DOWAGIAC — Southwestern Michigan College Department of Visual and Performing Arts will present its 2018 Fall Band Concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2 in the theatre of the Dale A. Lyons Building on the Dowagiac Campus. 

Featured will be the SMC Symphonic Band, Jazz Ensemble and Brass Band under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Korzun. Admission is free. Donations are gratefully accepted. All donations go towards activities for SMC performing arts students.

A highlight of the Fall Band Concert will be works of art created by SMC art students inspired by two selections performed by the Symphonic Band. It is the culmination of a collaborative project between visual arts and music where students listen to the selections, then under the guidance of SMC art instructors the students respond to these selections through their art.

The art works created will be shown at the concert while the Symphonic Band performs each selection. The two pieces selected for this collaboration are “Dusk” by Steven Bryant and “Undertow” by John Mackey. The Symphonic Band will also perform the march “E Pluribus Unum” by Fred Jewell and “On the Banks of the River Shannon” by Jason Nitsch.

SMC’s Jazz Ensemble will perform the be-bop selection “Oleo” by Sonny Rollins, the George Gershwin standard “Love Is Here to Stay,” the funk rock favorite “Cold Duck Time” by Eddie Harris and Chick Corea’s energetic “Armando’s Rhumba.”

SMC Brass Band selections include the “University of Illinois March” by John Philip Sousa, “Homage” by Jan Van der Roost and “A Moorside Suite” by Gustav Holst, which has become a standard for both brass bands and wind (concert) bands.

Friday’s concert concludes with the combined bands performing “Shrine of the Fallen” by Brian Balmages and “Anitschka” by Johan Nijs. “Shrine of the Fallen” is a musical tribute to an area in the Ukrainian city of Kiev by the same name. This area was set aside to honor those who died in 2014 at the hands of Russian soldiers during an uprising against the Ukrainian president. The selection “Anitschka” is an example of a type of Hungarian dance called a czardas that begins slowly and ends wildly.

The Fall Choral Concert takes place the following Friday, Nov. 9, also at 7:30, featuring special guest Dr. Amanda Pabyan from Central Michigan University and SMC alumni Anthony Tibbitts, a CMU vocal performance major.