Two soloists help Willamette Valley Concert Band toast Scandinavian composers

By Heather Crabtree
The Entertainer

Albany — Ensemble bands don’t always lend themselves to pianists as easily as they do flute or saxophone players.

But for the Willamette Valley Concert Band’s winter performance, Scandinavian Music Festival, on Sunday, March 18, soloist Andrea Recek has the chance to play an instrument she started at age 5.

The concert begins at 3 p.m. in the Russell Tripp Performance Center, Takena Hall, on the Linn-Benton Community College main campus in Albany.

Recek, of Albany, will play the first movement of the “Piano Concerto in A minor” by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

The 26-year-old is a classically trained pianist who graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts in music in 2002. She is working on her master’s at the UO.

She has played with the band since 1996, but does not typically play piano for the group. Instead, she picked up a new instrument suited for ensemble performances.

“My dad plays in the band and they needed someone to play the mallet percussion part and my dad said, ‘It’ll be just like playing the piano,’” she said. “It wasn’t exactly, but he got me into it.”

Recek also plays the bass guitar for the Albany Swing Band and the Heartland Big Band, and has worked on musical productions at Albany Civic Theater and the Majestic Theatre in Corvallis.

This will be her second appearance as a soloist for the concert band.

Also giving a solo performance for the Scandinavian Music Festival concert is Sarra Newton of Independence.

For the winter concert, Newton will perform “Gammal Fabodpsalm fran Dalarne” by Norwegian composer Erik Lindberg on the alto saxophone.

Newton began her journey with music around middle school, playing the saxophone through school and in various summer programs. She then attended Southern Oregon University in Ashland and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“It sounds really lame, but I saw someone playing (the saxophone) on television and I decided that’s what I wanted to do,” Newton said.

She has played with the concert band since she was 13. Now, at 26, she also plays for a foursome of sax players known as The Fairer Sax Quartet and for the Monmouth-Independence Town Band.

Like Recek, she is classically trained.

The concert will also feature selections from Finnish composer Jean Sibelius; “Huldigungsmarsch” from the “Sigurd Jorsalfar Suite” by Edvard Grieg; and selections from “Peer Gynt Suite,” also by Grieg, “Tivoli Festival Overture” by Danish composer Soren Hyldgaard, “Fantasie on a Danish Tune” by Albert O. Davis, “First Swedish Rhapsody” by Swedish/American composer Erik Leidzen, “Swedish Folksongs and Dances” by Swedish composer August Soderman, and “Entry March of the Boyars” by Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen.

For more information on the Willamette Valley Concert Band, visit the band Web site at: www.willamette

valleyconcertband.org.

If You Go

WHAT: Willamette Valley Concert Band Winter Concert, “Scandinavian Music Festival”

WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday, March 18

WHERE: Russell Tripp Performance Center, Takena Hall, Linn-Benton Community College, Albany

TICKETS: Tickets are $8 and available at Gracewinds Music in Corvallis; Mid-Valley Gems and Jewelry and the LBCC Theater box office in Albany; Stainthorp’s Music in Lebanon; and at the door