I recently attended a recital for the Les Merrill Quartet at Santa Ana College. The concert took place on Friday October 4th, 2002, at 12:30pm in the Fine Arts Building, C-104. Concerts/Performances such as this seemed to be performed weekly; I believe it's meant to be more like a public recital. The performance was sponsored by SCC. The performers were as follows; Les Merrill (drums), Brian Kehlenbach (piano/conductor), Melody Versoza (vocals), and Ruben Ramirez (bass). Brian Kehlenbach seemed to act as the lead, or conductor, he stood up before and after each piece to say a few words about who the piece was written by and some brief history on them.
             The music seemed to fall more into the jazzy type category, but still yet had that big band type edge. All of the music was composed by Harold Arlen from the 1930's to the 1940's. The Following songs were played by the Les Merrill Quartet; Get Happy, I've Got the World on a String, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Stormy Weather, Let's Fall in Love, It's Only a Paper Moon, Come Rain or Come Shine, and maybe the most famous, known from its use in the Wizard of Oz, Over the Rainbow.
             We arrived and sat down to a display of four musicians all playing separate instruments, one was a vocalist. The piano player took a stand and acted as the composer as he said a few words before and after each piece of music played. We were also all given a brief history of the music to be played and who composed it, Harold Arlen. It was a very successful performance and to my surprise found the music to be quite entertaining and soothing. I honestly thought I was going to be holding my self up through the performance; I was definitely mistaken because I found the music to be quite intriguing. I was impressed with the performers they were all professional, calm, and precise with there performance. I also enjoyed the performance because I was able to get a
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