[November 22, 2024]
Southwest Portland Community Band Winter Concert
Saturday, December 14, 2024, 5:00pm
Multnomah Arts Center
Admission is free, donations benefit the Ida B. Wells High School Band
Food and beverages available
Concert program here.
Not your grandma's stuffy concert band, SW Portland Community Band aims to break the mold. There are no auditions, just a love of playing music together. Players include Ida B. Wells High School students, parents, alumni, and musicians with no other connection to the school beyond the desire to play in a supportive non-competitive group. Some are in their sixties and haven't played since high school band, others are professional musicians. Led by Wells band teacher Nick Caldwell, these players just want to have fun, and manage to sound good while doing it.
The band has grown from 18 people at the first rehearsal in 2017 to more than 50, with a waitlist for all positions except second bassoon. Even though concerts are free to attend, they have taken in enough donations over the past few years to buy new equipment and upgrades for the high school music program. By 2020 they had brought in enough money to cover the cost of acoustic shells for the Wells auditorium, a performance venue with notoriously challenging acoustics.
The most recent purchase from the band's concert proceeds is a set of Yamaha 1.5 octave chimes, costing "a cool $6800 dollars," according to Caldwell. He added, " I think the old ones came new with the building in 1957."
Caldwell expressed his thanks to everyone who has supported the band over the past five years. "Seeing the excitement on the Wells percussion students' faces when they got to play them for the first time was great. The old chimes will be given to the Robert Gray Middle School band students, who currently do not have a set of chimes. So two schools have benefitted!"
The next goal is a new vibraphone.
—Valeurie Friedman
Do you have an opportunity in your life to make music? Tell us about it.