The Minot Community Concert Band presents its winter concert Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Ann Nicole Nelson Hall at Minot State University.
As with all community concert band performances, the evening is free and open to the public. But unlike other performances, a freewill offering will be accepted for operations of the band.
"This is our only fundraising of the year," said Tim Wollenzien, conductor. "We use it for music for the band and to defray transportation expenses for our high school outreach program."
Every fall the group travels to area high schools for performances with and for their musicians.
"This year we went to Towner," Wollenzien said. "Community bands are becoming more popular around the country and in Canada. Folks are realizing they still have the skills they learned and it's fun to continue performing. We have people from all walks of life, all volunteers, and all really quite good."
He noted that it was important to the life of a community, as well as the individuals, to maintain the appreciation of the arts.
The group began as the Elks Band, and comprises mostly adults, playing woodwinds, brass and percussion -- "No strings," he said. "That's for the full orchestra."
It is Wollenzien's fifth season as conductor, a position he holds as well as that of executive director of the International Music Camp. The program includes a special guest player, Suzannah Miller, a senior at MSU, who will be playing the pipe organ both as part of the band on "Transcriptions of Elsa's Process to the Cathedral" by Wagner, and solo on Bach's "Prelude and Fugue."
Among other offerings will be "American Hymnsong Suite" by Dwayne S. Milburn, of which they will perform three movements.
"It takes familiar hymns and treats them in different styles jazz, rhythmic and 'spicy,'" Wollenzien said. "Spicy in the sense of having unexpected sounds in it."
"It's nice having a piece by a contemporary composer," he added, referring to Milburn who is currently a director of the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own." They are also doing a march, and Grainger's "Lincolnshire Posy."
"You know the reason people do this is because they love to," Wollenzien said. "You can always tell that during a performance."