RECOLLECTIONS
OF A CONTINENTAL DIRECTOR
(By Bob
Feller, toured with Continentals for 11 tours 1977-1987, Director of The Continental
Brass and Singers 1980-1987, currently Full Professor and Head of Winds and Percussion at Biola Conservatory of Music, 29 years)
AMSTERDAM WITH BILLY GRAHAM
 |
| Bob Feller |
The
Continental Brass and Singers (Tour H) in 1986 were very strong and hit it out
of the park every night! The band was
loaded with some very talented players who could “really” play, including a
couple from Eastman School of Music!
During our
stay in Holland, we were invited to be the “house band” for the Amsterdam Billy
Graham Itinerant Evangelist Convention for 5 days. Every night, we performed an instrumental
opening special, and then another feature with the choir in the middle of the
evening program. The last night of the
convention, one of the organizers came to me in the afternoon saying they were
going to open the evening with a procession of flags from every country the
evangelists represented. They wanted a
long fanfare! Well, we didn’t have a
fanfare per se in our repertoire, long or short, but we couldn’t turn down an
offer like that!
The year
before, there was a great fanfare introduction to one of our songs, “Sing to
the Lord.” But, we did not have a copy
of it. Checking with our Dutch hosts (Continental Sound) we found a cassette
tape copy of last year’s program. No
written music of course!
I approached
Todd Beany, our piano player and a fellow student from the Eastman School of
Music who was working on his Masters Degree in piano performance. Todd was brilliant and had piano and
arranging chops galore! I explained the
situation to Todd. He stood there for a
few seconds and then quietly said, “I need a cassette player, a piano and two
hours in a quiet place.” Two hours
later, Todd showed up with the fanfare and the instrumental parts all copied
out by hand. We slammed them onto the
music stands and began to rehearse.
That night,
as The Continental Brass blistered out that opening fanfare from “Sing to the
Lord” for 26,000 people, and flags began to fill the entire convention hall, I
looked over at Todd sitting at the piano with tears streaming down my
face. It was a thrilling moment for all
of us. I knew for sure that this was
another reason God had brought Todd on this tour. I would venture to say that very few people
who ever toured with The Continentals could have done what he did for us that
day.
(Music
tours, performances and productions often had their all-nighters and last
minute challenges. We had no choice but
to find a way to solve and make happen.
It’s part of why we all loved every minute of it!... Cam)
Bob lives in La Mirada, California with his wife Sue and their 3 children. In addition to Biola Conservatory, Bob is also Head Instrumental Clinician for Disney Performing Arts Workshops
(over 4000 recording session workshops to date) and works as a Freelance Trumpet Player in Los Angeles, including recital performances in
Southern California and tours to China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Indonesia. Recently, Bob has taken 5 tours to Romania with the Biola Symphonic Winds ministering to orphans and abandoned babies.
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