thorne Hall-to play in every spring. Bing said that Thorne’s acoustics are very similar to Carnegie Hall, making it one of the best venues in Los Angeles along with the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Ambassador Hotel, UCLA’s Royce Hall and the Music Center.
Caltech not only provides monetary support, but also consistently draws a 500-person crowd for the band. (At Oxy, a 250-person crowd is the best-case scenario.) The Band plays twice a year at Caltech’s Ramo Auditorium, which is smaller and has poorer acoustics than Thorne.
Choosing pieces appropriate to Carnegie Hall was a challenge.
“Carnegie has grand acoustics, and has close to a two-second reverberation time,” Bing said. This is ideal for pieces that are “long, hymn-like, such as brass chorales; not terribly busy or note-y pieces.”
To this end, he chose classic pieces like Ira and George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Howard Hanson’s “Chorale and Alleluia” and Joseph Curiale’s “Prairie Hymn.”
“Be Glad then America” by Willliam Schuman will be conducted by guest conductor and Professor of Geology at Caltech, Paul Asimow.
Vocalist Kjerstin Williams will solo for both Gershwin pieces. Williams is an alumna of Caltech, where she earned her Ph.D. in robotics.
These pieces are not overly ambitious, which makes them ideal for this performance. “We are not playing at Carnegie Hall to make music history, we are playing to make music,” Bing said. He also chose these pieces because he knew the band could perfect them.
With the Carnegie show just a month-and-a-half away, the band has been practicing three hours a week at Caltech.
Gelzer will serve as the informal Occidental manager of the group next year. Wanting to increase the number of Occidental members, she is encouraging musicians at Oxy to join the band next year. Bing is highly supportive of her efforts to publicize and recruit for the Concert Band.
“I want to let Occidental students know that [their school] has a viable music department that includes groups like the concert band,” he said.
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