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Local summer band wraps up their season with a concert

A summer band ensemble recently wrapped up its season with a concert that received rave reviews from the public. The band, Brass Boogaloo, features a dozen performers between the ages of 14 and 19.
Boogaboo Brass
Members of Boogaboo Brass are, front row, from left, Katie Ostrander, Kaylee Carlson, Victoria Beahm and Sarah Leverton; middle row, Garrett Schwab, Paige Wilson, Brooke Wilson, Jeremy Littlefield and Rogan McLean; back row, Laura Swirski, Kristen Carlson and Kylie Phillipchuk. Photo submitted

A summer band ensemble recently wrapped up its season with a concert that received rave reviews from the public.

The band, Brass Boogaloo, features a dozen performers between the ages of 14 and 19. They gathered in the free park area of Woodlawn Regional Park on Aug. 26, and played several songs in three 45-minute performances for the spectators who gathered, all while respecting social distancing.

Dawn Marie Sloan-Beahm, whose daughter Victoria is part of the band, recorded the songs and posted them on social media. Response from the public has been favourable. 

“I had asked her if she could record them, because I wanted to be able to listen to them … and actually hear what the whole band sounds like,” said Brooke Wilson, one of the co-founders of Boogaloo Brass.

And it allowed the group to share the songs with anyone who wanted to listen to them, because they couldn’t have a large number of people there.

The response from those who listened to the performance has been positive, Wilson said. After the second performance of a song from Game of Thrones, Wilson and her sister Paige thought it was their best effort.

“It’s just a great thing, I think, that we’re just a group of kids playing band instruments,” said Brooke Wilson. “As nerdy as that sounds, it’s honestly super fun, and we get to spend time with each other. We’ve all known each other through the band program at ECS, so just getting to play whatever we want, and work together to critique ourselves and improve, has been fun and pretty nice to share that with people.”

Wilson pointed out this was the second year for the band, which she formed during finals in her Grade 12 year in 2019.

“There was a group of us, maybe six or seven, and we were in the band instrument storage room, and we were looking at some of the more obscure instruments that we had in there, and we said we should play that.”

Then they decided to form a summer band to play whatever songs they want and have a lot of fun in the process.

After getting permission from Kyle Whitehead, who’s in charge of the school’s band program, they borrowed some music, started practising and had a fun summer working on music together. They played at a community event at the Southern Plains Co-op.

“It was a lot of fun, so we decided this summer to start it back up again,” said Wilson.

There were five members back from the 2019 band, and seven new members joined this year. They rehearsed twice a week for about two hours, and worked on four songs, two of which were arranged by Paige Wilson.

“We’d find a song from a video game, and she would set it out for the instruments that we had with our players,” said Brooke Wilson.

Boogaloo Brass has allowed young musicians to keep their skills sharp. Normally people are eager to practise at the summer, but then they wind up playing very little.  

“It’s been good to keep practising throughout the summer, so you don’t lose that technique and muscle memory that you worked so hard on during the school year,” said Wilson.

And it’s been great to have an opportunity to keep the music going during the pandemic.

Wilson is hopeful the band can become a summer fixture in the Estevan area. They have also discussed performing at events in the community this fall, since they will be in Estevan for at least the fall months.