October 3 Vallejo/Vacaville Arts and Entertainment Source: Solano Winds community band goes beyond ‘The Planets’

He was far from a one-hit wonder and forged a distinctive compositional style drawn from many sources — Strauss and Wagner to English folk songs and Sanskrit hymns. But perhaps more importantly, he laid the foundations for community bands in the 20th-century.

The influence of English composer Gustav Holst on wind bands cannot be denied, says Bill Doherty, leader of the Solano Winds community concert band, which opens its 30th season Oct. 11 with a program called “Sublime Suites: Celebrating Gustav Holst” at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre.

While Holst’s astrological suite “The Planets” (1916) is his best-known symphonic work, played fairly regularly in concert halls, his First Suite in E flat major for Military Band (1909) ranks as a touchstone of the modern band repetoire, said Doherty, who is in his last year as the Winds’ conductor.

“When we started rehearsing, I asked for a show of hands of everyone who had played it before and just about everybody raised theirs,” he said during a telephone interview Tuesday from his Fairfield home. “It’s a staple of the repertoire. I played it in the eighth grade.”

And the music had a profound effect on him, recalled Doherty, 65, a trumpeter when not leading the band.

“You realize that music could be a lot different,” he said. “I think that experience was true for a lot of us. There are all these little gems in there. When you’re digging into it, you discover them.”

Doherty, a former public school mathematics and music teacher, noted the three-section piece starts out in 3/4 time with a stately introduction and Chaconne, a Spanish dance rhythm, with more than a dozen theme and variations. Next is the Intermezzo, characterized by Holst’s use of folk themes. Wrapping it up is March and its parade-style sounds in 6/8 time.

“It’s easy on the ears,” he said of the First Suite, “but it gives the mind a lot to think about.”

Holst, who was born in 1874, definitely will get his due during the concert, which celebrates the 150th year of his birth.

The Vanden High Wind Ensemble — led by band director Chris Hulett, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, who marched in the Cal Band under the direction of Robert O. Briggs, founder of the Solano Winds — will perform Holst’s “A Moorside Suite” (1928). Commissioned by the BBC, it was the first 20th-century work composed specifically for a brass band.

Also in three movements, the Scherzo begins with a jig-like theme, followed by Nocturne, characterized by a solo trumpet; and March, noted for a trumpet fanfare.

But with Holst, as good as his band writing was, audiences still want to hear some aspect of “The Planets,” don’t they?

And so Doherty, noting ” ‘The Planets’ put Holst on the symphonic map,” has added two of the best-known sections from the suite: “Jupiter — The Bringer of Jollity” and “Mars — The Bringer of War.”

In “Jupiter,” an eight-minute composition, Holst sought to embody happiness associated with a planet characterized by a swirling tapestry of colorful stripes and spots. By contrast, “Mars,” at seven minutes, the music rises to a climax, with repeated musical figures, some of them menacing, and ends abruptly with a crashing, unified sound.

To end the concert’s first half, Solano Winds member Melinda Ellis, a multi-instrumentalist and music coordinator for the Vacaville Unified School District, will conduct “Jupiter,” the fourth movement of “The Planets.”

Doherty said Holst preferred a life of composing and teaching to being in the limelight. His lifelong friend and fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams — known for several symphonies and shorter works, among them “The Lark Ascending” and “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” — had more influence on Holst’s music than anyone else.

To open the second half of the program, the band moves to the music of a composer who was Holst’s contemporary, Maurice Ravel, who composed “Boléro” in 1928, a mesmerizing, one-movement work built around steady, repetitive rhythms. It was famously used as primary theme music in the 1984 film “10,” starring Bo Derek.

Solano Winds and the Vanden ensemble will combine on stage for the final
two selection, Holst’s “War” and a suite from “Star Wars” by John Williams: “Princess Leia’s Theme,” “Imperial March — The Forest Battle,” and the “Star Wars” title theme.

The Solano Winds Community Concert Band got its start in 1995, when Doherty
approached Briggs, soon to retire from the Cal Band, about the need for a community band in Solano County. Briggs led the band for 13 seasons before his death in 2008, and Doherty moved from the trumpet section to the podium.

Born and raised in Alameda, Doherty earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley. And, like Hulett, he is a veteran of the Cal Band.

He leads some 60 volunteer musicians who rehearse weekly at Golden West Middle School in Fairfield. In addition to the full concert band, the group supports a number of small ensembles, among them a jazz ensemble, a flute choir, a brass quintet, a saxophone quartet, and a woodwind quintet.

IF YOU GO

• What: Solano Winds and the Vanden High Wind Ensemble celebrate Gustav Holst
• When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 11
• Where: Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre, 1010 Ulatis Drive
• Tickets: $25 general; $20 seniors and students
• Online: solanowinds.org or vpat.net
• Telephone: (707) 469-4013