BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The Bloomfield Civic Band will perform its fall concert Sunday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m., at the Bloomfield Middle School. It will be under the direction of Frank Ortega. Although he will not be performing, Ortega is a tuba player. He is in his fourth year conducting the Bloomfield Civic Band.
The theme of the concert this weekend is “Winds of Autumn — Sounds of the Seasons.” In a telephone interview earlier this week, Ortega said he decided on the compositions to be performed because in a concert last spring, the brass instruments were featured.
“I wanted to do something for the winds,” he said. “I thought of compositions that might do this.”
Ortega graduated from Clifton High School in 1988 and from the time he was 16 until he was 22, he performed with the Bloomfield Civic Band. He took his undergraduate degree at the Manhattan School of Music; his masters at the San Francisco Conservatory; and his post-graduate work in education at Rutgers University. He is currently the director of the Saddle Brook High School Band.
“It’s a nice change to work with adults or people more serious,” he said of conducting the Bloomfield group. A number of students that he conducts in Saddle Brook are members of the civic band.
Ortega also has an interest in movie soundtracks. He has scored a short video, “Godzilla Eats Las Vegas.” Scoring a movie, he said, was especially time consuming.
“I had a friend do the video,” he said.
He said there were two approaches to movie scoring
“Either find the original score or compose something original,” he said.
For the Godzilla movie, he used a composition by Eric Whitacre whose “October” will be performed Sunday.
“I like working with theater,” Ortega said. “I direct the plays at Saddle Brook High School.”
Of course, he also directs the marching band. He said its theme during the football halftime shows this season is “Spy versus Spy” — James Bond and “Mission: Impossible”-type music.
“We’re taking it to competitions and festivals,” he said.
Ortega said the Bloomfield Civic Band rehearses six to eight times before a concert. After this upcoming performance, it will begin work on a Dec. 16 holiday show.
“I’m trying to bring in a vocal, a soloist,” he said of the holiday show. “It will be a mixture of traditional and contemporary music.”
The band will also perform in April.
During the summer, getting prepared is the toughest, Ortega said. This is because the band performs four times. He prefers to do two new shows and two with music familiar to the musicians. He also like to introduce new composers and has premiered work by Montclair State University students.
“Conducting is what I do every day, for 21 years,” he said. “I don’t play that much anymore. Conducting is my major form of expression.”
To be a conductor, Ortega said a person has to be able to clearly communicate the composer’s intentions.
“You have to be expressive and have a good knowledge of the score,” he said. “You have to be able to hear the parts and conceive how it should sound.”
An admission fee will be charged at the Sunday afternoon concert.
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