Mersey Band performing ‘Suitely’ in Liverpool

The concert will feature the 36-member group performing an eclectic program largely made up of sets of related instrumental compositions. Selections will range from military marches to the classics, from a gentle waltz to classic rock and from jazz standards to whimsical Warner Brothers show tunes. It is scheduled to get underway at 7 p.m. at the Zion United Church, Main St., Liverpool.

Music Director Scott MacDonald looks forward to the first concert of the 2009 year as an opportunity to showcase “a performance standard” the band hasn’t achieved in years. He feels it has a renewed fullness and richness of sound. “The Suitely Sounds the Band” concert takes its name from its inclusion of the Swedish Folk Song Suite, The Blue Ridge Overture and A Canadian Trilogy. Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous will be the Looney Tunes Overture. On the lighter side, the band will also play Waggery for Woodwinds, a breezy arrangement which showcases the Woodwind section.

Duke Ellington big band era hits such as Mood Indigo, Caravan and Don’t Get Around Much Anymore will be wound together in a varied and fast-paced medley under the general title Sophisticated Ladies. Starting out in a relaxed walking pace, the band will kick off into a bright Dixie tempo in playing a traditional slow-fast New Orleans-style arrangement of Just A Closer Walk With Thee.

Trombone soloist Rod MacGillivray – who is currently completing his doctorate in trombone performance from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio – will be featured performing a rendition of Ash Grove, a traditional Welsh folk tune. MacGillivray, who served six years with The Band of the Ceremonial Guard in Ottawa–will also be adding his dulcet low brass tones to marches such as Tenth Regiment and Strike Up the Band. It’s the Ceremonial Guard Band that plays during the traditional Changing of the Guard Ceremonies on Parliament Hill.

Still keeping in the genre or martial music, guest bagpiper Dr. Ross Myers will, for a second season, lead the concert band in a series of well-known Scottish marches. A jazz quartet - being formed from within the Mersey Band - is now rehearsing a short program of syncopated standards to be played during intermission.

Dr. Meyers – of the RCMP “H” Division Pipes and Drums, Halifax, and the Royal Nova Scotia Tattoo Black Watch Association Pipes and Drums – will add the skirl of the bagpipes to the official regimental march of the Royal Engineers Wings. The pipes, the band’s drum section and the full Mersey aggregation will also play The Road to the Isles. In a change of mood, Dr. Myers will play the spiritually uplifting tune Highland Cathedral superimposed over a backdrop of Mersey Band music.

Making its debut during the program will be a quartet that band leader MacDonald has named The Diminished Fourth. It’s a jazz combo where he plays saxophone and clarinet. Retired educator and well-known local musician Bill Crowell plays keyboard and does vocals. MacGillivray - who directed the jazz band at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, Ohio - adds his melodic bass trombone and John Cunningham backs up the mini-group on drums. They have been rehearsing jazz chestnuts such as: The Lady Is A Tramp, Summertime, Fly Me to the Moon and Ain’t Misbehavin’.

The concert finale will see the pipes, band drums and Mersey Band play a stirring march medley including numbers such as Black Bear and Wha’ Saw the 42nd. Dr. Myers, who had been playing bagpipes for 16 years, was a member of the Fredericton and District Pipes and Drums and The Base Gagetown Pipes and Drums before moving to Mersey Point from Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Concert admission is a free-will offering. Proceeds will go towards helping the Mersey Band fulfill its commitment to keeping instrumental music alive in Queens County. The band, which performs at parades, concerts and commemorative services, holds band camps that give youth and adult beginners a head-start at playing a musical instrument. The Mersey Band Society also subsidizes private music lessons year-round and proceeds from the May 8 concert will support these activities. Society president Jim Parks reports that, in all, the group took part in six parades and 12 concerts and ceremonial events last year. Highlights of the 2008 session included the spring concert and a late fall fund-raising dinner and evening of chamber music performed by a number of ensembles made up of various smaller groups from within the band.

The Mersey Band - now marking its 61st anniversary - was, in reality, a continuation of the Liverpool Citizens’ Band. The Mersey Paper Company took over the organization in 1950 and for 34 years rehearsals were held in a band room near the gatehouse of newsprint mill. That band room had served as a temporary restaurant to serve workers involved in naval ship repairs the Mersey company carried out during The Second World War. The band later practiced in more spacious facilities in the company’s Woodlands Building. The Bowater Corporation of North America began a phase out of its involvement in the band in 1988 and, by 1994 control of the community group was taken over by the Mersey Band Society.