Austin Symphonic Band Performing El Capitan

Austin Symphonic Band. November 14, 2021 concert at the Weiss HS Performing Arts Center in Pflugerville, TX. ASB performing El Capitan by John Philip Sousa (arr. Keith Brion and Loras Schissel). Guest Music Director Dr. Kyle R. Glaser conducting. Concert title: "Stage and Screen".

Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings

From the program notes:

El Capitan (1896)
John Philip Sousa (1854–1932)
Arranged by Keith Brion (b. 1933) and Loras Schissel (b. 1964)

One of the perennial Sousa favorites, this march has enjoyed exceptional popularity with bands since it first appeared. It was extracted from the most successful of the Sousa operettas, El Capitan. El Capitan of the operetta was the comical and cowardly Don Medigua, the early seventeenth-century viceroy of Peru. Some of the themes appear in more than one act, and the closing theme of the march is the same rousing theme which ends the operetta.

This was the march played by the Sousa Band, augmented to over a hundred men and all at Sousa’s personal expense, as they led Admiral Dewey’s victory parade in New York on September 30, 1899. It was a matter of sentiment with Sousa, because the same march had been played by the band on Dewey’s warship Olympia as it sailed out of Mirs Bay on the way to attack Manila during the Spanish-American War. — Program note by Paul E. Bierley

Listen for:
• Standard march form consisting of:
o Introduction
o First Strain
o Second Strain
o Key Change into the Trio
o Break-up Strain (Dogfight)
o Trio Refrain
• Beautiful euphonium counterpoint in the first strain.
• A shift from 6/8 to 2/4 at the trio.
• A bonus, second melody in the trio.