In a culmination of a semester of hard work, the All-Campus Band treated its audience to a night of musicianship Tuesday night at the Musical Arts Center.
The band, which only performs one concert per semester, played a diverse repertoire of concert band music including “Prelude, Siciliano and Rondo” by Malcom Arnold and “Rippling Watercolors” by Brian Balmages.
Associate professor of music Eric Smedley, who co-directs the Marching Hundred and directs the Symphonic Band, said he was impressed by the performances of the soloists and the band’s overall balance.
“I thought their biggest strength was their cohesiveness and their ability to work together and blend the sounds,” Smedley said.
The All-Campus Band is a class in the Jacobs School of Music open to all IU students regardless of major, ageand musical background.
Rachel Worden, a senior majoring in human resource management, has been a member of the band since her freshman year. Worden said she loves that although she isn’t a music student, she gets to advance her music education, play with fellow musicians and showcase their collective hard work in a concert at the end of each semester.
“At the end of the year, we just put out our best performance and everything we’ve learned throughout the year,” Worden said.
Graduate student Benjamin Alaniz, who co-directs the All-Campus Band alongside fellow graduate student Daniel Johnson, said he is proud of the band’s determination to improve and the members’ willingness to try new things. And although he said he appreciates the opportunity to display this development in concert, he thinks the work leading up to it is more valuable for his students.
“This is just to show, to express, to share with an audience, which is important musically, but I think the rehearsal process means more,” Alaniz said.
Alaniz said it takes a lot of passion to sacrifice Monday nights for weekly hour-and-a-half band rehearsals, but the band is always ready to work hard in spite of everyone’s busy schedules.
“It’s like the worst day of the week and it’s at night and people are tired, but people come out from wherever they are, into the darkness and meet,” Alaniz said. “They make something come to life out of nothing.”
Editor's note: Hannah Johnson is a member of the Marching Hundred.
