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On this page, you will find current Band news ... both good and sad. We trust this will help you keep up-to-date with the Band throughout the year. If you have an email address, and would like us to send you our monthly newsletter, please let David Tirrell-Wysocki know @ newsletter@freesebrothersbigband.com.
December 2011
Hello Freese Brothers Big Band fans:
It's not often you can go to a Big Band Dance and hear tunes written by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Irving Berlin, Mel Torme and Jose Feliciano.
Jose Feliciano?
Yep. It's the Freese Brothers Big Band annual Christmas performance at the Derryfield Country Club in Manchester.
The music starts at 7:30 on Tuesday, Dec. 20.
Good music, good food, a good time -- sponsored in part by our friends at Bellwether Community Credit Union.
Hope to see you there.
September 2011
Thank you for supporting our very successful 2011 summer concert series. From the town green in New Boston way back on Fathers’ Day to the Center Harbor bandstand overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee on the final weekend of August, we had a great time bringing Big Band music to wonderful audiences all over the state. We hope you were able to take in a performance and we look forward to coming back to your communities next year, our 30th anniversary year!
August 2011
Did you know?
The leadership and performance style of two of the biggest bands of the Big Band Era could not have been further a part.
Glenn Miller’s orchestras were known for endless rehearsals and “letter-perfect playing." Replacement band members were recruited on their ability to maintain the same sound. The band members’ appearance also was uniform. When sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes, players could only smoke Chesterfields when performing on the Chesterfield program. According to one story, they had to wear maroon sox on the program because that was the color on the cigarette pack. It was a radio show!
Duke Ellington played off the individual talent of his players and it was not essential that replacements sound like the original performers. In fact, Ellington wrote many tunes to showcase specific members of his band. Rather than only performing tunes that were perfected in rehearsal, Ellington sometimes gave his players a rough outline of an arrangement shortly before a performance, allowing their talent and imagination to shine.
July 2011
Hello Freese Brothers Big Band fans!
Did you know?
Did you know songwriter Bobby Troup and his wife, Cynthia, wrote one of the popular tunes we perform as they headed west from Pennsylvania in post-war 1946 to gain fame and fortune in LA? As one story goes, early in the trip, Cynthia suggested they write a tune about the highway. Bobby was not impressed. Later, they hit a highway that would take them all the way to L.A. Cynthia fit the name of that road into a rhyme, she and Bobby filled in the names of the towns along the way for more lyrics, and the rest is history.
Her rhyme? “You can get your kicks on Route 66.”
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