For the City Times

The Stevens Point City Band will present its second concert of the summer season on Wednesday, June 15 at 7 PM in the Pfiffner Pioneer Park band shell along the Wisconsin River.

“Ready, Set, Dance!” will be the theme as the band, under the direction of Kathryn Kawleski, performs music celebrating a wide variety of dance styles. Featured selections include “El Relicario”, “Three Celtic Dances”, “Blue Tango”, “Wedding Dance”, “The Hokey-Pokey”, “Big Band Polka” and “Bacchanale” from Saint-Saëns’ opera “Samson and Delilah”. Leroy Anderson’s “March of the Two Left Feet” will be the music for the weekly children’s march.

Leroy Anderson’s Blue Tango hit #1 on the Billboard National Singles Charts in 1952 and remained there for 38 weeks and in the top 10 for six months. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1952.

Anderson was the son of Swedish immigrants – his mother an Organist and his father played Mandolin. He was raised and educated in Massachusetts, then attended Harvard. He became one of the most popular American composers of light classical music and enjoyed a long musical relationship with Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

The Children’s March, March of the Two Left Feet, is based on Anderson’s reading of the P.G.

Wodehouse book The Man with Two Left Feet and premiered in 1970.

Bacchanale, from the Camille Saint-Saens opera Sampson and Delilah, is described as the percussion-driven dance leading to Samson’s destruction of the philistine Temple in Act III. This opera, based on the tale of Samson and Delilah found in the Old Testament’s Chapter 16, Book of Judges, was first performed December 2, 1877 in Weimar at the Grossherzogliches(Grand Ducal) Theatre in a German Translation.

Michele’s Restaurant and Catering of Stevens Point will provide food for purchase before and during the concert.

Concerts are free and held Wednesday evenings through August 3. Audience members should bring chairs or blankets for seating.

In the event of inclement weather, the concert will be held in the gymnasium at St. Paul Lutheran Church and School, 1919 Wyatt Avenue.