The Upper Valley Community Band will perform its first indoor concert in more than three years Sunday.

“I think it’s just really good to be coming alive again,” said band president Mark Nunlist.

The performance — which features new works and new members — takes place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at Frances C. Richmond Middle School auditorium, at 63 Lyme Rd. Admission is free and donations for the nonprofit organization will be accepted. More information can be found at uvcb.org.

“It’s probably the most challenging program I’ve assembled for the Upper Valley Community Band,” said Mark Nelson, the band’s music director. “The only way I could justify doing it is if we had the players to pull it off and we do.”

Like other arts organizations, the band was greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The group had been rehearsing for its spring concert in March 2020 and put those plans on pause. That summer, band members began practicing on the lawn outside the Lebanon Elks Club, sitting at least six feet apart. They performed outside that Labor Day weekend.

“That was just huge,” Nelson said.

In 2021, they resumed rehearsing outside and as vaccines became more widely available, they started performing more outdoor concerts.

When they did return to rehearse indoors in 2022, it was at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Hanover. The band’s longtime practice space, Hanover High School, was off limits due to the pandemic. They began rehearsing there once again in fall 2022.

“Gradually, gradually, gradually, we got back together,” Nelson said.

The band required its members to be vaccinated.

“Sort of the underlying principle was the band members felt responsible to one another and the families and loved ones of one another,” Nunlist said. Members also made a point not to attend rehearsal if they weren’t feeling well or they’d been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID. “They were very comfortable shouldering the community responsibility for the health of everybody.”

Prior to the pandemic, the band had around 70 members. Now they’re up to around 45.

“A year ago we might’ve had 20, 22,” Nunlist, a tenor sax player, said.

Some members moved way during the pandemic or weren’t comfortable coming back. Some had other obligations and some died.

They slowly started to build back membership and last September had an infusion of new members after a Dartmouth graduate student posted a call for members on Dartlist, a listserv created for people affiliated with Dartmouth College.

“Lo and behold within the next two weeks, six more people showed up,” Nelson said.

Among the people who showed up was Edwin Robledo, who moved from southern Florida to Lebanon for a job.

“I saw it and kind of debated with myself for awhile before deciding to join it,” Robledo, a trombonist, said. He had played music while he was growing up, but put it to the side while in college and had not played in a concert band for nine years.

“I really had a big itch of wanting to do it again,” Robledo, 27, said. “Being new to the area I really wanted to explore what the area had to offer. I wanted to connect with people, make friends.”

Robledo did not have a trombone, but that did not prove to be a problem: He was g ifted a trombone by Nelson, who had gotten it from the family of a band member who had died and wanted another musician to use it.

“I was extremely blessed,” Robledo said. “When I started in the band again it was the perfect way to get back into it. They’re not expecting me to be super professionally experienced. Everyone is super nice.”

Around 15 new members joined the ranks last fall, which made this Sunday’s program possible, Nelson said. Among the works the band will be performing is Homage to Bharat by Brian Balmages.

“In effect this is a piece which is an homage to Bollywood music,” Nelson said, adding that the composition features a tambura, a plucked drone instrument common in India. “It’s been a challenge but also an interesting challenge for the band because it includes scales that would be familiar in India but not familiar in the West.”

The band will also perform two movements from the Suite of Old American Dances by Robert Russell Bennet, in addition to other pieces.

“For me as music director it is really gratifying to meet a bunch of new people who are really keen to play and secondly to work with people who are really keen to play,” Nelson said. “It feels in some really pronounced way that we’re back. Capital W capital B we’re back. That’s something I wouldn’t be able to say last September. We were doing pretty well, but now I’m thinking, ‘Wow, we’re doing it.’ ”

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.

]]>