TISDALE — Two community bands came together to produce a larger, fuller sound than what they could do alone.
The Tisdale Lions Community Band and the Prince Albert City Band played their spring concert at Tisdale’s Maurice Taylor Performing Arts Theatre April 28.
“In the past, we’re talking probably about 10 years ago, the Tisdale, P.A. and Melfort bands did a collaboration for a couple of years in a row.,” said Nicole Webb, a conductor for the Prince Albert band. “We kind of dispersed and did our own thing. This year Uffe [Vors, the Tisdale band’s conductor] contacted me and said, ‘would you like to do it again?’”
Melfort couldn’t do it due to other obligations, but Prince Albert was all for it.
“We decided it was about time to get the band back together, so to speak.”
Vors said it was wonderful to have the two bands play together.
“We could play pieces that we had trouble playing ourselves because we are few,” he said. “For example, we don’t have French horns in the Tisdale band so we don’t hear how French horns would play because we don’t have them. Being together with another band, we filled up all of the holes and we can play larger pieces and more pieces that require more instrumentation.”
Webb agreed with that sentiment, saying that some of the pieces that they played required more percussion than they normally have.
“We’re really excited with how it went. Being able to hear full sounds that we don’t normally hear is super exciting for us and we left the stage, the P.A. band, going, ‘I think that’s the best we’ve ever played that one song.’”
The collaboration was also a good chance to learn from one another.
“The not-so-strong players can learn by sitting next to somebody that’s stronger” Vors said. “Just like a sport team, you learn from players that are better than you.”
The two bands followed up their Tisdale performance with another in Prince Albert the next day. Vors said he hopes the two bands will be able to play together again.
“I just want to express our gratitude for Tisdale as a community for having us here and for supporting their music program,” Webb said. “Uffe and his team have been working super hard and rural Saskatchewan does not have many music programs and this one is thriving and it’s really just because of the community support.”
