Celebrating 20 years in San Antonio this year, the 323d Army Band lights up Laurie Auditorium this Saturday with a performance featuring a variety of holiday favorites. There’ll be Christmas carols and songs for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
“We see a really diverse crowd for this particular concert. It’s probably the biggest event that we do all year,” says Staff Sgt. Kailin Eskander, an oboist with the band and its wind ensemble, Intrepid Winds. The crowd at their annual holiday show includes civilians, retired and active-duty military, and plenty of families with young children.
The show is free, and is “a great opportunity for [students] to come and see professional musicians at work with no charge.”
The concert features the entire band as well as side projects like the rock ensemble Texas Flood and the Intrepid Winds.
All that remains to be seen is whether Santa Claus himself will show. “He has come in years past,” Eskander says with a smile, though she wouldn’t commit on whether the jolly old elf will be at the show on Saturday night. Maybe it depends on whether the audience is naughty or nice!
The Army Band Holiday Special program takes place on Saturday, December 12, at 6 p.m. and is open to the public, but tickets are required. To RSVP, follow this link.
Following their performance in the TPR studios, I sat down with Staff Sgt. Kailin Eskander to ask her a little more about her musical journey and career in the military. The transcript is below.
Nathan Cone: When did you first begin playing music?
Staff Sgt. Kailin Eskander: I’m originally from Kansas City, Missouri. I went to public school, and in fifth grade the band program opened up. Not many people start on the oboe, but I did. It’s the only instrument that I’ve ever played. My mom always wanted to have an oboe player in the family so she started with her first born, which was my older brother.
Did your mom play oboe?
No, she played piano.
So why did she want an oboe player? Because that’s a very unique wish!
It is! She would go to symphony concerts... and I have no idea why she wanted an oboe player, but it always stood out to her. She loved the sound of that instrument. It makes her cry, it pulls on her heartstrings I guess. So my brother lasted for about a year and a half and decided it was absolutely uncool and he quit. And so when I was going into fifth grade, that was the instrument we had at home, and so I picked up oboe and never stopped. That was 23 years ago.
In your playing, when did you realize that somehow or another you could make this into a career?
I just think it was always something that I was hoping for, and wishing for, and it came true! I really enjoy doing it. I had a wonderful band teacher in high school, I had a great orchestra instructor, and then I went to college at St. Olaf in Minnesota, and they had a great music program as well. And I just ended up making all my connections and my network around this career path. So it’s great to be doing it as a professional musician in the Army.
So how did you choose the Army as your venue?
Well it’s a really wonderful career opportunity for a musician because it offers health benefits and vacation days, and you’re not piecing together your paychecks with freelancing gigs. There’s a lot of wonderful educational opportunities and you get to travel the world. I’ve been stationed in Germany, Atlanta, Georgia, and now San Antonio, Texas. Those are all three great places to live and make music for the public.
What is a typical day or week like for you as an Army musician? What are your duties?
There is no typical day, and I actually love that part about the job, because you’re always doing something different. There’s always a different audience to play for. Sometimes it’s [a young audience], doing educational outreach. Sometimes [the audience is] older, honoring veterans by playing music for them and thanking them for their service, and everything in between. But even though there’s not a typical day, there is a typical cycle in the year, and there are different things that we’re responsible for. Number one, we have to be up on our game musically. Most of our day every day is made up of individual practice and small or large group rehearsals. And then on top of that we all have to remain physically fit and we have to qualify on rifles annually at the range, and then we just have to do kind of ‘soldier tasks’ and skills. Regular training. So we’ll do ruck marches, we’ll learn how to clear a building, we’ll learn how to check vehicles at a safety checkpoint. These are all portions of the warrior tasks and battle drills that we have to know.
Now from the lay person’s perspective, someone might wonder, ‘why does the band have to perform soldier duties' or still know those tasks?
Well, we call ourselves soldier-musicians. We’re soldiers first, and as soldiers our specialty that we bring to the Army is music. We do have bands that deploy and go down range, and that’s always a factor. You could always be called upon to deploy into a combat zone, and if that happens, you certainly want to be up on those tasks and skills for protection of yourself and of your unit. However, if we do deploy, our primary task there is to play music. We are morale boosters. We’re playing music, lifting spirits, bringing goodness to a dark space and time.
Army Band Holiday Special
- December 12, 6 p.m.
- Laurie Auditorium
- Free tickets here
A video posted by Texas Public Radio (@texaspublicradio) on Dec 1, 2015 at 9:18am PST
