Honoring Our Heroes

The Willamette Valley Concert Band, under the baton of Julie Buchert, will present a free Memorial Day concert at 4 p.m. Monday, May 29.
Performing with the band will be The Heart of the Valley Children’s Choir directed by Sandra Babb of Oregon State University.
The concert will be at the LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU campus, 875 SW 26th Street, Corvallis.
The band will perform songs honoring military heroes of our past and present.
The approximately 60-member children’s choir will join the band to open the concert with “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Some of the other pieces will be “This Is My Country,” arranged by Jerry Brubaker, “The Stars And Stripes Forever,” by John Philip Sousa, and “All Is Calm,” By Robert W. Smith.
Xylophone artist Brendan Elliott will play Galop, from “The Comedians,” by Dmitri Kabelevsky.
The performance will be narrated and announced by Jason Caffarella, a musician and teacher in the Albany area.
The concert’s band director, Julie Buchert, a 1979 graduate of West Albany High School, taught band, choir, general music and other subjects for 30 years before retiring.
The band, with approximately 45 members, was created by Dr. Richard Sorenson in 1970. It has continuously performed since then, with a hiatus during the COVID pandemic.
Although the concert is free, donations, helping area music students attend the Mid-Valley Band camp this summer, will be appreciated,