Bands get to be the main attraction at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Blared, actually.

The 15 trumpeters who will surround the audience will do more than signal the opening of John ("The Red Violin") Corigliano's "Circus Maximus" in a concert featuring wind and brass ensembles from USC, CalArts and Cal State Northridge. They'll announce that serious band music is ready to step out from a shadowy parallel universe and enter the mainstream.

Aside from maybe hearing something from the two dozen much-loved recordings made by conductor Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble in the '50s and early '60s, many music fans who have gone to Disney or other famous concert halls have been able to spend their whole lives unaware of serious band music.

Part of the problem is that most performances are confined to schools, colleges and universities. Another is a vagueness about the name and the connotations it brings up.

"Say 'band' and it could be any one of half a dozen things -- jazz bands, marching bands, concert bands, concert-in-the-park bands," says H. Robert Reynolds, who will conduct the USC Thornton Wind Ensemble in "Circus Maximus" on Sunday. "If you wanted to go to a serious, substantial program and found a marching band, you'd be disappointed. Likewise, if you wanted to go to hear a marching band and found a wind ensemble, you'd really be disappointed."

Even "wind ensemble" isn't a standard term.

"We have too many names floating around," says University of Texas at Austin conductor Jerry Junkin, who commissioned the Corigliano piece. "Depending on who you're talking to, a band may be referred to as a wind ensemble, a wind band, a wind orchestra, a wind symphony or even something else. They're all bands."

Whatever their name, many contemporary composers have fallen in love with them. In addition to Corigliano, the roster includes William Bolcom, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse, David Del Tredici, William Schuman, Gunther Schuller and Michael Colgrass.

But widen the focus and you get works by Holst, Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, even Mozart. Sunday's concert will include works by Mendelssohn, Grainger, Bernstein and Nick Didkovksy.

"Most composers I know, you mention bands and their eyes light up," says Corigliano. "Bands have got fabulous instruments that aren't in orchestras, and actually you don't miss the fact that the strings aren't there because there's so many other timbral resources.