Composer Bernard Hoffer and the River City Brass Band are showing there's more to patriotic intensity than flag-waving and drum-thumping.
The band's current season-closing concerts, titled "Summertime," feature a new work by the New York City-based composer. "Elegy: Nine-Eleven for Saxophone and Brass Band" is a dramatic and fervent piece that is filled with American pride.
But it isn't a simply stated patriotism, and Thursday's crowd of a little more than 400 at the Carnegie Library of Homestead reacted with enthusiasm and a little puzzlement. Perhaps that was because of the nature of the work. Music director Denis Colwell says when he commissioned the work he was looking at some light piece to fit on a breezy concert. But Hoffer says when terrorists attacked the United States last Sept. 11, he felt compelled to do a composition dealing with that.
The result is a piece that uses some jazz-influenced lines — probably stemming from the Stan Getz-shaped nature the composition was going to do. But it's not jazz that turns into a sax soloist with a big band. Rather, it is the type of jazz that creeps into Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" or works of composers such as John Adams.
David Carroll, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland, is the tenor sax soloist in these concerts and performed brilliantly at the Homestead concert. The former associate principal bassoon from the New York Philharmonic returned to the saxophone, an instrument he says he loves, about nine years ago. And Carroll's mastery shows. Not only was his tone and articulation great, but his conception of the melodic development of the piece made its statements clear and logical.
Surrounded by Thelonious Monk-like harmonies, Carroll played melodic passages that were jazz-influenced but also had the sound of classical studies. Out of that development finally emerged statements by him and the band of "America the Beautiful."
But it wasn't a rousing hymn — rather simply an affirmation of who we all are. And perhaps that's the reason for the pensive reaction: The composition is more of a nudge to the mind than a pat on the back.
But it's also one of the best pieces the band ever has commissioned.
The rest of the concert existed in its more summery way, with selections such as Johann Strauss's "Thunder and Lightning Polka," Karl King's "Barnum and Bailey's Favorite" and an arrangement of music from "The Natural" by cornetist Drew Fennell.
The pace of the concert was slowed a little by too many songs from the River City Barbershop Quartet, which was kept to a trio because of the illness of member Lance LaDuke.
But the band's "Stars and Stripes Forever" provided the energy the singers lacked.
Evidently, it was the pat on the back the audience was hunting for all along.
The concert will be performed 8 p.m. today at the Palace Theatre, Greensburg; 3 p.m. Sunday at Baldwin High School; 8 p.m. Tuesday at Upper St. Clair Theater; 8 p.m. Thursday at Gateway High School, Monroeville; 8 p.m. Friday at Carson Middle School, McCandless; 8 p.m. May 11 at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland; 3 p.m. May 12 at Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center, Johnstown. Prices vary. Details: (412) 322-7222
