The annual William Bell Memorial Tuba and Euphonium Day concert was performed Saturday at the First United Methodist Church in Perry, with an appreciative crowd of some 40 souls braving the autumn rains for the sake of the annual brass concert.
This year’s featured clinician was John Manning, associate professor of tuba in the University of Iowa School of Music. Manning led a rehearsal at 1 p.m., clinic and performance at 3 p.m. and conducted the free public concert at 4 p.m.
Manning is a founding member of the Atlantic Brass Quintet, an award-winning performing ensemble that has toured the U.S. and around the world, including Korea, Japan, Costa Rica, France, Kuwait, India, Pakistan, England, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The Atlantic Brass Quintet has won six international chamber music competitions and performed at the White House, Tanglewood, Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, Savannah Onstage, the Sacramento Festival for New American Music, June in Buffalo, the Bank of Boston Celebrity Series and the International Trumpet Guild Conference. In 2003 the quintet conducted master classes at Rice University, the San Francisco Conservatory and the Julliard School.
At Saturday’s William Bell Memorial concert, Manning described for the audience the different instruments in the brass ensemble, including single- and double-bell euphonia, tubas in B flat and C, sousaphones and the rarely seen ophicleide.
A Creston native, William Bell became principal tubist with the John Philip Sousa band in the 1920s and later was first tubist in the NBC Orchestra, having been chosen by the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini.
From 1943 Bell was first tubist in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and he later taught the instrument in the famed music program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Bell was nursed in his final illness by his sister, Ruth Rankin of Perry, and he died and was buried at Violet Hill Cemetery in Perry.
Saturday’s inclement weather made the annual twilight performance at Bell’s grave site in Violet Hill Cemetery doubtful. The rainy autumn weather seemed to be a fitting accompaniment to the songs played in honor of Bell.
The event was sponsored by Perry Fine Arts. The next event in the Perry Fine Arts schedule is a Dec. 2 performance by the Greater Des Moines Community Band at the Perry Performing Arts Center.
