Band performs to capacity crowd

Sisters music fans flocked to the Sisters High School auditorium on a cold Saturday afternoon last weekend for Cascade Horizon Band's Winter Concert. Crowds were bigger than ever this year, with all but the assembly hall's front two or three rows filled to capacity.

Last Saturday's concert was dedicated to Marilyn Burkholder, one of the band's original 12 members who was also the band's manager and president. Burkholder and her husband Bruce, who lived in Bend, died tragically last July in an automobile accident on Highway 20 close to the Santiam Junction.

The concert also honored Sisters long-time teacher, scholar, school board member and community activist Cliff Clemens who died on Friday, January 18, just prior to his 102nd birthday. After the band's introductory piece "Where the Black Hawks Soar," director Sue Steiger, who teaches band at High Desert Middle School in Bend, asked all to pause for a moment of silence in Clemens' honor.

The band, which is affiliated with the New Horizons International Music Association (www.newhorizonsmusic.org), boasts 65 members, three of whom are from Sisters. The New Horizons program provides opportunities for adults to become involved in music, even if they have had no previous musical experience. It is also geared to attract individuals who were active in school music programs but have been inactive for a long period.

"I've always thought Bend or Central Oregon was primed for a New Horizons Band, because there are so many active seniors who have played but they weren't ready for the symphony or they weren't ready for the college band, yet we could offer something," Steiger said.

When the band started in 2003, several of the members were beginners on the instruments they played.

"They have gone from playing very beginning music to where they're playing actual college stuff now," Steiger said.

Cindy Hepworth, of Bend, is one of those beginners. One of the band's original 12 members, Hepworth had always played the piano but took up the trombone after Steiger said she needed one.

"I went and rented a trombone and took some lessons and bought my own trombone, and five years later here we are," she said.

All concerts are free. The band practices once-a-week all year, and recently members have been organizing additional weekly sessions for sectional rehearsals.

Although separated by many years, Steiger finds many similarities between her middle school band students and seniors who play in the Cascade Horizon Band.

She acknowledges that she has no discipline issues with the adults and that she can kid around with them a little bit more than with her middleschoolers.

However, Steiger said, "there are days when they're nervous. We took them to a festival, and they forgot their music. They forget this and they forget that. I said, 'it's just like my kids at school.' They're just in bigger bodies. A lot of the same things happen."

For Steiger, seeing how the band has progressed over the past five years is very rewarding. "This is my thing, and this is my baby. It's just been a thrill to watch it (the band) grow and develop."