While Guilford's historic Christ Church (1817) is closed for renovations, the Christ Church Society has been presenting events outdoors on the church lawn. Join us for the final event of 2024, with Celebration Brass Band.

The program starts with a prelude: a talk by Guilford's Linda Hay in the Christ Church Cemetery, at 4:30 pm. Meet at the nearby gravesite of Gen. John Phelps, one of Guilford's most interesting historical (and national!) figures: Civil War hero, Presidential candidate, abolitionist. Then at 5:00 pm the Celebration Brass Band will play an appropriate funeral dirge to lead us to the adjacent lawn for a concert of New Orleans music.

Bring a blanket or lawn chair. Admission is free with donations welcome for the band and the church renovation. Refreshments courtesy of the Guilford Country Store & Cafe.

The Celebration Brass Band is Southern VT's signature ensemble for the distinctively vibrant music that we know as the New Orleans Brass Band sound!

Since 2009, under the leadership of New Orleans native and Langdon NH resident Peter Simoneaux, the Celebration Brass Band of Southern VT has become familiar to Brattleboro area audiences through their performances at numerous Gallery Walks, the Strolling of the Heifers, 4th of July parades, and a host of other local community events.

With band founder and director Simoneaux on bass drum and vocals, joined by spouse & musical partner Linda Simoneaux on sousaphone, vocals and parade marshaling duties, as of 2019, CBB features a dynamic cast of Brattleboro area musicians including co-directors Walter Slowinski (Butterfly Swing) and Ron Kelley (Bread & Puppet) on reeds, Dan DeWalt (Simba, Creacion) and Chuck Ober on trombones, Anders Burrows (Alafia, Aura Shards) and Sam Johnson on trumpets, Tim Ellis on sousaphone and as parade marshal, Stephen Voorhees on snare drum, as well as various associate members, notably Bill Shontz on reeds, Brian Bender on trombone, and Julian Gerstin on percussion.

Traditionally, since the late 1800s, New Orleans Brass Band music has been the music of jazz funerals and street parades in New Orleans, the style that gave birth to the careers of Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, whose lineage continues to this day in the funky, driving street rhythms of groups like the Dirty Dozen, the Rebirth Brass Band, the New Birth & Treme Brass Bands, and countless others who have helped re-define the sounds of New Orleans music over the past 40 years.

Over the past 25 years, the New Orleans brass band revival has exploded in popularity, to the point where it has become the dominant musical force in the city, embracing both tradition and innovation, old forms and new. It is the mission of the Celebration Brass Band to bring this joy to weddings, funerals, and other functions throughout northern New England, to represent both the traditional and contemporary strains of the New Orleans brass band sound, and to discover the common threads between this genre, and those of modern jazz, and the wider Afro-Creole musical diaspora. For more information on the Celebration Brass Band, contact Peter Simoneaux at 603-835-6051, or inquire by email to peter.simoneaux@gmail.com.

Event Info

Nov 23, 2024, 10:30 to 11:30 AM

Nov 23, 2024, 11 AM to 12 PM

Nov 29, 5 PM to 7:30 PM, Nov 30, 2024