Performed
Sunday, June 1, 2pm
Hofmann Theatre
Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Dr., Walnut Creek CA
A concert that got low-down — and upbeat!
featuring
• Tubist Zachariah Spellman of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in a mesmerizing rendition of James Curnow's "Fantasia for Tuba" and "Flight of the Bumble Bee." He has been a featured soloist with many organizations including the San Francisco Symphony.
• The Contra Costa Wind Symphony's own Bassoon Trio performed Leroy Anderson's popular Bugler's Holiday
• The Bay Bones - twelve trombonists showed their slippery skills with Pederson's Trojan Trombone and Laserom's Magic Slides
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English Folk Song Suite ......................................................... Ralph Vaughan Williams
I. March: Seventeen Come Sunday
II. Intermezzo: My Bonny Boy
III. March: Folk Songs From Somerset
Bugler's Holiday .................................................................................. Leroy Anderson
Bassoons: Lori Garvey, Michael Garvey, Michael Cooke
Petite Suite .................................................................... Claude Debussy / Arr. Kimura
I. En Bateau
II. Cortege
III. Menuet
IV. Ballet
INTERMISSION
The Wizard of Oz ................................................. Arlen & Harburg / Arr. James Barnes
We're Off To See The Wizard - Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead
The Merry Old Land Of Oz - If I Only Had A Brain
Over The Rainbow
Fantasia for Tuba ............................................................................... James Curnow
Zachariah Spellman, Tuba
"Flight of the Bumble Bee" ............................................................ Rimsky-Korsakov
Zachariah Spellman, Tuba
An American in Paris ....................................... George Gershwin / Arr. Jerry Brubaker
Trojan Trombones ......................................................................... Tommy Pederson
The Bay Bones
Billy Robinson, Director
Magic Slides .................................................................................... Wim Laseroms
with The Bay Bones
English Folk Song Suite … Ralph Vaughan Williams
Like many classical composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams used folk songs for inspiration. The melodies were pleasant and would have been known to his audience. He wove them throughout the score, adding artistic variations. Equally important were the lyrics to these songs. They would evoke stories to the audience during the performance. Written in 1923, the English Folk Song Suite is one of Vaughan Williams's most famous works. The suite consists of three movements.
I. March: Seventeen Come Sunday
Seventeen Come Sunday is a folk ballad of a chance meeting leading to a love affair. The woodwinds play this melody. The movement ends with Dives and Lazarus in the lower instruments. This song is based on the biblical story of the beggar Lazarus and is a parable concerning heaven and worldly riches.
II. Intermezzo: My Bonny Boy
In My Bonny Boy a young woman sees a former lover in the arms of another woman. But as she sings, she gets over her loss. The tune opens on a solo oboe. The low-register instruments then repeat it. Halfway through the movement, a typically English waltz begins. It is the song Green Bushes. This new unrelated song is an opposite version of the first. Now a young man sings of seeing a pretty woman waiting in the woods. He is so persuasive he convinces her to go off with him, leaving her lover behind. The musical simplicity of this piece offsets its timeless love stories.
III . March: Folk Songs from Somerset
Folk Songs From Somerset opens with the folk song Blow Away the Morning Dew or The Baffled Knight, played by the solo cornet. In this song, dating to 1609, a knight meets a maid swimming in a brook. When he proposes intimacy, she persuades him that they will be more comfortable upon her richly appointed bed. When they arrive at her home, she rushes in first and locks him out. In most versions she then taunts him for his gullibility! The ballad concludes by warning young men to ignore maidenly protests in these situations. As the tune moves across the various instruments, one can almost hear this story being played out.
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Bugler's Holiday …Leroy Anderson
Low woodwind version of the bright and cheerful Bugler's Holiday. This is one of the best-known favorites by the American master of semi-classical music, Leroy Anderson.
Anderson wrote Buglers' Holiday in 1954 for all three members of the Boston Pops trumpet section. The part is cunningly written around both standard bugle calls and original bugle-call-like figures. As usual in Anderson 's music, both the solo parts and the rest of the orchestration are highly accomplished and meticulous. Buglers' Holiday became a favorite almost immediately and has remained popular ever since.
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Debussy's Petite Suite (1889) began as a four hand piano piece and was later recast for full orchestra. It has since been frequently arranged - for clarinets, for harp, for brass - and is much loved as one of Debussy's most appealingly melodic short pieces.
The work has a simple lyricism that contrasts with much of the composer's music from the late 1880's. His other work from that period was known for trend-setting harmonies that drew the wrath of contemporary critics for being "too modernistic." There are four separate movements, each originally crafted to give equal opportunities to both pianists.
En Bateau , or "In a Boat," the first movement, has an exquisite melody that is accompanied by broken chords that clearly suggest ripples, eddies, and whirlpools in water. The name comes from a poem by Paul Verlaine that describes a small boat in the moonlight “gliding merrily over the dreaming water.” Simple though it may be, this movement actually uses one of the signature elements of Debussy's later harmonic style – the whole-tone scale.
The next movement, entitled Cortège, or “Procession,” reminds the listener of a festival parade with its marching band passing with a rush of musical pageantry. This is also after a Verlaine poem, mentioning “a monkey in a brocaded jacket trotting and leaping in front of his mistress, as she waves a handkerchief in her delicately gloved hand.”
The beautiful Menuet follows. The Suite's most magical movement, it suggests the musical equivalent of elves at play. In two of its passages, Debussy gives the melody an eerie, open sound by scoring it in parallel tenths. It is a transcription of an unpublished song, Fête Galante set to a text by Theodore de Banville.
The final movement is an energetic, festive dance movement with the title Ballet. Therein, a lively 2/4 dance alternates with a supple waltz in 3/8 time.
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The Wizard of Oz … Arlen & Harburg, arr. James Barnes
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film and is often ranked among the top ten best movies of all-time. The story is well known to all of us.
The Wizard of Oz is widely noted for its musical selections and soundtrack. Music and lyrics were by Harold Arlen and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, who won the Academy Award for Best Music-Song for "Over the Rainbow".
Tonight’s arrangement features instrumental version of these vocals from the film:
- Over the Rainbow
- Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead
- You're Off to See the Wizard
- The Merry Old Land Of Oz
- If I Only Had A Brain
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Fantasia for Tuba… James Curnow
This uplifting composition explores the lyrical side of the booming foundation of the concert band: the tuba.
The solo tuba begins the piece with a four-note motif. It happens to be F, Bb, G then C. This leads into an overture-like journey through both pastoral and martial rhythms. The piece includes delicate interplay between the solo tuba and the wind symphony as a whole.
A driving scherzo follows in a free form or “fantasia” manner. Minivariations are played on the original four-note motif. One hears hints of Gershwin from the tuba. Suddenly the piece slows as the tuba solos in its expressive, sonorous voice. A brief cadenza introduces the final scherzo that leads to an energetic conclusion.
Fantasia for Tuba was written in 1987.
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Flight of the Bumblebee… Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
This famous orchestral interlude was written by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1899 for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The piece closes Act III , Tableau 1, right after the magic Swan-Bird instructs Prince Gvidon Saltanovich on how to change into an insect so that he can fly away to visit his father.
This piece is extremely difficult on the tuba. The contrabass tuba contains an internal column of air that is 18 feet long. The artist must double tongue long, flowing passages while producing enough air pressure to vibrate this mass of air. Starting and stopping this airflow in a bee-like manner can only be accomplished by a skilled virtuoso such as Mr. Spellman.
Audience members inspired by soloist Spellman may enjoy hearing an entire college marching band aggressively playing Flight of the Bumblebee in the movie Drumline.
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An American in Paris … George Gershwin
An American in Paris is the symphonic result of Gershwin’s visit to Paris in the spring of 1928. It is in the form of an extended tone poem evoking the sights and energy of the French capital. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.
Gershwin composed the piece on commission from the New York Philharmonic. He also did the orchestration, scoring An American in Paris for the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra plus celesta, saxophone, and automobile horns. It contains a strong tuba part. For authenticity Gershwin even brought back some Parisian taxi horns for the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall in December 1928.
Gershwin (with help from music critic Deems Taylor) wrote in the original program notes that: "My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere." When the tone poem moves into the blues, "our American friend ... has succumbed to a spasm of homesickness." But, "nostalgia is not a fatal disease." The American visitor "once again is an alert spectator of Parisian life" and "the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant."
Gershwin’s work was the inspiration for a 1951 MGM musical film, starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant. The climax is The American in Paris ballet, an 18-minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron.
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Trojan Trombones… Tommy Pederson
Composer and trombonist extraordinaire Tommy Pederson wanted us to envision all the trombones in the USC Marching Band "marching up to the review stand" to play Trojan Trombones. He pictured the remainder of the band at parade rest.
This trombone sextet is essentially a Pederson medley. It begins with his "Trombone Polka", then moves to his piece "The Nibbler". The middle glissando section references his "Velvet Lazer". After a return to the "Trombone Polka", and again "The Nibbler", Trojan Trombones concludes with a typical rip-roaring Pederson glissando ending.
Tommy lamented that USC never performed Trojan Trombones.
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A European circus feel with polka undertones highlight this trombone trio showpiece. Composer Laseroms so thoroughly uses the full range of the instrument’s slides that the audience will feel they have stumbled across a New Orleans group with its tailgating trombones. This athletic piece is a colorful conclusion to our concert this evening.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Zachariah Spellman has been Principal Tubist for the San Francisco Opera Orchestra since 1977 and for the Marin Symphony since 1980. He is also a member of the Golden Gate Brass and the Aurio Trio. A frequent recitalist with pianist Karen Hutchinson,
Mr. Spellman has been a featured soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, the Fremont Symphony, Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra, Peninsula Symphony, the Bay Bones, and the Youth Philharmonic of his hometown, Portland, Oregon.
Along with his regular orchestral positions, Zachariah has performed with the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Silicon Valley, Oakland East Bay, California, Oregon and Houston Symphonies, and the Manhattan Philharmonic. He has also been a sideman for Mel Torme, George Shearing, and Ray Charles.
It was while performing with the Masterworks Chorale and Orchestra of San Mateo that he met his wife Susan. Susan's culinary skills are legendary among opera aficionados, particularly as demonstrated by the annual feast she prepares for the Opera in the Park concert. The Spellmans make their home in San Francisco and enjoy restaurants and travel.
Summers have found Zachariah at such music festivals as Tanglewood, Peter Britt, Grand Teton, Lake Tahoe and Mendocino. His students from the San Francisco State University, where he has been teaching since 1982, populate international musical ensembles.
In addition to his San Francisco Opera releases, Mr. Spellman is featured on the David Grisman recording Songs of our Fathers, with Bay Area's Thoth and "those darned accordians" Big Lou's Polka Cassarole, as well as many TV and radio commercials that are produced in the Bay Area. Zachariah can occasionally be seen and heard marching through the streets of Chinatown in the Green Street Mortuary Band.
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The Bay Bones is a trombone choir of between 6 and 32 trombonists -- the group varying in size depending on venue and genre. Yet, two concerts have been performed with 90 players! They were founded by Billy Robinson and Will Sudmeier in 1972. They have been featured as guest artist for the International Trombone Festival on three separate occassions and have appeared at many venues in the Bay Area and other locations in California. The Bay Bones' repertoire includes special classical arrangements as well as those in jazz and other styles.
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Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 -1958) was arguably the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell. His music is noted for its power, nobility and expressiveness. It is, perhaps, “the essence of Englishness”.
Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in the village of Down Ampney. He was educated at Charterhouse School , then Trinity College, Cambridge . Later he was a pupil of Stanford and Parry at the Royal College of Music after which he studied with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris .
At the turn of the century he was among the very first to travel into the countryside to collect folk-songs and carols from singers, notating them for future generations to enjoy. This was vital as they were becoming extinct due to increased literacy and printed music in rural areas. As musical editor of The English Hymnal he composed several hymns that are now world-wide favorites. Later he also helped to edit The Oxford Book of Carols.
Vaughan Williams volunteered with the Field Ambulance Service in Flanders in World War I. He was deeply affected by the carnage and the loss of close friends such as the composer George Butterworth.
Before the war he had met and then sustained a long friendship with the composer Gustav Holst. He later became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London .
In his lifetime, Vaughan Williams eschewed all honors with the exception of the Order of Merit which was conferred upon him in 1938. He died in 1958.
In a long and productive life, hardly a musical genre was untouched or failed to be enriched by his work. His output included nine symphonies, five operas, film music, ballet and stage music, several song cycles, church music and works for chorus and orchestra.
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Leroy Anderson (1908 - 1975)
was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John 
Williams described him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music." He wrote nearly all his pieces originally for orchestra, then transcribed most of them himself for band.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Swedish parents, Anderson was given his first piano lessons by his mother, who was an organist. He studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music and also took double bass lessons in Boston. In 1926 Anderson entered Harvard, to study theory, harmony and music composition. He earned a Master of Arts in 1930.
Anderson continued at Harvard, concentrating in Scandinavian languages, while also working as organist for the university, leading the choir and the Harvard University Band, and conducting and arranging for local dance bands. In 1936 Arthur Fiedler hired Anderson as both arranger and to produce original works for the Boston Pops.
In 1942, Anderson joined the U.S. Army, as a translator and intelligence officer. He was stationed at the Pentagon on Scandinavian intelligence matters.
In 1951 Anderson wrote his first hit, Blue Tango. It was the first instrumental recording to sell over a million records. He was immensely successful in the 1950s with pieces such as Sleigh Ride, Bugler's Holiday, and The Syncopated Clock.
- The Syncopated Clock was the theme song for The Late Show on New York’s WCBS-TV in 1950.
- Plink, Plank, Plunk! was used as the theme for the CBS panel show “I’ve Got A Secret” throughout the 50s.
- The Typewriter was often performed by the Boston Pops. When Anderson occasionally conducted, he would roll up his sleeves, don a green eyeshade and flail away on an imaginary typewriter while the orchestra played.
According to the his official website, "Leroy Anderson is considered by many to be one of America's four greatest 20th Century composers of instrumental music, alongside George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Charles Ives”
June 29, 2008 is the centennial of Anderson’s birth.
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Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918) along with Maurice Ravel, is considered one of the most prominent French Impressionist composers at the turn of the Twentieth Century.
He was born near Paris . His father was a salesman and kept a china shop. His mother was a seamstress. Some childhood trauma caused him to be clinically depressed; he never spoke about his early years. Later he could not compose without his favorite porcelain frog.
Debussy went to the Paris Conservatory to study piano when he was only 10. 
He lived at the castle of Nadezhda von Meck and taught her children. She was a wealthy patroness of Tchaikovsky. Eventually, Debussy played all Tchaikovsky’s pieces in addition to other classical repertoire. She also took Debussy on trips to Venice, Vienna, and Moscow. In Vienna he heard Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner and was influenced by Wagner.
Debussy won Prix de Rome twice in 1883 and in 1884, which covered his studies at the Villa de Medici in Rome for the next four years. In Rome Debussy met Franz Liszt and Giuseppe Verdi.
Debussy was influenced by the impressionist poets and painters. In 1890 he wrote his most famous music collection for piano the Suite Bergamasque, containing Clair de Lune. His Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1892) continued the most productive 20-year period in his life. He composed orchestral Nocturnes, La Mer, Images (1899-1909), and the intricate ballet Jeux (1912) for Ballets Russes.
The beginning of WWI and the onset of cancer depressed Debussy. He left unfinished opera, ballets and two pieces after stories by Edgar Allan Poe, that later were completed by his assistants. He died on March 25, 1918, in Paris .
Debussy's music defines the transition from late-Romantic music to twentieth century modernist music. In French literary circles, this period was known as Symbolism, a movement that directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
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Harold Arlen (1905 – 1986) created music that is everywhere.Though he is most noted for composing the songs for the film The Wizard of Oz, he has written over 400 songs! Favorites include It's Only A Paper Moon, Stormy Weather, I've Got the World on A String, and Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.
Arlen was born Hyman Arluk, in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. He learned the piano as a youth and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer and moved to New York City in his early 20s. While working as an accompanist in vaudeville, he changed his name to Harold Arlen.
In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: "Get Happy," with lyrics by Ted Koehler. Throughout the early1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem nightclub, as well as Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen also continued to perform, most notably on records.
Arlen's compositions have always been popular with jazz musicians because of his facility at incorporating a blues feeling into conventional American popular songs.
In the mid-1930s, Arlen married, and spent increasingly more time in California, writing for movie musicals. It was then that he began working with lyricist Yip Harburg. In 1938, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz.
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E. Y. (Yip) Harburg (1896 – 1981) is often known as "Broadway's social conscience," Harburg was born of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, raised in poverty on Manhattan 's Lower East Side , and later attended City College of New York where he struck up a lifelong friendship with his classmate, Ira Gershwin. Yip was a master lyricist, poet and bookwriter who was dedicated to social justice.
Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg to immigrant Jewish parents on the Lower East Side of New York City. His nickname was "Yipsel" often shortened to "Yip". Contrary to popular belief, "Yipsel" is not a Yiddish word, but rather the pronunciation of "YPSL", an acronym for Young People's Socialist League. After he adopted the name 
Edgar Harburg, he was best known as Edgar "Yip" Harburg. He attended Townsend Harris High School , where he and Ira Gershwin, who met over a shared fondness for Gilbert and Sullivan, worked on the school paper and became life-long friends. They went on to attend City College together. (This is now part of CUNY.)
Harburg then spent three years in Uruguay to avoid World War I, which he opposed as a Socialist. After the war he returned to New York , married and had two children and started writing light verse for local newspapers. He became co-owner of the Consolidated Electrical Appliance Company. The company went bankrupt following the crash of 1929, leaving Harburg "anywhere from $50,000 - $70,000 in debt." He insisted on paying the debts off over the next few decades. At this point, he and his friend Ira Gershwin agreed that Yip should start writing song lyrics.
On Broadway Harburg began writing lyrics for multiple revues in the 1930s which included songs that became standards including Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, the classic anthem of the Depression and April in Paris .
In Hollywood , Harburg wrote lyrics for numerous film musicals during the 1930's and 1940's. His most famous work was The Wizard of Oz (1939, with Arlen). In this classic, Yip conceived the integration of song and script, wrote the recitative for the Munchkin "operetta," and wrote the lyrics to all the songs, including the Academy Award-winning Over the Rainbow. He was also the final script editor and made significant contributions to the dialogue. Most of this is uncredited.
From 1951 to 1961 during the House Un-American Activities Committee investigations and the McCarthy hearings Yip was “blacklisted” for his political views from film, television and radio. Broadway, however, remained free from this kind of censorship.
Altogether, Yip wrote the lyrics to over 600 songs with a variety of composers. Yip followed the dream of democratic socialism: He believed that all people should be guaranteed basic human rights, political equality, free education, economic opportunity and free health services. As Broadway's social commentator, and given his ability to "gild the philosophic pill" with witticisms and a lyric style all his own, Yip Harburg is a unique and major lyricist of 20th century American musical theatre.
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James Barnes (1949 - ) is an American composer. Barnes studied composition and music theory at the University of Kansas, earning a Bachelor of Music in 1974, and Master of Music in 1975. Since 1977 he has been a professor of theory and composition at the University of Kansas, where he teaches orchestration and composition.
In recent years, he has been commissioned to compose works for all five of the major military bands in Washington, DC . A recent CD by the United States Air Force Band features his Third Symphony.
His numerous publications for concert band and orchestra are extensively performed at Tanglewood, Boston Symphony Hall, Lincoln Center , Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC .
Barnes is also a tubist and has performed with numerous professional organizations in the United States.
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James Curnow (1943 - ) a native of Michigan, received his formal training at Wayne State University and at Michigan State University, where he studied euphonium and conducting.
Curnow has been commissioned to write over two hundred works for 
concert band, brass band, orchestra, choir and various vocal and instrumental ensembles. His published works now number well over four hundred.
He lives in Nicholasville , Kentucky where he is president, composer, and educational consultant for Curnow Music Press, Inc. of Lexington, Kentucky, publishers of significant music for concert band and brass band. He also serves as Composer-in-Residence on the faculty of Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky , and is editor of all music publications for The Salvation Army in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was a was a giant of 19 th Century music. He was born in Tikhvin, near Novgorod . From 1856 to 1862, he attended the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg . In 1861, Rimsky-Korsakov met the composer Mily Balakirev and joined a group of young composers who later became known as The Five. This group, led by Balakirev, urged Russian composers to stress their national heritage in their music.
In 1871, Rimsky-Korsakov left the navy and joined the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Realizing he knew almost no music theory, he taught himself counterpoint, harmony, and music form. He became one of the world's greatest music theorists. Several Rimsky-Korsakov’s students went to achieve fame, including Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky.
Rimsky-Korsakov is known for his imaginative blend of orchestral sounds. Examples include Capriccio Espagnol (1887) and The Russian Easter Overture (1888). Rimsky-Korsakov based many of his 15 operas on Russian history and folklore. Only one of them, Le Coq d'Or (The Golden Cockerel, completed in 1907), won international fame. But his operas The Snow Maiden (1882), Sadko (1898), and Tsar Saltan (1900) are popular in the Soviet Union. Two of his most famous pieces come from his operas "Song of India" from Sadko and "The Flight of the Bumblebee" from Tsar Saltan.
His symphonic suite Scheherazade (1888) ranks as one of the most popular orchestral works ever written.
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George Gershwin (1898 – 1937) was an American composer, whose compositions mark the entrance of America into the international classical music world. His musicals and popular songs are among the finest in those genres, and his art-music compositions are infused with jazz and popular music.
The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Gershwin was born was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn. Fueled with a love for music, he began studying the piano at the 
age of 12. Being a poor student, he convinced his parents to let him quit school at 15 and became a pianist in “Tin Pan Alley,” demonstrating songs for the Remick Publishing Company. There, he was exposed to thousands of songs and gained a sense for quality music. He tried writing songs and at 20, he wrote his first complete Broadway musical, La La Lucille. A fifteen minute effort produced Swanee, made famous by Al Jolson. The team of George and older brother, Ira, as lyricist, wrote more than a dozen successful musicals, including Oh Kay!, Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, and Girl Crazy, between 1919 and 1933. In 1924, he forgot a commitment he made to bandleader Paul Whiteman and was compelled to compose his Rhapsody in Blue in just 3 weeks.
Gershwin wanted to study with Igor Stravinsky. When he approached the composer at a party Stravinsky asked Gershwin a question back: "How much money do you make a year?" On hearing the answer Stravinsky said "Perhaps I should study with you, Mr. Gershwin."
Of Thee I Sing, staged in 1932, became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize. He had less success with Porgy and Bess (1935), which closed shortly after opening, but later became a great success. He was not able to see that, as he was diagnosed in 1937 with a brain tumor and did not survive the surgery.
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Jerry Brubaker is a native of Altoona, Pennsylvania, Jerry Brubaker received his undergraduate from the Eastman School of Music and his graduate degree from the Catholic
University of America. He served for 30 years in the United States Navy Band in Washington, DC as a French horn soloist and composer/arranger. In 1985, he became the Band's Chief Arranger, and held that position until his retirement from the Navy in 1998.
Mr. Brubaker is well-known for his patriotic compositions and arrangements of popular music, motion picture scores and Christmas favorites. He has published over 200 works for band, chorus, and symphony orchestra.
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Pullman Gerald “Tommy” Pederson (1920-1998) was a trombonist and composer, often described as the “foremost authority on the art of playing the trombone.”
Pederson began to play the drums and viola at age four. However, his career as a percussionist ended early. As a youngster he was a pit musician at a silent movie theater. During a gruesome battle scene in the film The Big Parade, he was supposed to execute a rimshot whenever a character was shot or bayoneted. Instead, Pederson fainted.
At age 13, Pederson began getting up before dawn to practice the trombone 
instead of the viola. He began his professional career traveling with the bands of such luminaries as Gene Krupa and Tommy Dorsey while still in his teens. He also worked for Woody Herman and Benny Goodman. (Pederson adopted the name Tommy out of respect for his boss, Tommy Dorsey.)
After World War Two, he came to Hollywood and started his own band, playing at the Hollywood Palladium and the Brown Derby. From the early 1950's through the mid-1970's, Pederson was the trombone player in Hollywood . He was featured in literally thousands of movie soundtracks, television and radio shows, and recordings, sometimes playing as many as six studio sessions a day.
Pederson’s true passion, however, was composition. He produced over three hundred trombone works. These pieces often incorporated both elements of jazz and whimsical treatment of familiar melodies. Examples include The Terrible Tempered Trombone, I’ve Been Working on the Trombone, and Elephant in The Living Room.
Pederson was likely the World’s most prolific trombone composer.
(Portions excerpted from Doctoral Dissertation of M. P. Devlin, 2007)
Wim Laseroms (1944 - ) was born in Oudenbosch, The Netherlands. At the urging of his 
father, young Wim became enamored with percussion at the age of 4. When he was 16 he taught courses to percussion ensembles. He continued his musical studies at the Brabant Academy of Music and obtained certificates of musical teaching, and conducting. He then began composing.
Today his catalogue contains more than 100 works.
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