September 12 Vallejo/Vacaville Arts and Entertainment Source: Solano Winds moves into band’s 30th season

As the conductor prepares to step away from podium, Solano Winds will celebrate its 30th season as a community band of brass and woodwind players who give musical literature a unique sound.

“Wind bands don’t have the history of symphonies,” said longtime band leader Bill Doherty, who launches the four-concert, 2024-25 season Oct. 11 with a varied program in the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre.

However, wind bands, says the retired public school educator, have everything a symphony does except for string sections. “It just gives a different kind of sound,” he added.

The appeal of wind bands, Doherty, 65, said during a telephone interview Sunday from his Fairfield home, rests with them being a “primary way for music instruction” in schools.

Additionally, the number of compositions for wind bands has increased over many decades, he said, adding that the Oct. 11 concert will feature a number works by British composer Gustav Holst in a program subset titled “Sublime Suites: Celebrating Gustav Holst,” marking the sesquicentennial of his birth.

The program includes excerpts from “The Planets,” one of Holst’s best-known works, and his Suite in E flat for Military Band, as well as two selections evoking his style: Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” and John Williams’ “Star Wars Saga.” Solano Winds will be joined on stage by the Vanden High School Wind Ensemble for the 7:30 p.m. performance in VPAT, 1010 Ulatis Drive.

For tickets, visit vpat.net or telephone (707) 469-4013.

No surprise, a Dec. 6 concert, dubbed “Hymns, Hers & Holidays,” offers gift-wrapped selections with seasonal flavors.

The 7:30 p.m. concert in Fairfield’s Downtown Theatre, 1035 Texas St., will feature what Doherty labeled “three sumptuous settings of hymns, some music by female composers, and a generous dose of holiday music.”

“We were looking at a few pieces in particular,” he said. “About a year ago, I asked band members what they’d like to hear.”

Other selections include “Fanfare for the Festival of Lights,” a celebration of Hanukkah music, a suite from the animated film “Polar Express,” music by Alan Silvestri, and a program-ending medley of Christmas carols.

In a follow-up email, Doherty said, “Female composers often do not receive the same notoriety as their male counterparts, and for no good reason.”

The band will showcase the work of two female composers for the December program: Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 (1931). His wife, Jennifer Doherty, a longtime music teacher in Fairfield-Suisun Unified schools, will conduct the “Juba Dance” from that work.

He called composer Julie Giroux “a titan of the wind band world,” and the band will perform her “Nutcracker Fantasia,” based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet score.

For tickets, visit downtowntheatre.com or telephone (707) 940-0700.

“Made in the USA, ” the title of the 3 p.m. March 9 concert in VPAT, promises stirring, patriotic music, “a celebration of our American heritage,” said Doherty.

Selections include Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” a world premiere from the Solano Winds Woodwind Quintet, and closes with John Philip Sousa’s rousing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Narration accompanies “Lincoln Portrait,” and, according to Doherty, it is “really a combination how the words are supported by the music. If you listen to Lincoln’s words, it’s almost worth a soundtrack for those words.”

Does the Copland, one of the American composer’s well-known and often performed works, speak to the current U.S. political climate?

Doherty paused slightly before answering, saying, “My music directorship is as nonpartisan as possible.”

He will mark his final concert as music director at 7:30 p.m. May 2, when the band performs in the Downtown Theatre in Fairfield, then return to the band’s trumpet section for the 31st season.

For the program, Doherty selected some of his personal favorites to conduct, including Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide Suite” and Herbert Clarke’s “Carnival of Venice,” with trumpeter Ed Schubert playing the iconic solo part.

Each program selection “has its own story,” he said.

Other selections include a Russian march that is the equivalent of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” he said, adding that the band also will perform a little-known Offenbach piece titled “La Belle Hellene.”

Also part of the season-ending program is a piece Doherty’s wife commissioned, “Solano Winds Heritage.” It was originally to be performed at the Solano Wind’s season 25 gala in 2020, an event cancelled by the pandemic but finally performed at a rescheduled gala in May 2023, with Solano County educator Christopher Hulett conducting.

“The piece highlights music personally important to me and the band and was composed by Melvin Brito,” noted Doherty, who taught music for three years and Vanden High in Fairfield and math for 20 years at Campolindo High for 20 years in Moraga. “I had not heard the piece until its premiere, so I’m excited to conduct it in May.”

Born and raised in Alameda, Doherty earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a veteran of the UC Berkeley Band, commonly called the Cal Band.

The Solano Winds Community Concert Band got its start in 1995, when Doherty
approached Bob Briggs, then retiring as director of bands at the University of California,
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.

Doherty leads some 60 volunteer musicians and rehearses 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.

During one or any of the four concerts, what should the audience listen for in the music?

“If people just open their ears, hearts and minds and let the music speak to them in whatever way it speaks to them,” said Doherty, agreeing with a famous phrase by British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of the imagination.”

“Music is a very personal thing,” he added.

Originally Published: September 10, 2024 at 3:07 p.m.