Chamber Ensemble Brings New Take On Carol Classics To Wantagh Public Library

WANTAGH, NY. — While the original "Twelve Days of Christmas" song promises 11 pipers piping, audiences will get a twelfth at no extra charge Saturday, as the twelve-member Island Winds Chamber Ensemble comes to the Wantagh Public Library for its Holiday concert.

The twelve-member ensemble is composed entirely of retired music teachers, euphonium player Don Sherman told Patch Monday, who met in other music performance circles and bonded over a shared love of chamber music. Specifically, the dozen players share a love of music written for dual woodwind quintets, an arrangement that entails pairs of bassoons, clarinets, flutes, horns and oboes.

“We're all retired, music teachers, which makes it possible for us to have a Tuesday morning rehearsal every week,” Sherman said with a laugh. “And it really is a lot of fun. All of us, from all over the island, really, have been teachers in one district or another. It's wonderful.”

When asked how the double woodwind quintet came to form, Sherman said the members of the Island Winds wanted a chance to break out of the conventional form of chamber music. In a genre defined by trios, quartets and quintets, they initially wanted to try a ten-member dectet.

“Well, there were a few [members] that said there's some really great chamber music literature that's out there that you don't get a chance to do too often,” Sherman said. “I've played in other groups. You know, there are some pretty standard instrumentations. You can have a string quartet, for example, or a brass quintet…And there were a bunch of pieces, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could get together and play this?’”

The formation of the group wasn’t without hurdles, as the Island Winds had difficulty tracking down the exact right instrumentalists, Sherman said. In time, however, that difficulty created a unique strength for the group.

“What we found was, first of all, we couldn't get the exact instrumentation. That's why, as a euphonium player, I wouldn't ordinarily be playing with this group, but they couldn't find bassoonists. So I play that instrument, the bassoon parts on my euphonium, and it gives it a little bit of a different sound. It's a little more brass and less woodwind, but it works very well,” Sherman said. “We've found ways to make it blend. So we also added a bass clarinet, so that's a little bit of a different sound for while we had an additional horn as well. But at any rate, so that was the original desire. What we found was that we had a really unique sound because of these slight changes to the instrumentation. And we also had three or four musicians that liked to write and arrange music. So we have a lot of our own arrangements that are real unique that no one else has.”

As for Saturday’s concert, Sherman said, audience members can expect an ensemble that includes plenty of classics with some Island Winds flair.

“In some ways, it is sort of a typical holiday program, but nothing we do is really typical. You'll hear some favorites and we're actually going to have a sing along of holiday favorites that people can sing with us,” Sherman said. “But there's also some really original takes on some traditional music and some things you don't hear as often…there will be some jazzy tunes like The Christmas Waltz by Julie Stein and a really unusual, sort of jazzy arrangement of jingle bells, which is kind of fun. There's some traditional European things that people might not know the title of, but maybe you've heard, but older music, like there's a Wassell song from Gloucestershire and it's a really beautiful arrangement that one of our clarinet players wrote, an Old English tune. And there's also a Renaissance song called Gaudete, which is usually done with a vocal ensemble, but it sounds terrific on wind instruments. We've got the carol of the bells, which everybody knows about; what's fun about it is that it incorporates lots of other little tunes inside, so it's like a little Christmas overture. And, you know, we'll have a little nod to the hundredth anniversary of the Rockettes when we do the parade of the wooden soldiers, everybody will recognize that, certainly. And there'll be a couple, maybe that you don't recognize, that you, you know, maybe it sounds festive, but you haven't heard of it before. It's nice to have a little variety that way and have something new to capture your interest.”

As for what he hoped audiences took away from the performance, Sherman said he hoped the performance could provide a brief reprieve from the busy holiday season.

“Well, I hope, number one, that their spirits are lifted and that it feels like the holiday season should. There's so many obligations, you have things that check off your list. And if you can take an hour to just enjoy some music, especially live music, as far as I'm concerned, hopefully that's the number one thing,” Sherman said. “And number two, maybe they go, huh, you know, chamber music and wind instruments playing live. This is like something I'll pursue again sometime. I wonder what a summer concert might sound like. And if it piques someone's interest, then we've really done our job.”