Wenatchee Big Band returns to Apple Blossom stage with swing-era tradition, modern flair
Wenatchee Big Band (copy) (copy)
Wenatchee Big Band brings its big sound to the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival entertainment stage annually, shown here in 2023.
Brass will gleam in the spring light, reeds will chatter awake, and somewhere between the last float of the Youth Parade and the first lazy drift of afternoon, the Wenatchee Big Band will take the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival's Entertainment Stage at Memorial Park.
The longtime local ensemble will perform Saturday, April 25, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., not as a relic, but as a living, breathing organism, offering an afternoon of big band standards and contemporary arrangements during one of the festival's busiest days.
"We've been preparing for this Apple Blossom gig for months now," said Tracy Warner, the band's director and first tenor saxophonist. "We're challenging ourselves to really put on a very interesting program."
Warner, who describes himself with a shrugging humility - "a very, very typical mediocre school-trained musician," he said - has been with the band since the late 1990s. His title of director is less conductor and more curator.
"I choose what music we're going to play. I build the menus for the gigs," he said. "And I set the tempos - and occasionally do very, very gentle, mild critiques of speed."
The program is designed with a festival crowd in mind - a park still buzzing from the Youth Parade, full of families and kids who may not yet know what a big band can do.
"For Apple Blossom, you're trying to have more up-tempo pieces," Warner said. "Things that are more interesting, a little more showmanship involved."
The Wenatchee Big Band traces its roots to 1981, when local musicians who came of age in the big band era formed the group to keep the style alive in the valley. The ensemble maintains a traditional big band structure with five saxophones, multiple trumpets and trombones, and a rhythm section.
"It's always the same size," Warner said. "You have a certain number of chairs that make up the band."
What has changed is the world around it. Where the group once played frequent dances, weddings and holiday events, those opportunities have thinned.
"We used to play a lot of dances, one a month," Warner said. "Now it's one or two a year. Weddings have pretty much gone to disk jockeys."
The group continues rehearsing Wednesday evenings at the Foothills Community Center and regularly welcomes new musicians.
"There's nothing that's more fun than making music with your friends," Warner said. "There's nothing better than that."
Featured vocalist Angela Waggoner will join the band for several selections during the April 25 performance.
"She'll have about eight numbers to sing," Warner said. "She's really good."
And while the band honors its roots, audiences shouldn't expect a museum piece.
"If you want to hear Glenn Miller tunes and things like that, we're not going to be doing any of that," Warner said. "We're pushing the edge of the envelope to make it as interesting as we can."
It's a fitting approach for a day that bridges generations. As middle schoolers march in the parade and scatter into the park, some may hear, perhaps for the first time, the punch of a horn section or the sly swing of a saxophone line.
"They might hear something that they go, ‘Oh, that's something I want to be involved with,'" he said.
Baritone saxophonist Angela Richmond will take part in the Youth Parade earlier in the day with her students from Foothills Middle School before joining the ensemble onstage later that afternoon.
After more than four decades, the Wenatchee Big Band remains what it has always been: a community institution, a little grayer perhaps, but still game.
"We've had our ups and downs, but we're still going strong," Warner said. "Even if you don't really like jazz, you'll hear something that you like."
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