Suites and Sweets

During the band’s 2023-2024 season, a silent auction was held which included a chance to win a conducting spot on the 2024-2025 season and take a conducting lesson from Maestro Shelton. The winning bid fell to Jim & Sharon Campbell, who wanted to gift this unique opportunity to their granddaughter, Kate Gocza. Kate just graduated from Liberty High School in Peoria as a straight-A student, 1st chair flutist and drum major in the band, and she selected Ralph Vaugh Williams’ English Folk Song Suite for her conducting debut.

This inspired Colonel Shelton, the band’s Music Director and Conductor, to program a concert featuring some of the band-world’s best and most exciting concert suites. The concert will include Leroy Anderson’s Irish Suite, Alfred Reed’s Second Suite for Band, Clifton Williams’ Symphonic Suite, and as a special “sweet treat”, in commemoration of the Centennial year of Henry Mancini’s birth, the band will feature a medley of Mancini favorites simply entitled Mancini!

This special afternoon of delectable band literature will be “sweetened” with Clarinet Candy, a clarinet section feature, and Carrickfergus, a beautiful Irish ballad performed by the band’s principal euphonium player, Don Larry. Don’t miss “Suites & Sweets”, Sunday, April 13, 2025, at the Vista Center for the Arts at 4:00 p.m.