East Winds keeps roots in classic repertoire

Roger Schneider was looking for some challenges when he and two colleagues formed the East Winds Symphonic Band.

He got 25 years of them and doesn't want to stop dealing with them.

"I was looking to have a band that would provide some challenges and also be fun," he says, "and I think the band has become that."

The 60-piece wind ensemble, celebrating its 25th anniversary Saturday, has taken its classic concert-band sound to Greensburg, Ligonier, Upper St. Clair, Kennywood Park, Three Rivers Arts Festival, and the Bach, Beethoven and Brunch at Mellon Park, Shadyside, among other places.

Its birthday concert is at the Rodef Shalom Temple, Oakland, the home of one of its two regular concerts a year.

"Any group that can survive for 25 years has to have some good leadership," says Carl T. Iezzi, director of the North Suburban Symphonic Band, headquartered in Ross. He admits his own musical demands keep him from hearing his eastern counterpart too often, but he calls them "a really good concert band."

Iezzi also points out he hears the East Winds at the Three Rivers Community Band Festival, an event also put together by Schneider, a baritone horn player from Murrysville.

Going into her 17th year as music director, Susan Sands, of Sewickley, says she is pleased with the dedication of band members.

"They are a great group of people to be with," she says. "There is nothing I think we back away from. Oh, there are things we end up not playing, but it isn't because we haven't tried."

Schneider lauds the work of Sands and the support of the Rodef Shalom Temple Brotherhood, which has been providing a concert site since 1983.

The concerts, Saturday's included, are free; members of the temple ask for a grocery or cash donation for the Squirrel Hill SuperPantry.

The band began in 1981 when Schneider, then from Forest Hills, Ed Dzenis, of Monroeville, and Ron Johnson, of Forest Hills, decided to form a band that would provide greater musical challenges than the bands for which they were playing.

A summer of networking led to the formation of a 26-piece band that rehearsed in a Wilkinsburg church and performed its first concert in September. The members were from 15 communities in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. The 60 members come from 30 communities in those two counties.

Schneider won a Volunteer in the Arts award from WQED broadcasting in 2002 for his work. He says the band keeps its roots in the classic repertoire of concert bands. He feels comfortable there because of the popularity of that music that includes marches, show medleys and big-band hits.

"We're just trying to keep the concert band sound alive," he says.