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FLHS band celebrates 80 years of music on May 13 |
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Thursday, 08 May 2008 |
It all started with a man, his clarinet, and a dream to create an accomplished high school band.
Now, 80 years later, students at Forest Lake High School are still making beautiful music and expanding on a proud tradition.
Community members are invited to celebrate 80 years of music during a special anniversary concert at 8 p.m., Tuesday, May 13 in the high school auditorium. Admission is free.
The high school’s Concert Band, Symphonic Winds and Jazz Ensemble will perform the music of Vaughn Williams, Goldman, Heiden, Whitacre, Mozart, Purcell, Graham and others.
The concert marks the 80th season of the Forest Lake band program. In the summer of 1928 the school board was approached by a clarinet player, a man whose name has been lost over the years, who had a desire to form a school band.
That fall 16 students were recruited to form the school’s first band. In a letter dated Dec. 14, 1985, one of the original student musicians, Walter Skoog, shared his memories of the band’s start-up.
“The instruments were distributed – two trombones, a few trumpets, some clarinets, set of drums and a piccolo,” Skoog wrote.
“Members were shown how to hold and operate their respective instruments and how to make a sound come out of the thing. The process was comical to say the least.”
The first performance, a rendition of “On Wisconsin,” didn’t go so well, Skoog remembered.
“It was awful,” he wrote. “But after a few tries it was not too bad.”
Under the direction of 11 different head directors and more than 40 band instructors, generations of students have earned awards and high honors in music competitions, have performed in venues across the country and in Europe, and have entertained countless Forest Lake area residents.
In addition to the school’s band performances, the concert will also feature two special alumni guests: conductor Joan Moen-Pearson and performer Markus Hahn.
Joan Moen-Pearson is a current resident and native of Forest Lake. During her student-experience in the Forest Lake schools she was a clarinetist in the band.
She has performed professionally and internationally, occasionally in the role of a USO musician, entertaining American soldiers on deployment.
Moen-Pearson’s has spent the majority of her career as a music educator in the Forest Lake Area Schools, serving as a choir teacher and band director at the junior high level. At the conclusion of this school year Ms. Moen-Pearson will retire from teaching.
Markus Hahn is a native of Forest Lake and a 2005 graduate of Forest Lake Area High School.
He is currently studying classical saxophone, and pursuing a degree in music performance in the studio of Eugene Rousseau in the School of Music at the University of Minnesota. He is scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2009.
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