Opening concert Sunday for Brazil Concert Band

BRAZIL -- The Brazil Concert Band will present “Beatles, Bayou and Champagne” on opening night, Sunday, June 3 at Forest Park in Brazil.

The free concert begins at 8 p.m. at the park’s bandshell (or pavilion if rain).

Director Matthew S. Huber, in his 50th year as a member of the BCB, and the 160-year-old Brazil Concert Band offer an evening of classics from The Beatles, Broadway favorites, new compositions and those ever-popular marches.

New to the Brazil Band is “Bayou Breakdown” by Brant Karrick featuring all sections of the band in a Bach-style fugue and folk song-like lyrical theme with the flavor of Louisiana.

Beatles fans will rock to “The Boys From Liverpool,” a John Lennon and Paul McCartney montage arranged for band by Jerry Bilik. Among the songs are “Eleanor Rigby,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Yesterday,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob- La-Da,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Hey Jude.”

From Broadway, comes “Gigi” by Lerner and Loewe in a setting by R.R. Bennett with the songs “The Night They Invented Champagne,” “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore,” “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” and “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”

Those flutes, clarinets, oboes, bassoons and saxophones dominate in “Woodwinds of Mass Destruction” by Matt Conaway.

The brasses show off in “A Hot Time in the Brasses Tonight.”

From 1939 comes Lockhart and Seitz concert marche militaire scored by Harry Alford, “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise” with euphonium soloist John P. Huber who teaches music in the North Central Parke School Corporation.

Marches on tap include “The Big Cage” by Karl L. King, “Gloria” by F. W. Losey, “Independentia” by R. B. Hall and “Hands Across the Sea” by John Philip Sousa.