Souvenirs help people cherish the memories

By ANNABEL GIRARD
Staff Writer

The last note has sounded and the instruments are being packed away. But there is more left than the memories.

A variety of souvenirs make it possible to take a small piece of The Great American Band Brass Band Festival home.

There is a poster, T-shirt and pin designed for each year. The 1999 poster features old photos of band members from the late 1800s. Each of the 16 photos has a band member holding a different instrument. There is a conductor, a piccolo player, two clarinet players, four cornet players, a couple of alto horn players, a couple of trombone players, plus members who play the euphonium, the tuba, a snare drum and a bass drum.

``It's the whole instrumentation of an anonymous brass band,'' said festival organizer George Foreman. ``It's the kind of band like we pattern the Advocate Brass Band on.''

The cards were taken from the collection of Foreman and Centre College. They are the type that were popular in the 1880s and 1890s.

The 1999 poster created by Trapp Communications of Lexington is very traditional and history oriented, Foreman said. With the black and white photos, brown background and red lettering, it stands in sharp contrast to last year's colorful and cartoonish poster.

One of the players on this year's poster was taken from the card and colorized to be placed on the back of this year's T-shirt.

``We took this and gave it an Andy Warhol treatment,'' Foreman said of the band member who appears in red and yellow on the back of the T-shirts.

In designing the mementos, Foreman worked with Cindy Trapp at Trapp Communications. The business does design work for the Norton Center and donated its design time to the festival, Foreman said.

The 1999 festival pin carries The Great American Brass Band Festival in the same design that is on the poster.

The sound of the band festival can easily be taken home. The festival has three CD recordings of highlights from the 1996, 1997 and 1998 festival, each decorated with a detail from that year's poster.

In addition to mementos marketed by the festival, The Marketplace also carries recordings by many of the groups performing at the festival, including the local Advocate Brass Band.

Four CD recordings by the Advocate Brass Band feature newspaper marches, in keeping with the band's sponsorship by the local newspaper. The CDs cover a wide range of selections, ranging from probably the best known, ``The Washington Post March,'' to the more local, ``Advocate-Messenger March,'' written in 1990 for the band.