We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Dr. William (Bill) Moody, Conductor Emeritus and co-founder of the PCB. His influence was widespread in the music world, especially through his 17 years of teaching at the University of South Carolina. He will be greatly missed.
Thank you for everything, Dr. Moody. #forevertothee🎼
Our band members are hard at work to prepare for our next concert! Coming up on February 10, 2018, we will be pleased to present to our Columbia audience (and then some!) Stravinksky’s The Firebird, Suite 1919.
The Firebird, a suite originally written for full orchestra as a ballet, was rescored by Stravinsky a few years later for Symphonic Winds. This iconic literature weaves a story of Prince Ivan encountering monsters, falling in love with a princess, and befriending the mythical firebird whose lullabye can put the most evil beasts to rest. For a more in-depth explanation of the music and story, we encourage checking out this educational video from KhanAcademy:
In addition to The Firebird, we will also present several more engaging and well known pieces of music:
This concert will be performed on Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 7:30 PM at the Koger Center for the Arts as part of the 40th Annual USC Band Clinic. This event is free and open to the public. The performance is general admission, so plan to arrive early for prime seating!
We are pleased to announce our “Nominate a Veteran” conductor for this year’s Memorial Day Concert:
David Eelman, nominated by his friend, Hal Mcintosh, is a retired Army Bandsman who served 20 years in active duty as a tuba player, euphonium player, vocalist, and staff conductor with the 8th Infantry Division Band, 2nd Infantry Division Band, Eighth Army Band, U.S. Army Signal Corps Band, and Fort Jackson’s own 282nd Army Band. He retired in 2006 at the rank of Staff Sergeant.
Mr. Eelman holds a Master of Music degree in Conducting and Church Music from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from William Paterson University.
He currently performs with the Lexington County Choral Society, the USC Summer Chorus, the Carolina Wind Symphony, and as a freelance tuba player in the Columbia-Lexington area.
Congratulations, Mr. Eelman! We look forward to having you conduct the PCB at our Memorial Day Concert on May 29th.
It’s nearly time for our season-closing Memorial Day Concert on Monday, May 29. Nominations are still open for conducting the PCB in the playing of Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” on stage at the Koger Center. Be sure to recommend a veteran (no conducting experience required!) before the deadline on Friday, May 19. Click here to nominate someone today!
Please come out and join us as we honor — through music — our country’s fallen soldiers this Memorial Day.
Our band members have jumped back into rehearsals to bring the Columbia area not one but two concerts back-to-back weekends this February!
For our first concert this month, we are pleased and honored to have been invited to perform the finale concert at the South Carolina Music Educators Association’s conference held annually at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. The performance will begin at 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 4, 2017 at the USC Alumni Center. This performance is free and open to the public.
Can’t make it that Saturday? Not to worry! We will perform the same works again the next Saturday, February 11, 2017 at 7:30 PM as part of the USC Band Clinic. This performance brings us back to our “home venue” at the Koger Center for the Arts. This concert is also free and open to the public. The performance is general admission, so plan to arrive early for prime seating!
Both of these performances will feature only four pieces of music, but quality in this case far surpasses quantity! The PCB will open with Overture to “Candide” by Leonard Bernstein (trans. Grundman), followed by our encore performance of Vaclav Nelhybel’s Trittico. Next up are the six musical portraits that make up Percy Aldridge Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy. We will close the concert with none other than Russian Christmas Music by Alfred Reed.
First, thank you to all who came to our November concert at the Koger. We know the Tuesday night performance was a change from the norm, and we appreciate everyone who was able to work us into their weekday schedule!
Now our band members are making their way to Chicago for the 70th Annual Midwest Clinic — during a pretty major cold snap, even for the Windy City! (Please keep us in your thoughts during these wintry travels.)
Our Thursday performance at this international band and orchestra conference will feature our own conductor, Scott Weiss, along with multiple guest conductors and a guest soloist:
Of our concert selections, we will be performing two Jim Stephenson works (Concerto No. 2 for Trumpet “Rextreme”, mvt. 3, composed for soloist Rex Richardson; and there are no words, a tribute to the 9 victims of the Emanuel AME shooting in Charleston, SC), a work composed by our own Joshual Hinkel (Galactic Mission, a fun piece of literature evoking the excitement of outer space travel), and a world premier piece by Joel Puckett (My Eyes are Full of Shadow “describes looking back on a moment of pain in the past and an inability—an unwillingness?—to move beyond it.”)
Here’s hoping that if you are in Chicago for the Midwest Clinic that you will join us Thursday at 1:30 PM for what is sure to be a performance to remember!
After a restful summer for our ensemble’s many band director members, the excitement of a new school year has arrived in South Carolina! This, of course, means that marching band camps and rehearsals have ramped up. Even our director, Scott Weiss, is getting in on the back-to-school action at the University of South Carolina, where the Carolina Band has begun marching practices on the new turf outside of the Copenhaver Band Hall. We wish all of these directors and their students the best this fall, look forward to seeing and hearing them perform in the coming months, and celebrating their musical and athletic successes.
Even while a high percentage of our members are currently focused on marching shows, the PCB as a whole also has our sights set on a winter trip we’re proud and honored to be familiar with. Now for the third time in our band’s short history, we have auditioned for and have been invited to perform at The Midwest Clinic in Chicago. Our director and board members are busily making plans for transporting instruments, selecting music (much more difficult than you might believe!), and sorting out travel details. From our veteran performers who have been-there-done-that to our newer members who have never experienced an international music conference, the excitement is palpable.
We know most of our South Carolina friends and supporters won’t be able to make the trip with us, so the PCB is making plans for a special pre-Clinic concert in the Columbia area later this year. Stay tuned for additional info when we kick off our concert season in November!
