The joy of making music for many adults lies in the past, distant or otherwise, when they were members of high school or college bands.
But in the Four Corners, that joy has come alive again through Southwest Civic Winds, a community concert band, which is celebrating its second anniversary with its Spring Concert on Sunday. Despite its moniker, the group also includes brass and percussion.
“The band is a community musical group that brings accessible entertainment to a wide variety of people throughout the Four Corners,” Civic Winds Board President Paul Boyer said, “and it provides a musical outlet for people who are bursting with talent and desire and just need a place to express their skills.”
The group was founded by Fort Lewis College music professor Mark Walters and Katzin Music owner Ruth Katzin-Kilpatrick after she suggested it to Walters.
“I asked Ruth if we really had enough good players to make a balanced concert band,” he said, “and she said, ‘Without a doubt.’ And she was right.”
On Sunday, the group will be playing pieces including the “Commando March” by Samuel Barber – the only work he composed for concert band – Alfred Reed’s “Armenian Dances” and Eric Whitacre’s “Sleep.”
And for the first time in its short history, the group is welcoming a soloist, longtime Music in the Mountains and Dallas Symphony trumpeter Stephen Weger. He’ll be performing “Carnival of Venice” with the band.
“My dad was a high school band director and conducted a municipal band in Paris, Texas,” Weger said about his comfort in working with a group of talented amateurs instead of the professionals he performed with for so many years. “This is a good group. I’m really enjoying it.”
The booking came about through serendipity.
“I was retired for about a year,” said Weger, who now lives in Durango, “when I picked up a trumpet and started playing around with it. Then a man from Fort Worth (Texas) asked me to play some recitals, and I booked a larger practice room up here at Fort Lewis. Mark heard me, came in and introduced himself and here I am.”
The 55 to 60-piece band doesn’t play simple music, Walters said.
“This is making me stretch, too,” Walters said. “We did Aaron Copland’s ‘A Lincoln Portrait’ in the fall, and I told my wife it was the hardest thing I’ve ever conducted.”
‘A pine tree in the forest’
Returning to music after a hiatus, sometimes of decades, has enriched the musicians’ lives in unexpected ways. After starting trombone lessons at age 11 and performing through high school, Andrea Kirkpatrick stopped playing after graduation in 1992.
“After years of daily practice, concerts, parades and competitions, I closed the trombone case and walked away, not realizing I was leaving behind a close friend,” she said. “For years, I ran drills in my head, practicing the slide positions and trying to remind my ear what the horn sounded like.”
Farmington resident Karon Lyon played throughout junior high and high school, winning all-state honors and was even a part of Howard Chrisman’s fledgling San Juan Symphony.
“In the fall of 2011, 40 years after putting down the horn, I literally had dreams in which I was playing the horn,” she said. “I borrowed one from a friend that December and quickly discovered that I had to relearn everything. The horn I had played in high school was a single horn – the borrowed one was a double horn, with all new fingerings and technique.”
Six months of practice and lessons, attendance at a Civic Winds concert, an introduction to Walters and an invitation to join the group at its next rehearsal, and she’s committed to the group, too.
There is no doubt Civic Winds is a joyful experience for the musicians as much as for the audiences.
“It brings back a joy that cannot be expressed or found in any other outlet, It brings back a joy that cannot be expressed or found in any other outlet,” Kirkpatrick said. “It returned to me a piece of my heart I left in my trombone case back in 1992. It’s being a pine tree in the forest. You are singularly beautiful, but as a whole you create something much larger, something much more beautiful.”
‘Prepared, diligent, enthusiastic’
Civic Winds continues to grow and evolve. Sunday’s concert marks the début of the group’s big band, conducted by Aztec High School Band Director Rian Chiaravalloti.
“I’m very enthusiastic about this big band,” Walters said. “I’m playing baritone sax and clarinet in that because it’s a fun opportunity for me, too.”
The musicians and Walters form a mutual admiration society.
“I particularly appreciate the professionalism and musicianship that Dr. Walters brings to the group,” Lyon said. “I can honestly say that having this experience is significant in moving me from a novice to being able to call myself a musician.”
And Walters is as jazzed – pun intended – about the musicians in this group.
“They are so prepared, so diligent, so enthusiastic,” he said. “This is quite an impressive group. A lot played in college, several have music degrees, there are 12 or 13 band directors in the group. I’m amazed at the ability level.”
There is one big difference between the members of Civic Winds and the college students he works with in his day job at FLC.
“Being adults, they have the means to buy new professional-quality instruments,” he said with a laugh. “In the French horn section, all five have professional horns. It makes a real difference in the sound.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
Southwest Civic Winds will present its Spring Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students.
They are available at 247-7657, by visiting www.durangoconcerts.com or at the Ticket Office at the Durango Welcome Office, 802 Main Ave.
The concert will feature students from local high schools playing side-by-side with the musicians on “Earthdance” by Michael Sweeney. It will also mark the début of the Civic Winds Jazz Big Band Ensemble.
