What: Happy to Be Here: A Musical Celebration of Cape Cod
Presented by: The Cape Cod Concert Band, Tom Borning, Conductor
When: 2:00 p.m. Sunday, May 26, 2024
Where: Barnstable Performing Arts Center, Barnstable High School
Admission: FREE!!
Contact: Kate Whouley: kate@capecodconcertband.org, (508) 771-4127
The Cape Cod Concert Band celebrates 50 years of music-making and our own home-
sweet-home with Happy To Be Here, an instrumental concert featuring musical tributes to
CCCB conductors past and present and a live performance of Michael Donovan’s suite,
Portraits of Cape Cod. The concert begins at 2:00 PM on Sunday, May 26, at the
Performing Arts Center at Barnstable High School. Admission is free with donations
welcome.
Portraits of Cape Cod consists of eight short movements, each evoking a time, a place, a
memory, a tradition, or a spirit that is unique to the Cape. The musical portraits are
personal, reflecting Michael Donovan’s lifelong connection to the Cape, but concertgoers
will connect to the composer’s depictions of familiar Cape landmarks, including the
Sagamore Bridge, Four Seas Ice Cream, and The Columns. (And there are pictures
too—original watercolors by the composer, reproduced in a beautiful commemorative
booklet.)
Alongside Portraits, the CCCB’s birthday program includes an array of musical tributes
to the Band’s conductors—only three in 50 years! To honor founding director Tony
Stevens, the Band will play David R. Holsinger’s Havendance, a rousing overture that
Tony loved. He purchased it soon after its 1985 release for the group to play. For John
Hagon, the CCCB’s conductor from 1995-2020, and the man who morphed into John
Philip Sousa every few years for the Band’s Sousa Lives concerts, the CCCB will perform
The Untitled March. Sousa’s final work, it was discovered more than 50 years after his
death. And in appreciation for the CCCB’s current conductor, Tom Borning, who has led
the ensemble since 2021, the Band will play Mount Everest by Rossano Galante. The
composer is a favorite of Tom’s, and the CCCB performed the piece on the first concert
that he conducted. And there’s plenty of musical fun planned too, including Kool and the
Gang’s infectious Celebration and the hilarious Happy Birthday Around the World.
The Cape Cod Concert Band, an all-volunteer 48-piece wind and percussion ensemble, is
funded by audience donations, business supporters, and grants from the Mass Cultural.
