A Grand Sousa Concert —Great American Main Street Band (aka Nonpareil Wind Band)/Timothy Foley (EMI 54130)
WCLV has dusted off this EMI CD to feature for Independence Day! Hard to believe it’s been three decades since this terrific recording was released. Not even EMI has survived—its catalogue is now owned by Warner Records! The performances here are exemplary because of the superior musicianship of the players, and because of the experience and dedication of their conductor, Timothy Foley. He started out as a clarinetist, studying in high school with the great Anthony Gigliotti of the Philadelphia Orchestra and then at Oberlin Conservatory. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and served as a clarinetist in “The President’s Own”—The U.S. Marine Band—for eleven years before becoming its director. He retired in 2004. Foley enlisted in the Marines in 1968, exactly 100 years after John Philip Sousa, then a 13-year-old kid from Washington DC, enlisted as an “apprentice musician.” Sousa rose to lead the Marine Band from 1880 to 1892 and turned it into the premiere military band in the United States. Happy Fourth!