PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Eagles Concert Band is bringing a free concert at the Colonial Theatre on Friday, Nov. 7.

 

This is the band's 18th year performing at the Colonial. New principal conductor David Diggs said he has decided to perform music from composer John Philip Sousa, but not his famous marches. 

 

"One of the ones that I think is very unique to the program is we're going to be playing Sousa, but we're not going to be playing a Sousa march. Sousa wrote a lot of other pieces for his band, but they're generally not played because they're very hard to get rehearsed and put together as a piece. They're not as easy as the marches," Diggs said.

 

He was appointed as principal conductor over the summer, taking over from Carl Jenkins. Jenkins, who also lead the Drury High School band for many  years, retired from the Eagles after 11 years.

 

Diggs started choosing the music in March for the annual concert and selected "Beneath the Southern Cross."

 

"It's from a suite called the 'Looking Upward Suite,' where the other movements are talking about celestial things, as well as the Southern Cross," he said.

 

The concert is the weekend before Veterans Day and most of pieces represent the military, especially from World War II, as it is the 80th anniversary of the end of that war.

 

"Because our concert comes so close to Veterans Day, we always try to do something to honor the veterans," Diggs said. "And so this year, I've chosen three pieces that have sort of their genesis within World War II."

 

That includes a piece by the late composer British composer John Addison, a BAFTA and Oscar-winning composer of soundtracks, including for "A Bridge Too Far."

 

Diggs said this piece will start the second half of the concert.

 

"I chose this one because this is a term we're hearing a lot right now, and most people are probably not aware of where that term came from, but that's out of Operation Market Garden in 1944," he said. "And one of the generals when they were talking about the plans said, 'Well, I'm not sure this will work, because this seems like a bridge too far.' Now we have this phrase, and you hear it all the time."

 

Also on the playlist is "Victory at Sea" by Richard Rodgers, who composed the music for the 1952 NBC documentary focused on the U.S. Navy during World War II.

 

"We're doing 'Victory at Sea,' which was a mammoth project that NBC did, and I've been studying what went into the logistics of it — 60 million miles of film that got boiled down to 13 hours of television time. It was a great project," said Diggs. "And Richard Rodgers, who at the time was the premier Broadway composer, was commissioned to write the music for the show. And it deals with, it's just a wonderful piece, and it deals with the various scenes that are in 'Victory at Sea.'"

 

Lastly, they plan to do "Hymn to the Fallen" by John Williams with a video featuring Veterans Day events around the county that were taken by many of the band members and some pictures from Normandy that Diggs traveled to get last summer.

 

"It's very moving, and it's so the entire concert just going to be fantastic," he said.