May 04, 2011
Wednesday PM

Once again, for just $10 and students free, the audience was treated to live performance that was outstanding. I chose to live in Ketchikan. I was raised in a community of great renown for world wide recognition of an orchestra - graduated from a college close to NYC and performed with the chorus in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center - having access to any number of world known conductors with orchestras and bands and chorus. Yet ... I am absolutely thrilled each time I attend a live performance here in Ketchikan, this small island community that has a wealth of people who give their time and talent to learn and then to share - choral, band, dance, theater, painting, sculpting, writing and the list goes on.

Sunday was a cold, drizzly day - but for those of us who chose to sit in the Kayhi auditorium it was a day of the thrill with music glorious. Our community band members are not all professionals - they don't get paid to perform - yet they provide us with a wea lth of music that cannot be surpassed by any other community.

For today's program Roy McPherson did not hesitate to challenge his band members. They accepted the challenge - and what a grand performance. (At the end of the last piece - a medley of tunes from West Side Story, a MOST challenging piece - 2 members of the percussion section lauded each other for performance well done - I am sure they did not realize that some of us saw their exuberance.) I choose to live here, not just because of the fresh and best food from the sea and berry bushes: but also for the culture, the local Native culture, the culture of 'the last frontier', AND the arts culture our neighbors give themselves to and then share.

Some people in town say: go south if want good ... But I say: stay in your own community for the best: the best of the arts, medical, whatever it might be. I'm glad to live on this island and have this 'wealth' shared / given that we might have even a brief reprieve from our (dreary-rainy) daily living.

Bravo KCCB and thank you.

Judith Green
Ketchikan, AK