TERRE HAUTE — The focus is on youth as the Terre Haute Community Band presents “Broadway Bound” on Saturday in Fairbanks Park at 8 p.m. The THCB is collaborating with the VCSC Performing Arts Workshop to preview their summer musical, “Beauty and the Beast.” This concert also features a special narration of the popular children’s tale “Peter and the Wolf,” featuring Bryan Taylor as narrator.
The Performing Arts Workshop includes 123 students, representing grades 6 through 11, from the Vigo County School Corporation in the roles of singers, dancers, musicians and production crew. The following students from North, South and West Vigo high schools will perform selected titles from “Beauty and the Beast: Samantha Thiede, Matt Hooper, Abby Cunning, Jordan Allen, Able Watson, Savannah Richardson, Cecilia Gray, Marcus Steiner, Jeffrey Marks and Cole Bennett. The Performing Arts Workshop will present “Beauty and the Beast on July 2 and 3 in Fairbanks Park.
Bryan Taylor, executive director of communications and marketing at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, has performed with Community Theatres in Terre Haute, Kokomo and Sullivan.
He also sings in his church choir and is an active member of the Rose-Hulman Drama Club. He will narrate Sergie Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, a musical symphony written in 1935 at the request of the Russian Central Children’s Theatre. Each character in the story, from the Bird to Peter himself, has a particular instrument that serves as that character’s musical theme, an interesting device that keeps the audience as well as the musicians on their toes.
The playlist also includes “Porgy and Bess,” originally conceived by George Gershwin as an “American folk opera.” It premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers — a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time. “Highlights from Cats” presents a medley of songs by one of today’s most successful composers of musicals in both New York and London, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“The Boys from Liverpool” subtitled “A Lennon and McCartney Montage” presents some of the popular tunes written by the most unique and truly fantastic musical partnership of the 20th Century, that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “The Wiz“ by Charlie Small, “Handel in the Strand” by Percy Aldridge Grainger, and “Knightsbridge March” will round out the program.
All concerts are free and staged in Fairbanks Park. The conductor of the Terre Haute Community Band is Yvonne Newlin, the Performing Arts coordinator and instructor at Lincoln Trail College in Robinson, Ill. The Summer Concert Series is sponsored by the Terre Haute Parks and Recreation Department. The band appreciates the grants received from the City of Terre Haute and Arts Illiana and a media sponsorship with WFIU. For further information please contact the Terre Haute Community Band at (812) 535-6440 or visit www.terrehautecommunityband.org.
