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Alan Alda
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| It
would be cool to say that Alan Alda
"bankrolled" Boston Brass and picked
up the tab for the recordings.
But that would not be true at all.
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| What
is interesting to note is that we did a wedding
where he was in attendance.
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| I
had been contacted by a local music agency to play at a
wedding. They
wanted a brass quintet and I said that's what I do.
It was to be at the Ritz-Carlton, just across
from the
beautiful Boston Public Garden.
The agency put me in touch with the bride, Eve.
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I
called Eve and discussed the ceremony music as well as the
selections we could play for the cocktail hour afterward.
She was a sweetheart and so easy to work with. When I told her the quintet was doing a concert way out on
the end of Cape Cod in late April (1990), in Provincetown,
she said she would love to come out to us.
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She
and her fiancé showed up and enjoyed the performance. Hearing the quintet seemed to make her even more excited
about having us play at her wedding.
One thing she asked me to do was to play one of the
pieces from the Provincetown concert at her wedding.
She actually wanted it placed within the ceremony
purely for its own sake, and as a little pause in the
wedding action.
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only did she want us to play it, she also wanted me to
go up to the podium and introduce the piece, telling a
little about it. It's not such an easy piece, but it's a great one.
It's called the "Jig Fugue" of J.S.
Bach, and the arrangement is by Ralph Sauer, a fine
trombonist from Los Angeles who is a gifted arranger.
There is a little disagreement about this piece
of music, in that Bach may not have actually written it
at all -- no one can be absolutely sure.
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| On
the day of the wedding we did a little collection of
preludes, guests were being seated, and I was thinking
about what I was going to say about the Bach fugue.
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We
got our cue for the processional, and the bride descended
from a circular staircase at the back of the room.
As she was processing down the aisle, I was so
surprised to see Alan Alda escorting her.
He looked so young that I thought to myself,
"Why look at that --
Eve Alda's brother, Alan, is escorting her down the
aisle!" Her brother!! It
actually took a while for me to realize that Alan Alda was
Eve Alda's father.
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That's
how I met Alan Alda, a very nice man with a sweet
daughter!
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