Los Alamos Community Winds closes season with From Hammer to Bow

A piano, a cello and a wind ensemble will share the stage when Los Alamos Community Winds closes its 2025-2026 season with From Hammer to Bow on Saturday, May 16, at 7 p.m. at Crossroads Bible Church in Los Alamos.

The finale will feature guest soloists Julian Chen on piano and Andrian Harabaru on cello, giving the concert a wider sound palette than a standard community band program. That mix of instruments fits the title itself, which suggests a deliberate arc from percussive force to bowed strings and points to a program built around contrast and collaboration.

For Los Alamos, the concert is more than an arts calendar date. Community Winds is one of the county’s most visible volunteer-driven musical groups, drawing players from middle and high school students to retirees. The ensemble practices Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. at Los Alamos High School, and its season finale marks the end of a full year that also included fall, holiday and winter concerts before this spring program.

Ted Vives, the group’s music director, has led the ensemble for more than two decades. Program notes say he is in his 26th season as musical and artistic director in 2025-2026. Vives, originally from Auburn, Alabama, studied composition and music education at Florida State University and later earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

The finale lands in a county where volunteer music groups remain tightly linked to civic life. Los Alamos Community Foundation says music matters here because concerts require money for music, performance space and guest musicians. That broader support network has grown with new seed endowments established by resident Dean Decker for both Los Alamos Community Winds and the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra. Each fund needs $10,000 within five years to become a permanent endowment.

The foundation said it manages 24 permanent endowment funds and awarded over $200,000 to local nonprofits in fiscal year 2026, including Los Alamos Community Winds. That kind of backing helps explain why a spring concert can carry outsized meaning in a town that has relied on concert bands since the Manhattan Project era. Los Alamos Community Winds itself was established in 2001, continuing a lineage that included the Los Alamos Concert Band under Jan MacDonald from the 1970s through the 1990s.

In a county where local institutions often double as gathering places, From Hammer to Bow will close not just a season, but a year of community performance that keeps Los Alamos’ music tradition visible, audible and shared.