How many conductors does it take to get a powerful wind blowing?
A whopping five of them will be waving and handing off the baton Sunday as the Southwest Washington Wind Symphony celebrates 20 years of moving musical air with a reunion of past and present conductors. Returning to the podium to direct the 51-piece concert band in a free afternoon concert will be conductors Mark Lane (retired, former band director at several local high schools as well as Central Washington University), Lewis Norfleet (now a band director in Grants Pass, Ore.), Sam Ormson (current band director at Mountain View High School) and Tim Siess (current band director at Union High School), in addition to current principal Wind Symphony conductor Patrick Murphy (director of bands at the University of Portland).
“It is so cool to have all the core conductors coming back,” Murphy said. “But the really cool thing is that Rich Carr is still around and still excited every week. Without Rich there would be no group.”
It was Carr’s vision of a top-notch yet all-volunteer community band — and his determination to network his way toward realizing that vision — that launched the Southwest Washington Wind Symphony. The project took a while to get off the ground, he said.
Carr, 77, who lives in Hazel Dell, was a working pediatric anesthesiologist at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital when he took his kids to a musical extravaganza called “Blast,” which, as the title suggests, leans into the sheer power and volume of brass instruments.
If You Go
What: “Legacy of Music” by Southwest Washington Wind Symphony
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Union High School, 6201 N.W. Friberg-Strunk St., Camas
Admission: Free
Information: swwindsymphony.org
“It was like an epiphany, seeing these musicians on stage, just having the time of their life,” he recalled. “It took me back to when I used to play the cornet and I was having the time of my life. I wanted to do that again!”
As a kid, Carr played the cornet in church and with a Salvation Army band. But he set his horn aside again by the time he reached high school. He hadn’t played in 35 years when unlikely inspiration hit him. Not only would he start playing again, he’d form a concert band that was a cut above the norm for a volunteer community group.
“I wanted to make really high-caliber music,” he said. “That’s what I enjoy. There’s something about making music with other people that really touches your soul. It’s not something I can do myself, because it’s greater than the sum of its parts.”
Excellent concert bands already existed here and there in the Portland metro area, he discovered, but not in Vancouver. That made no sense to Carr, who knew that Southwest Washington was, and is, home to a strong community of talented musicians and music educators.
“As I explored this idea and talked to band directors, I learned that a lot of the very best musicians from Vancouver were going to Portland to play,” he said.
Some of those players shrugged off the idea of launching a serious but voluntary new ensemble in Clark County, Carr said. (Current conductor Murphy said, “I don’t know if I would have answered a call from some doctor looking to start some new community band.”)
But others loved the idea, and about 20 showed up at what’s called a “reading session,” sight reading and evaluating suggested pieces they might commit to performing. Many of those folks already knew each other and were glad to have a reason to gather and socialize, he said.
“When we sat down and made music together, magic happened,” Carr said. “That’s what sparked this thing. It wouldn’t have happened without other people.”
About 70 percent of those people are professional music educators, he said, and they are very busy people. They have just a handful of rehearsals in the run-up to each concert, and the musicians are expected to be capable sight-readers and concert performers. It’s an invitation-only group.
Given all that, Carr said it’s gratifying and frankly surprising to realize that the group has survived and thrived for decades. Such longevity didn’t seem likely when the group started, even though Carr took the project seriously enough to set it up as a bona fide nonprofit corporation. He remembers going to a nonprofit-agency information session where he was told that his little effort couldn’t possibly survive, even for five years.
Musical excellence is one reason why the Southwest Washington Wind Symphony has lasted 20 years, Carr said. The other, frankly, is that its three concerts per year are always free.
“The business side of keeping this organization alive has been challenging,” Carr said. “We keep it free because, if you charge anything at all, you’ll exclude people. We want to include everybody. We want students to come.”
That strategy continues to work, he said. The community is generous with donations, and there’s no shortage of musicians — of every age — eager to get involved.
“Some of today’s players came to our concerts as kids, as students, and they said, ‘I want to play in that group,’ ” Carr said.
New American music
What exactly is a “wind symphony”? That’s just a hifalutin term for what’s also known as a concert band or simply a brass band, Murphy said. It’s an ensemble with an even “thicker texture” of lung-powered woodwinds and brasses than a full orchestra, he said. On Sunday the group will include one piano, two double basses and an assortment of percussion.
“It’s not an orchestra and it’s not a marching band, but it’s another kind of music that’s really American,” Carr said.
Concert bands draw both from orchestral classical repertoire as orchestras and from the popular standards that still get played on community bandstands. Plus, Murphy said, there’s a growing body of interesting new music for concert bands.
“The concert band world is young,” Murphy said. “The sounds we make are constantly evolving and we are always trying new things.”
Sunday’s diverse program includes John Philip Sousa’s 1893 “The Liberty Bell,” which is best known (fortunately for Sousa? or unfortunately for Sousa?) as the theme song to “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”; Gustav Holst’s 1909 “First Suite in E-flat for Military Band,” an early example of “serious” music composed for concert band; and David R. Gillingham’s 2001 “With Heart and Voice,” which has a distinctly modern flair.
Murphy’s own selection is a 2024 composition called “Skyward Spirits: A Micro-Symphony” by JaRod Hall, a young African American band director, tubist and trombonist based in Texas.
“It is so dynamic and energetic,” he said. “You’ve got a line of percussion in back and you’ve got all these flashy brassy instruments in front and there are some big solos. It’s a toe-tapping good time.”
