MOORHEAD — The Concordia Band left for their domestic tour on Sunday Feb. 4. The ensemble will perform in five different cities before returning to Moorhead this weekend.
Over the week-long tour the ensemble provides educational outreach, leading workshops and masterclasses with the high school students. They also work with different conductors pursuing their own professional development. The ensemble ends each day performing a concert in every stop along their route, sometimes collaborating with high school ensembles they rehearse with during the day.
Band members are hosted by community members who offer up their homes for a meal and a place to sleep. A number of home-stay hosts are Concordia alumni, often previous members of The Concordia Band.
Concordia Band member junior Wyatt Line is on his first tour this year, and finds the community outreach aspect to be one of the most important parts of the tour.
“Going on tour is one way that prospective students see what Concordia is all about, and they can see what different ensembles sound like. We also work with other people in the community and show them what Concordia is about,” Line said.
Senior Kaylin Bosworth is on her last tour before graduating. The band had visited her high school when she was a senior, and she believes the experience is important for students in this particular age group.
“Working with students that sometimes need to hear things from people kind of their age – it’s just a great opportunity for them to hear music that they’ve never heard before, and we usually try and tie ours to some sort of theme. In my time here we’ve done stuff related to civil rights which I think is super impactful,” Bosworth said.
Band director and professor of instrumental music education, Peter Haberman, spends months choosing repertoire in preparation for the annual domestic tour. He starts with one piece that is central to a theme or idea and adds more pieces surrounding it.
According to Haberman, this year’s biggest piece is David Maslanka’s “Symphony No. 4.” Planned with pieces such as Michel Fernandez’ “Unity Through Rhythm,” the program focuses on unifying humanity.
“There’s a depth to playing music in the concert more than once that you get to live with the music longer and find different facets of the music on different evenings and then it becomes a different part of you when you have that much experience with the music,” Haberman said.
The Concordia Band started their tour in Buffalo, Minnesota, and have additional concerts in Circle Pines, Minnetonka, Virginia and Farmington before their home concert in Memorial Auditorium at 2 p.m. on Feb. 11.
