Today's post is about a new musical project in Auckland - the Dominion Centenary Concert Band. The DCCB is a 7-piece ensemble of improvising musicians involved in the Vitamin S collective. (And yes, I play in it.)
DCCB's instrumentation, stage appearance and repertoire is largely a tribute to New Zealand's brass band tradition, and particularly the amateur community bands (Salvation Army, Women's Temperance Union, Maori and Ratana bands) that abounded during New Zealand's colonial period. The DCCB has specifically been established to mark the approaching centenary of New Zealand becoming a Dominion of the British Empire in 1907.
The format of DCCB performances revolves around "islands" of orchestrated composed pieces (drawn from multiple sources) connected by passages of free improvisation.
The 17 minute performance posted here was recorded at our inaugural concert, on June 16th 2005 at St Kevin's Arcade on Karangahape Road, one of Auckland's few remaining orginal shopping arcades. The composed fragments heard here are Hala Vuna, a traditional Tongan folk song; Ennio Morricone's movie theme from My Name is Nobody [Update: I am reliably informed that this theme is in fact High Plains Drifter, by Dee Barton, not Morricone's spaghetti western melody] ; and Bonnisseau, a brass theme of French origin.
Dominion Centenary Concert Band - Performance #1 , June 16th 2005
The personnel on the recording are: John Bell (concert master, glockenspiel, tenor horn, whistles and percussion); Paul Winstanley (marching bass drum, percussion and guitar); Bruce Morley (drums and percussion); Jaekyung Kelly Choi (clarinet, recorder, fife, hojuk and bass clarinet); Richard Cotman (trumpet, flugelhorn, bugle and shofar); and Tim Sutton (bass trombone).
Our next gig is in Wellington on October 30th as part of the Wellington International Jazz Festival. I hope you enjoy the music, and I'd be interested in comments, whether positive, negative or bemused!
John Bell
3 Comments:
At 6:36 PM,
etnobofin said…
Wow, you actually listened to the whole track! I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as we enjoyed performing it :-)
Peace out
At 4:06 PM,
DJ durutti said…
Hey -- just wanted to say i finally got around to listening to the piece and really liked it. 'Course taxi driver gave me a great preview! Only extra observation i'd add is that i heard bits of Zappa's early "classical" compositions -- starting around 11:00 mins -13 or so mins in (after the martial drummer gets shot). (although it doesn't apply as much to this type interlude, Zappa once described his "serious" compositions as "preposterously non-modern")
oh, and speaking of Zappa, maybe taxi driver will get around to that Zappa post in the not-to-distant future!
At 10:01 PM,
etnobofin said…
Wow, can I take the Zappa comparison as a compliment? Good to hear some more positive feedback. The big difference of course between Zappa and the DCCB is of course that the passage you're referring to is completely improvised, and Zappa's "classical" music was often completely through-composed, with no improvisation or solos (eg. "The Black Page", "Naval Aviation in Art" etc etc)
I think we should have an online Zappa festival. I'm in an FZ mood after freeman's excellent post of old Zappa vids from Saturday Night Live. Extraordinary footage - there are NO bands around today who play stuff like that. (Or if there are, I don't know about them, and someone is going to have to tell me about them).
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