Western-Themed Score Corrals Crowd

Howdy, pardner.

Our Municipal Band played a program of largely cowboy music (Western, anyway) at Bixby Park the other night, and it turned out to be a thoroughly delightful evening. The setting was perfect, the weather was great, and the music was pretty good, too.

The program was, as is usual with conductor Larry Curtis, varied and creative. The yahoo who wrote a letter to our local daily recently complaining that Curtis’s programs rely on Sousa and not much else was astonishingly ignorant.

Curtis, who knows more about band music than most people, goes out of his way to play music that is off the beaten path. This particular concert included some new stuff, quite a few pieces from the movies and a real oddity. The finale was a kicker.

John Carnahan, the head of the music department (oops, make that the Cole Conservatory) at California State University, Long Beach, created a piece called “And the Antelope Play,” retelling the story of the Antelope Valley in music. Tracing its history all the way from the Native Americans to the present day, Carnahan created a lovely, evocative piece that had echoes of Morricone and Copland and kept the audience transfixed throughout.

Jeff Driscoll, a former member of the band, put together a medley of cowboy songs that was fun for those of us who like recognizable tunes. There was “Back In the Saddle,” a very jazzy “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” and a few more. The piece ended of, course, with “Happy Trails.”

The oddity was a piece used in the old Buffalo Bill Wild West show, something called “Buffalo Bill’s Equestrian March” by one W.P. Chambers. Where does Curtis find this stuff?

Film scores played a big part in this concert. There was Bruce Broughton’s music from “Silverado,” one of John Williams’s earliest (and best) scores from “The Cowboys” and, of course, Ennio Morricone’s immortal music from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

While Rossini probably never saw a cowboy, the finale to his “William Tell” overture was co-opted by the Lone Ranger, and so it made a fitting close to the first half of the concert. The park ranger I was standing next to when they played this piece was on solo duty that evening and thought it was all about him.

Vocalist Carol Welsman and the Studio Band served up a second half that had little to do with cowboys and a lot to do with great jazz, terrific instrumental solos and stylish singing.

And I have to say a word about Bixby Park.

The band now plays on the ocean side of Ocean Boulevard, on the bluff overlooking the Pacific, and the setting is magnificent. This is also the most attentive band audience I’ve ever seen, and it’s not very crowded.

So if you are finding El Dorado or Los Cerritos a little too jampacked and noisy for your taste, you might consider switching your Muni Band nights to Tuesdays and coming over to Bixby.

Happy trails.