Orchestra of St. Luke's at Bella Abzug Park (9/9/26)

This is a fun day where small groups of OSL players present themselves in an open-air setting. Having remembered from last year that there was no printed program, I emailed ahead of time to see if they could email me the information so that I could print it out ahead of time. Nope. As of the day before the performances, the schedule had not been finalized. So I had to wing it. 

I got there early and scoped out the two different performance spaces. I could see a brass quintet setting up, so that's where I stayed. A standard brass quintet is two trumpets, one trombone, one French horn, and one tuba. I specified French horn, as both trumpeters also played the flugelhorn at one time or another. It's an interesting-looking instrument. You should do an internet search and take a look. 

They opened with the fanfare section of La Peri composed by Paul Dukas. It was appropriately fanfare-ish, bright and (dare I say it?) brassy. Portions of Saint Saëns' Carnival of the Animals followed—Lion, a march; Elephant, featuring the tuba; Fossils, so named because it quoted parts of old songs; and Finale, which was quite rousing. It was very interesting to hear an orchestral piece scaled down to a quintet. 

A pair of '20s/'30s songs followed. Puttin' on the Ritz is a delightful arrangement that I remembered from last year and was as much fun as I remembered. Tiger Rag was next with its nice jazz riffs leading into the growling "Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger!" 

A trio of songs from West Side Story was next—Maria, Tonight, and I Feel Pretty. Maria was lovely; Tonight included the slightly mellower sounds of the two flugelhorns; while the tuba featured nicely in the "I feel charming" section of I Feel Pretty. 

The set ended with Sousa's Washington Post March, my second hearing of it this summer. Do we all remember Sousapalooza from Make Music Day in June? Once again, it was interesting hearing it scaled down. 

Here's where the afternoon got dicey. It was announced that the brass quintet would do one more set and then the youth orchestra would set up at 5:00pm. I took it upon myself to go to the second performance space where a woodwind quintet was already in full swing. Only one work was announced from the stage, so I don't really know what pieces I heard. (Gosh, a printed program would have been nice.) This woodwind quintet was flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, and clarinet. One sedate and pleasant work opened with a clarinet/bassoon pairing with the horn added briefly, followed by a flute/oboe pairing before we got all five playing together. The one piece announced was the Juba Dance from Florence Price's Symphony #1. It was lively and included the hornist playing muted. Florence Price is an interesting character. You might want to look her up too sometime. 

At 5pm, the youth orchestra was setting up in the space where the wind players had been, completely at odds with what had been announced earlier. I may skip next year and decide later about 2028. But Puttin' on the Ritz ...

ConcertMeister