SEQUIM — The Sequim City Band will perform a special combined concert with the Port Townsend Summer Band at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The outdoor concert at the James Center for the Performing Art, 350 N. Blake Ave., will honor the 25th season of the Port Townsend Band and outgoing conductor Karl Bach.
It will include the best of concert band repertoire from marches to Broadway, sea songs to classics and Spanish dance to American cakewalks.
Both Bach and Tyler Benedict, conductor of the Sequim group, will share in the direction of the musicians.
The special guest announcer for this dual concert will be Jonathan Pasternack, conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra.
Bach has been director of the Port Townsend Summer Band since 2001. He began his career with the U.S. Navy in 1955 and served as a vocalist, percussionist and administrator. After retiring as a senior chief petty officer in 1974, he obtained teaching degrees and inspired music students in Virginia and Oregon. He retired to Port Townsend in 2000 and has enriched the community with his skills as a percussionist, vocalist, conductor and composer.
The bands will play two of Bach’s marches: “The Port Townsend March” and “The Sequim Centennial March.” Also by Bach is “A Sea Chantey Voyage,” a medley of sea songs that paints a nautical picture of the ship’s crew preparing to sail.
Other pieces include the “Suite of Old American Dances” by Robert Russell Bennett, “Invercargill” by Alex Lithgow — one of the most popular marches in the world, especially with the U.S. Marines — and “To Challenge the Sky and Heavens Above” by Robert W. Smith.
The concert will continue with “España Cañi” (Gypsy Spain), an international piece by Pascual Marquina written in 1923 and known as the “Spanish Gypsy Dance.”
“The Golden Age of Broadway” will celebrate the musicals of the famed duo Rodgers and Hammerstein, and includes well-loved songs from “South Pacific,” “The Sound of Music,” “Carousel,” “The King and I” and “Oklahoma.”
A light-hearted piece, “Instant Concert” by Harold Walters, will fit in 30 separate and well-known melodies in just over three minutes. The mélange includes opera, folk songs, spirituals, marches and classics.
