Indianapolis --

Civil War Round Table

by

Wesley L. Hanson
Stones River NMP

Wes will be singing and playing the songs popular in America during the decade of the 1860’s. It was a time of most prolific music publication, and every parlor piano was kept busy. Working from original sheet music located in such places as the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Chicago Historical Society, and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, Wes will do a varied program of marches, patriotic songs, humorous ballads, and the “three-handkerchief” laments. He will discuss the music in relation to the progress of the war as well as what was occurring in civilian life of the period.

In late 2000 Wes was able to purchase an over-the-shoulder tenor saxhorn, manufactured in Philadelphia in 1860-63, on which he will perform some of the instrumental pieces (others will be played on his large euphonium). The instrumental pieces have been arranged as solos by Wes from music originally composed for band or for piano solo. In his uniform as a staff sargeant, Wes commemorates the 14th Indiana Regiment of the Union Army, made up of soldiers from the area around Terre Haute, Rockville, and Brazil. He is often accompanied by his wife Ann in period dress.