Community band celebrates sweet sounds of 35 years

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on September 28, 2022.

Herald photo by Justin Seward Members of the Bridge Brass Quintet perform during the Lethbridge Community Band 35th anniversary at Casa this past weekend.

The Lethbridge Community Band celebrated its 35th anniversary at Casa with a wine and cheese-themed event on Sunday.

There were also speeches from band members and city Coun. Mark Campbell as well as entertainment for attendees from the LCB.

René Van De Vendel is the LCB president and has been involved with the band since 1988.

“We feel first of all that 35 years is something to celebrate,” he said. “We try to celebrate every five years but especially now after COVID. I personally have this real sense of relief that we didn’t go under. We did manage to resurrect the bands again and we managed to the get the players back again. So that’s a big accomplishment in my mind that we are now ready to go again.”

Van De Vendel’s answer was simple when asked about how LCP got to 35 years.

“The love of music,” he said. “I can talk about all the other things that are important. So playing music together is important and of course that’s true and meeting up with your friends is really important. … We just love this band music and it’s pretty evident that people just keep coming back to that because it’s something you do individually (and) in a group.”

A memory he has of being in the band stems from the arguments he used to have with LCB’s founding gold brass conductor Bob Cook.

“Him and I struggled and argued quite a bit because he had all these fancy ideas of getting guest performers in and I was dead set against it and then we did it,” recalled Van De Vendel. “I had to go back and apologize and he was right. So learning that older people have more experience and are right quite often has been a highlight for myself as personal growth. But musically, I can’t pick them out, we’ve done recordings, we’ve travelled internationally. We just had the burial of the Queen – she was carried into the St. Giles’ Cathedral in Scotland. We played to consort with the gold band and with the brass quintet in that cathedral. Those are highlights.”

Ken Lewis was one of the founding members for the LCB and still is playing with fellow band members.

“I have very great memories of the period of time with various conductors,” said Lewis. “In particular when Bob Cook started and Bob came with very high credentials. And a community band was at ground zero and I remember we had – at the very first rehearsal we must have had 50 people, probably 40 per cent of which could not read music. So that was a big challenge. I credit Bob with the enthusiasm of the board promoting the thing just getting the word out. Bob started that band in 1987 and in 1993 he took that band out to the Alberta Music Conference and there was something like 130 bands competing in this and our band won all of the awards.”

Lewis highlighted the period of time with the LCB’s partnership with Howard Cable and the McIntyre Ranch.

Cable was an Order of Canada recipient from Toronto and wrote around 60 arrangements for the Canadian Brass Band.

“Which just was an incredible period of time of being able to premiere pieces and do recordings,” he said. “Howard Cable took a liking to the Lethbridge Community Band and the Lethbridge city.”

Ian Randell is another original founder and it was when he got his first teaching job in Pincher Creek that he met Ed Staples and joined the Community Band there and continued on when he moved to Lethbridge.

“I think it comes from our moto, which is ‘We Love Music’,” said Randell. “It’s meeting people who have similar tastes in music and similar desires to perform it and learn it. I think that’s what it is, we have a common purpose and a common love.”

What made it enjoyable for the artists was the social interaction.

“We’d go to the bar after every practice at one point but we don’t do that so much anymore,” he said.

“But we had lots of parties and get togethers and so that worked very well for us.

He tipped his hat to the directors over the years who have kept challenging band members with new and more difficult music.

“At first when we started to learn these more difficult pieces we kind of grumbled a little bit, but after we get into them for a few weeks, the love of the music takes over and you don’t mind as much,” said Randell.