By Ralph Derickson

The 12-piece Saxton's Cornet Band performs at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21, in the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall. Tickets can be reserved by calling (859) 257-4929.

Oct. 17, 2001 (Lexington. Ky.) -- Saxton's Cornet Band, a brass instrument group that plays music reminiscent of the American Civil War era, will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21, in the Singletary Center for the Arts Recital Hall.

Tickets are $10, $8 for senior citizens, and $5 for students and can be reserved by calling the Singletary Ticket Office at (859) 257-4929.

The 12-piece Saxton's Cornet Band is the first performance in the Singletary's 2001-2002 Kentucky Artist Series.

The band will perform marches, dance music patriotic tunes and operatic songs. Saxton's band includes a new type of brass horn invented about 1850 by Adolph Sax and was the mainstay of brassbands popular during the Civil War.

Sax, who devised a whole new genre of brass horns, made a set of musical instruments that had keys or valves that, in effect, changed the length of the horn at he player's wish, thus allowing performers to play any note in the instrument's range. These new musical instruments were called saxhorns (Sax also invented saxophones).

"Saxhorn" bands -- in the army or in civilian life -- were organized like choirs of singers. Little cornets were the sopranos. They played the high notes and usually carried the melody. Alto, tenor and baritone horns played harmony and rhythm parts. The basses and tubas provided the low notes beating the rhythm. .