It happened again. A group of adults found themselves whipped into a frenzy by the sound of a Sousa march! We could not resist clapping like kids at a birthday party when the final strain of Stars and Stripes Forever hit the air at the end of last night’s Reveal Party for the Piedmont Wind Symphony’s 2022-2033 season.

Look, this party would have been exciting no matter what. The Piedmont Wind Symphony has made its comeback from the darkness imposed by the virus shutdown. Like virtually all arts ventures around the globe, the climb during the 2021-2022 season was uphill. Still, the new season promises a shower of glory, with composers like Omar Thomas coming to town and a cavalcade of star vocalists and soloists arriving to perform spectacular music, new and old. That’s a lot to celebrate.

Then there were the cake pops. Oh, if only I’d taken a photo of these cake pops. Picture a swath of tall, perfectly round, homemade cake pops (with some marvelous candy-cakey stuff inside), dipped in chocolate, and covered in coatings with the very colors of the Piedmont Wind Symphony’s attractive new logo. They were even arranged to replicate the logo! That’s what I call party-planning.

But back to Sousa. Sousa would have liked these cake pops. Sousa would have liked the whole evening. In fact, John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) probably walked the very street where today’s Hanes Theater is located, since he and his famous band stopped more than once to play in Winston-Salem during their extensive, exhausting train tours across the US.

Music Director Mark Norman told an interesting story about one of Sousa’s Winston-Salem concerts back in the early 1920s. Apparently, due to yet another error by their business manager, the band arrived to find no hotel rooms awaiting them. Allegedly they were going to have to sleep on park benches. Whatever the details, the players initiated a strike. Only nine players (who rightly feared Sousa’s wrath) took the stage, rather than sixty-five!

Still, when Sousa walked out to conduct, he bowed, turned, and led the whole concert with nine players covering whatever parts they ordinarily played, presenting surely one of the weirdest concerts of their lives! Afterwards, Sousa axed a good percentage of the band members who didn’t show up, including a well-known cornet soloist.

Such stories fuel music history. Without them, the discipline would be nothing but a list of names, dates, and places. And how fun to tell that story right before the last moments of this party, just as an ensemble of players took to the narrow side balconies  and cranked up Stars and Stripes Forever (with all the parts covered!)

There is plenty of anxiety in the world of the arts today. Audiences have shrunk, costs have soared, and it’s no easy task to rebuild solvency, momentum, and confidence. But music is irrepressible. The arts are irrepressible. I was heartened to see, in the adjacent Hanes Fine Arts Center, another party celebrating an art exhibit. It was also heartening to be back in a situation where the biggest problem was finding parking downtown, rather than the devastating concerns that crippled the the arts starting back in March 2020.

If you’re in Winston-Salem, check out the Piedmont Wind Symphony’s concert schedule and come be with us. Wherever you are, right now would be a great time log onto the websites of your local bands, choirs, orchestras, theater and ballet companies, and every other arts group that has held its breath for two years in the hope of a return to normalcy. Do what you can to support them. Pass their schedules along on social media and in emails to your friends. It’s a little like giving a car a push to get out of that last edge of a ditch. The car is fine, the road ahead is solid. All that’s lacking is one timely push.

And if you need a bit of revving up to make that push, I strongly suggest you crank up a Sousa march.