The general din of 80 musicians all tuning and fiddling with their various instruments dies down as director Greg Stoll calls attention and says which piece of music he’d like to rehearse first. And then, with the swish of his baton, music erupts, filling the room with the rich timbres and cascading harmonies of the Allan Hancock College Concert Band.
The ensemble is currently preparing for a benefit concert set to be performed March 11 at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande. The South County Education Foundation will receive the funds raised at the concert.
“What the group does is raise money for the Lucia Mar School District, and they give grants to enrich classrooms,” Greg said. “I know that one of the years they gave each one of the schools money to have their instruments repaired.
“In the time of cutbacks, that can be very important, so we are very happy to be helping them raise money,” he added.
The band is set to perform a program featuring a diverse array of music. Greg chooses the music for each concert and tries to highlight new composers as well as old classics that are crowd favorites.
“There are a lot of new composers in the concert band genre, and it’s very exciting to play their works,” Greg said, “The concert band is a newer ensemble—it’s fairly modern—so when we do a concert, we do many different styles.”
He likes to include contemporary works as well as new arrangements of old classics, jazz standards, orchestral transcriptions, and selections from musicals. Always including at least one selection from a musical, Greg has chosen a Robert Russel Bennet arrangement of music from The King and I by Richard Rogers.
[image-2]
“There is a wide variety to the things we do,” Greg said. “We are interested in playing what would be appealing to the audience. It can be very tonal and lush.”
The program will also feature “A Patriotic Salute” by James Hosay, which features a novel arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner.” For the number “Light Cavalry Overture” by Franz Von Suppe, the band will enjoy a guest conductor, Gary Thompson, who preceded Greg as the director of the Allan Hancock College Concert Band and is a current member.
“Gary Thompson, who was the director for 33 years or so, is now in our tuba section,” Greg said. “We have such talent with band directors in the group that we try to feature a guest director every so often.”
The band, Greg explained, has nine either retired or presently working music teachers among its ranks, including his father, Dr. Forrest Stoll, a retired university band director from the University of Utah, where Greg received his bachelor’s degree.
“He is actually the oldest member of the Hancock Band,” Greg said. “He just turned 90, and he plays up a storm.”
[image-3]
A certain family atmosphere pervades the group, Greg said. The band’s two longest-standing members are married couple Patricia and Tom Lynn, who have both been in the band for 48 years. Their daughter, Gena Laird, has been in the group for 25 years.
The 80-member band boasts members from many walks of life. Compromised of about 24 students, the rest of the band, Greg explained, is made up of retired and working community members. Besides the music teachers, the group also has science and elementary teachers, doctors, artists, photographers, retired aerospace engineers, construction workers, and even a retired forest serviceman.
Greg, who earned his master’s degree in music education from Arizona State University, has been directing bands for 34 years at the middle and high school levels. He was the band and choral director at Cabrillo High School in Lompoc for 18 years, but retired to spend more time with family and to direct at Hancock where he’s been for four years. He currently teaches math at Cabrillo High.
“Band directing at the high school level is really a young man’s job,” he said. “It’s so much fun working with an adult group; we all enjoy making music together, and it’s really just like a family.”
Greg, a trumpeter like his father, also plays with the local brass quintet Maestro Brass, comprised of area band directors. But when he isn’t at his day job or practicing with the quintet, he can be found Monday nights at the college, rehearsing the band that performs up to seven concerts a year. Besides the concert on the 11th at the Clark Center, the ensemble also participates in “Band-a-rama,” scheduled for March 24 this year, which showcases the local middle and high school concert bands and the Allan Hancock College Concert Band. Then, all the ensembles create a mass band of more than 250 performers.
[image-4]
This collaboration with local schools and nonprofits like the South County Education Foundation makes the Allan Hancock College Concert Band more than just a local performance ensemble; it’s a cornerstone of the fine arts in the community.
“When so many things, like the arts, are being cut from education due to budget constraints, I think we really need to protect the arts; it’s really important to the development of the students,” Greg said. “Anything we can do to help the South County Education Foundation or the Lucia Mar School District, or to help the arts at Allan Hancock College or Santa Maria or Lompoc, I think is just very important.”
Contact Calendar Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 8-15, 2012.
