The Solano Community Band joined forces with the Walnut Creek Concert Band in a performance at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts on March 12. The Solano band featured Campo’s own math teacher Bill Doherty as director and senior Emily Doherty on the oboe. The Walnut Creek band included former music teacher Harvey Benstein as director, current music teacher Johnny Johnson, and senior flute player Annie Guo.

Both groups are primarily made up of amateur musicians who perform music as a hobby. Both rehearse once a week on Tuesdays for around 2 hours. The groups rehearsed independently until coming together the night of the concert. “We do 4 concerts a year so we did like 7 rehearsals for this particular set,” Bill Doherty said. “One of the rehearsals was nice because Mr. Benstein came and conducted our group, then I went and conducted their group. The group had 7 rehearsals to get ready, and then the night of the concert, we rehearsed together for the first time for about a half hour before the concert started.”

Bill Doherty was rather pleased with how the concert turned out. “I actually thought a lot of things went well. I thought the groups were very close in our composition; the number of players and the quality of players, so it was just kind of nice to do things together, collaborate together. Putting the two bands together was, I thought, a lot of fun. I thought things went really well,” he said.

Emily Doherty also counted the concert a success. “I think everything went really well; I think it was a lot of fun to join forces with the Walnut Creek Band, and I think everyone really enjoyed getting to listen to each other separately and learning from what the other group is doing…it was fun,” she said.