Calais band wows park crowd High school ensembles seek funds for camp

CALAIS – In past years, the concerts in the park attracted women in hoop skirts with parasols and men in silk hats and fancy waistcoats.

Every weekend there were band concerts that included old-fashioned bands with a lot of brass, old-timers say.

The music of the day was Mozart or maybe a little chamber music. That later dissolved into ragtime with some big band tossed in.

Sunday, history repeated itself as the Calais High School jazz combo played songs like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

They were followed by the high school band that wowed the audience with “Washington Post March” and music from “West Side Story.”

The hoop skirts and fancy waistcoats may have been replaced with dungarees and bluejeans, but the audience enthusiasm that marked the concerts of yesteryear was still present Sunday. The audience, some sitting on the grass, others in lawn chairs, enthusiastically applauded the bands.

The concert was the brainchild of music teacher and band director Alison Brennan. “Driving by other towns and hearing bands playing in the park, I thought it would be a nice thing for us to do,” she said. “These kids work very hard all year long. A lot of the community just hear us as pep band kind of music, parades and basketball games, but this is the music they work the hardest on.”

There are 28 students in the concert band and seven in the jazz combo.

In addition to fun music, the concert had an important mission to raise money to send students to summer music camp. Some of the students will be going to the University of Maine in Orono, while others will attend the music school in Farmington. “Farmington is a jazz camp and Orono is your concert band camp where they learn music theory and concentrate more on their performance,” Brennan said. “Both [are] excellent ways for them to further their musical abilities, especially in an area where we don’t have any private teachers, this is very important.”

While the students were performing, the school’s Music Booster Club was cooking hot dogs. “It would be nice if we could do it annually,” Beth Rogers, president of the Calais Music Booster Club, said. “We are hoping to give back to the community what they have given to us over the years.”

The response was positive. “I think this is a wonderful idea and a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially since it’s such a nice day,” said audience member Sheri Sivret. “I think Alison Brennan is doing a wonderful job with the band. She has a lot of great ideas and is really bringing the music program back to Calais.”

Russell Coltart, whose grandson Matthew Coltart, 16, was playing a tenor saxophone in the jazz combo, said he enjoyed the idea of a concert in the park. “This is the greatest thing that ever happened. They should have one every Sunday,” he said. “Used to in the old days.”

Anyone who would like to donate to the music camp scholarship fund can make checks payable to Calais Music Boosters and send it in Brennan’s name to Calais High School.