Wednesday, June 21, 2017

AMSTERDAM ’86 AND THE BILLY GRAHAM CONVENTION – Wednesday June 21, 2017


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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