Providence Journal photo / Freida Squires
Petty Officer's Nick Nadal and Scott Chowning play french horns during a recent rehearsal with the Navy Band Northeast at Naval Station Newport.
NEWPORT -- From a music rehearsal room on Newport's Navy base, sounds of tradition and modernity emanate in equal measure -- and one musician's other gig is revealed.Brass and woodwinds, a singer cooing Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me," they are the 45-musician-strong Navy ensemble assigned to play all over the Northeast. It's Tuesday, and these members of Navy Band Northeast are running through repertoire in blue-gray camouflage uniforms.
They will don their dress uniforms on Thursday, when the band performs in the nationally renowned Bristol Fourth of July parade, which draws marching bands and parade watchers from around the country.
Navy Lt. Commander Carl J. Gerhard, carrying his conductor's baton, heads toward the rehearsal room. He is director of the ensemble at Naval Station Newport. He notes a Jimi Hendrix poster on a wall in an adjoining rehearsal space.
If this were 1969, a Navy band digging into psychedelic rock might have seemed counterintuitive in a countercultural world.
But modern Navy musicians are docile. In varying-size ensembles, they perform Beethoven, Bach, patriotic John Philip Sousa marches, the Navy march song "Anchors Aweigh," Boston Pops-style tunes, rock music, country, big-band swing, duos, and learn whatever may be on the top-10 pop charts at the moment, Gerhard says.
And, of course, a single musician is sent out to perform at the most solemn moments, playing taps at a funeral.
Gerhard knows something of musical versatility.
"I never grew up around military music," he says as the musicians rehearse. "I was a musician, a young musician, playing clubs at night and saw the opportunity" to audition and become a Navy musician. Now he runs the ensemble and is principal conductor.
And the camouflage-clad Gerhard has also toured and recorded with a different band over the years, one whose legion of fans' attire tend more toward the tie-dyed and the relaxed-fit: Phish.
Perhaps the most prominent band of the "jam band" form that became popular in the 1990s, Phish's tunes on stage can involve improvised instrumental passages that stretch a song out. When the band recorded live albums "Hampton Comes Alive," and "A Live One," that was Gerhard blowing trumpet with them on stage.
Gerhard said he grew up in New Jersey with Phish's piano player, Page McConnell. When Gerhard was on leave from the Navy and McConnell was on break from college, he said, they'd play music. They had played together for years when Gerhard was first asked to tour with Phish in 1991. He last played with them about a year ago in Virginia where his Navy-and-Phish musical career was the subject of a Virginian-Pilot article.
For the Navy Band Northeast, a typical year means upward of 500 performances, from those featuring the full 45 musicians to its numerous smaller groups. There is the Navy Band Northeast Pops Ensemble, the popular music group Rhode Island Sound, and chamber musicians such as a flute-guitar duo, and solo instrument performances. A brass quintet is called Top Brass and there's a woodwind quintet called Cross Winds.
But things have not been typical since the federal budget impasse -- known as sequestration -- took hold earlier this year. Congress could not come to agreement and various programs have seen cutbacks as a result. The band, normally performing in 11 states, including as far as West Virginia, is currently restricted to performing no more than 100 miles from Newport as a result of sequestration, Gerhard says.
He says the Navy band is looking for more opportunities to perform. The performances have to be free to the public. (He could envision one outside the State House in Providence, he says).
Eric Switzer will be among those in the Navy band in the Bristol parade. He plays tuba and, when he is in a parade, the sousaphone. It will be a homecoming, too: Switzer is from Bristol.
"Now I'm going to be performing in the same parade I used to when I was in high school," says Switzer, a 1998 graduate of Mt. Hope High School. "It's been an honor to serve."
Switzer says it's combination of "serving your country doing what you love." Much of the public may not see what the Navy does, so the Navy musicians "get to be the face of the Navy."
Gerhard, the band's director, says the experience of playing something such as the Bristol parade is "every 100 yards we're playing for a new audience."
Besides parades and other patriotic performances, members of Navy Band Northeast perform at military and other ceremonies. Musicians audition and, if selected, are sent to one of the 11 fleet bands, of which Newport is one.