Violist Tia Allen & Trumpeter Herb Smith in 'Music from The Gilded Age' by Orchestra of the Longfellow Chorus, 4 PM Saturday, March 21, 2015, Portland High School

Tia Allen, viola
www.HarlemChamberPlayers.org

Herb Smith, trumpet
www.RochesterPhilharmonicOrchestra.org

Five Outrageous Reasons to Attend
Music from The Gilded Age this Saturday

[Charles Koppitz's self portrait at the top of the oboe part to "Telegraph Polka."]

The Longfellow Chorus  March 15, 2015 Portland, Maine

A busy copyist with pressing deadlines, Charles Koppitz  nonetheless took pride in his work, often leaving his  mark with distinctive scrolls, frills and other  embellishments. Such is the case with the caricature sketch in ink of his  own good-natured, goateed face looking out from the  capital “O” of the word “Oboe” at the top of the oboe  part to Telegraph Polka. And in copyist’s ink, Koppitz has humorously labeled  “On the Alps, Ländler for Two Horns Obbligato and  Orchestra" (on today’s program) his Opus Number  4,009—this, after being active for less than a decade  as a theater orchestra leader in Boston. Enough said about the overburdened, unrecognized— and in Charles Koppitz’s case—brief life of a middle- class Victorian-American theater music director. [From the program notes to "Music from The Gilded  Age: Boston Theatre Orchestra Collection, 1869–1877,"  this coming Saturday, March 21, 4 pm, in John Ford  Theater at Portland High School, 284 Cumberland Ave.,  Portland, Maine  -- Charles Kaufmann] Here are five outrageous reasons to attend Music  from The Gilded Age: Boston Theatre Orchestra  Collection, 1869-1877 this Saturday at 4 pm, John  Ford Theater at Portland High School, 284 Cumberland  Ave, Portland, Maine. [Tickets here, or at the door, $20 regular, $10 student/ senior; call 207-232-8920 for more information]. 1. To see a half dozen kids from Woodside One  Wheelers (WOW) perform on regular unicycles, 5-foot  giraffe unicycles and 7-foot three-wheeled unicycles to  Charles Koppitz's Velocipede Galop for orchestra, written  in 1869 during "velocipede mania" in Boston -- the year  the bicycle was introduced to the United States. 2. To see and hear an antique telegraph machine from  19th Century Willowbrook Village used as a percussion  instrument in Charles Koppitz's Telegraph Polka (1870),  during which bassoonist-magician Wren Saunders will  turn herself into the dancing transatlantic telegraph cable  of 1866. 3. To witness up-close the talented members of the  Orchestra of The Longfellow Chorus -- placed in front of the  stage -- performing a series of never-ending circus leaps:  John Boden and Sophie Flood as horn soloists in On the Alps;  Betty Rines and Herb Smith as cornet soloists in Amazon  March; Melissa Mielens and Krysia Tripp as piccolo soloists,  diving through flaming hoops in In the Forest Polka;  percussionist Richard Kelly cranking his anchor chain device  in Yacht Nettie Waltz. This is virtuosic music; these are  outrageously good players. 4. To get to know two versatile, young singing actresses from  New York, Cree Carrico, soprano, and Kaitlyn Costello, mezzo,  who will recreate the roles of Evangeline and Gabriel in an  historic 21st-century reawakening of a lost 19th-century  orchestral medley, Selections from Evangeline, or, The Belle of  Acadia (1877) -- originally billed as "the first American comic  opera." 5. Because you will love this concert.