Stuart Community Concert Band will present “Holidays Around the World”

Deck the halls with boughs of holly….it’s almost time to let the joyous music of the holiday season lift your hearts, spirits, and voices as the Stuart Community Concert Band presents their festive holiday concerts at the Blake Library.

Because of the popularity of this annual community event, there are two performances on Saturday, Dec. 2 – one starting at 11 a.m. and the other at 2 p.m. This year’s theme is “Holidays Around the World.”

The holiday concerts are free and open to the public, but you need to have tickets in hand. Free tickets for the performances can be picked up at the Blake Library starting at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 25. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

“Holidays Around the World” is a tribute to Christmas and Chanukah music heard worldwide. Among the pieces to be performed are: C’est Noel, Deck the Halls, Sleigh Ride, themes from the Nutcracker Suite, Dreidel Dance, March of the Toys, A Christmas Festival, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Merry Christmas, Darling, and many other selections.

The non-profit Stuart Community Concert Band is under the direction of Jim LeBon. It consists of dedicated volunteer musicians who donate their time and talents to create quality music. Band members come from all walks of life and range in age from high-school music students to one musician who recently turned 90 years old.

They play for the love of music.

In addition to the delightful holiday music, the Palm City Cookie Ladies will provide a colorful assortment of more than one thousand delicious cookies for Blake Library concert attendees. This wonderful group of volunteer ladies has been baking cookies and serving refreshments and decorating the stage for the band’s holiday performances at the Blake Library since 2004.

Originally founded back in 1915, the ever-growing Stuart Community Concert Band has been making music for more than a hundred years. How wonderful and exciting it is to be celebrating 100 years of playing music in the Stuart community! Today this multigenerational group has more than 70 dedicated volunteer musicians.

The band’s annual holiday concerts at the Blake Library have become a very popular tradition in our community over the past several years, and we hope to see everyone there for “Holidays Around the World.”

For more information about the Stuart Community Concert Band, please visit their website at www.stuartcommunityconcertband.org.

Everyone is welcome to participate in this non-profit group. Are you a music lover? Do you play a musical instrument? Did you ever? If so, this community band is always looking for new talent.

The Stuart Community Concert Band has musicians from all walks of life, ages, and professions. Band members vary in skill level from those who have made music their life’s work to people who haven’t ’picked up an instrument in years and even decades.

Bonded by our love for music, we gather with our instruments every week to play, practice, and rehearse. Band rehearsals are on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m. at the North Stuart Baptist Church on U.S. 1, north of the Roosevelt Bridge. If you are interested in coming out to play, we’ll be happy to see you!