4-23-2025 4:16am

Boyertown Alumni Marching Unit to Present 49th Anniversary Spring Concert

Lesley Misko Editor

(Photograph by Lee Schultz) The Boyertown Alumni Marching Unit opens the 2024 Spring Concert with the presentation of the Colors during the playing of The Star Spangled Banner.

by Marta Weller *

In the mood for an adventure? On Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 2:00 PM in the Middle School West Auditorium, the Boyertown Alumni Marching Unit (BAMU) will take concert-goers on a musical tour that looks at the “spirit” that drives us all to try new things. Titled “The Spirit of Adventure,” the concert will feature music from various styles that captures a range of emotions.

To help directors and musicians play music as it was envisioned, composers almost always include an instruction at the beginning of a piece of music to let them know whether it should be bright and cheerful or melodic and romantic, or even spirited like a military march. Such is the case with the concert march Guardians of Peace, the opening selection for the 2025 spring concert, which composer James Hosay instructs be played at “majestic march tempo.” Other pieces to be performed include the very expressive (“Molto espressivo”) and adventurous Persis, also by Hosay, as well as the mysterious (“Misterioso”) works A Hot Air Balloon Adventure by James M. Pasternak and Haunted Carnival by Rob Grice.

The adventurous concert theme is also present in The Pathfinder of Panama, a march written in 1915 by John Phillip Sousa, which celebrates the spirit of adventure shown by those men who traveled the isthmus of Panama to find the best route for a canal. And what could be more adventurous than training a dragon? The audience will get a sense of that in How To Train Your Dragon by John Powell (arr. by Sean O’Loughlin).

The high spirit of the Alumni Marching Unit always shines brightly, and so it will be no surprise that the concert will be sprinkled with flashy and spirited performances by the band front. That spirit is especially strong in the concert finale, during the patriotic closing selection Battle Hymn of the Republic arranged by Bill Moffit.

Indeed, music played with passion (“con passione”) is never in short supply with the Alumni Marching Unit, that as a whole completely understands and tends to follow that direction exuberantly. Band Captain Dennis Weller has been challenging BAMU members with a wide variety of music selections and ways to perform for 30 years. From difficult pieces where some pages are nearly black with the many, many notes to be played, to writing field shows for the Unit to perform in exhibition at Cavalcade of Bands competitions, Weller has taken to heart the lessons he learned from his mentors, Don Kuszyk and Arlen R. Saylor. The challenge is to keep learning, perform as a group – as a team, listening to each other, and to have fun while doing it.

While this year’s spring concert marks the 47th concert of the Unit and the 49th anniversary of the formation of the Boyertown Alumni Marching Unit in 1976, there will be more listening pleasure for community members throughout the rest of the year. Other upcoming performances include the annual Fun Days Saturday evening concert and another Patriotic Concert at the Keystone Fire Company, just to name a few. And don’t forget the parades!

Playing music is always an adventure, whether it is new music to be learned or familiar music being played once again, especially in a band with 30, 45, or as many as 96 musicians (that happened one year). Throw in performing as a unit with a band front of a Rifle Corps and Twirlers, that’s a challenge!

The BAMU’s 2024 concert honored former Boyertown Junior High Band Director Mr. Donald J. Kuszyk, who started many members on the road to become the people they are today – team-spirited, community-spirited and fun-spirited adults. That same sense of spirit to try new things and to accept a challenge -- the Spirit of Adventure – is sure to infuse this year’s concert.

Concert tickets are $5 and are available at Aunt Nannie’s Bakeshop on Rte. 100, at Bachman’s Music on S. Reading Ave. and also at the door.

* Marta J. Weller, retired librarian, was originally from Minnesota where she met husband Dennis--from Boyertown--at Dana College in Blair, NE, and where they learned that living on the edge of Tornado Alley was just a little too much excitement. Boyertown welcomed them and Marta made a career from her love of books working in the retail book business, as librarian at Boyertown Community Library and then at Exeter Community Library. Since her retirement, she plays flute with the Boyertown Alumni Marching Unit and the flute ensemble Finely Fluted and the Exeter Community Band, arranges music for the flute ensemble, takes photographs, reads, writes poetry and prose, watches birds, loves her pets, and takes road trips. Recently she has self-published a small collection of her poetry, prose, and photography entitled "Word Art: Abbreviated”.