A retrospective gala in Sechelt on May 11 provided the opening fanfare in a two-part celebration of the Sunshine Coast Community Orchestra Association’s 30th anniversary season.
The association was founded in 1992 by music educator Michelle Bruce and the late Tom Kershaw. Kershaw was founding conductor of the organization’s orchestral arm, which launched in 1993 as a cohort of seven violinists. On Sunday at the Raven’s Cry Theatre, the Suncoast Concert Band — the association’s 25-member wind and percussion ensemble — presented a program of selections designed to commemorate the band’s former conductors.
A second anniversary concert is scheduled for May 25, which will feature the Sunshine Coast Community Orchestra.
“That’s three decades, eight conductors, and dozens and dozens of fine orchestra and band members,” noted event host Alec Tebbutt. “What a contribution this entire organization provides to the joys and spirit of being here on the Sunshine Coast.”
The band’s current conductor — Tak Maeda — is the longest-serving musician in the role, having held the baton for nearly a third of its existence. Maeda, who moved to Canada from Japan in 1990, also directs the Sea to Sky Wind Ensemble plus two groups based in West Vancouver: its Concert Band and Pops Band.
Band members dedicated numbers to each of their former leaders.
After its inception in 1995, Suncoast’s first conductor was Blaine Dunaway. Dunaway was a string player and trumpeter who also composed original works. Percussionist Tim Enns described Dunaway’s history of starting bands in Brandon, Edmonton, Sechelt, and Vancouver Island. “He had an amazing accomplishment with instruments,” Enns said. “He could pick up any instrument and just be a virtuoso on it.” Dunaway would frequently turn up at rehearsals brandishing newly-penned pieces of music. “You’d play it and say, ‘This is a new tune?’” recalled Enns. “It was a complete work of art.”
After Dunaway’s four-year term as conductor, his successor Bob Ethridge — a music educator originally from Dallas, Texas — served from 1998 to 2000. “He was a gentle giant,” said trombone player Bill Wishlow. Ethridge was a substitute elementary teacher and maintained a home-based instrument repair shop while offering private brass lessons. He also directed the association’s kids band, which was active in the late 1990s.
Wishlow recalled dropping his daughter at a band practice and being urged unequivocally by Wishlow to retrain his trombone embouchure after a 30-year lacuna. “So I did, and I met all these wonderful people, which never would have happened without Bob forcing me to pick up the trombone,” he said.
David Suomi-Marttinen started a three-year tenure as conductor in 2001 while also overseeing band programs at Elphinstone Secondary. “He was asked to take over pro tem until they could find somebody,” said Val Anderson, the band’s tympanist and piano player. “But he did such a great job and the morale was so good, they gave him the job permanently. And we loved working with him.”
Saxophonist Lorne Berman recollected an episode at the outset of conductor Lyle Carter’s involvement in 2002. While playing clarinet in a Duke Ellington number, Carter stood and pointed out a misprint in the score: a missing dot in an eighth note. “He could see it, and know it, and correct it,” said Carter. “Lyle became our band director, and for me as a beginning saxophonist at the time, what a learning opportunity for him to be leading the band while also playing searing solos on his alto sax.”
Under Carter’s direction, a 2006 joint concert with the West Vancouver concert band also set the stage for Tak Maeda’s involvement a decade later. “I was conducting the West Vancouver band, and it was my first experience on the Sunshine Coast,” said Maeda. “I was so amazed that it could be such a small community with such a nice band.”
Joe Hatherill (from England) and Francois Koh (from Korea) led the band from 2007 to 2011, followed by career music educator Janice Brunson. “She expanded the band’s repertoire,” said baritone horn player Ian Poole. Brunson prioritized Canadian composers when building playlists. “She was really ahead of her time,” added Poole, “and players characterized the music as challenging.”
Canadian content brought the 90-minute concert to a close, as the band concluded with a rhapsody of Quebec folk songs written by BC composer Robert Buckley.
More than 150 players have participated in the Suncoast Concert Band since its inception.
The Sunshine Coast Community Orchestra’s upcoming take on the “Down Memory Lane” program — under the direction of conductor José Ceron-Ortega — is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 25. Tickets are available at Sew Easy in Sechelt, Pet Valu in Gibsons, or by email via [email protected].
