Evenings with the Band

Just one of the pleasures of the town where I reside is being able to just go walking down the street for a excellent free evening of fantastic music by our Municipal Band. This band has been in existence for 101 years, the longest on-going Municipal Band in the country. The music director and conductor Larry has been doing his thing for the band for approximately eighteen years currently, and I have seen more or less every performance he has been engaged in throughout those years. So needless to say it is easy to understand if I am feeling sad currently to learn that our city just cannot afford to keep going with the band and this year is the final performance for our yearly Summer Music Concert Series.

In our town we have a variety of free music, free movies on the beach and a lot of little free rock concerts that happen all summer. But probably none of these compare with the attendance at the Municipal Band Concerts. They are very well-liked, with overflow crowds’ at all four large city parks where they hold them. In fact, it is so swarmed that I have been doing what quite a few in our town do on concert day. I have been heading out to the park initial thing in the morning hours to stake out my place on the lawn with a blanket and chair to tag my spot until I return in the evening. I reckon it shows something good about our town that fifty people can abandon their chairs and blankets seated on a lawn all day and they are all still there when we return to the park at 6Pm that night to take a seat and appreciate the concert.

By the time the concert begins each week, there are commonly around 200 people sitting at the lawn, almost all with picnic baskets of wonderful goodies and the ever so illegal wine to drink. I do find it interesting that they always announce at the beginning of each show that it is against the law to consume alcohol on park premises while everyone inside earshot of the statement is uncorking their wine bottles and pouring them into wine glasses to pass around. But no one has ever gotten rowdy, we are a pretty calm group who sit and munch our cold chicken, drink our wine and listen to Star and Stripes Forever. The wildest anyone gets is when every Fourth of July show the band asks members of the different armed forces to stand when the band plays the theme for their particular branch of the military. Some get very teary-eyed and many sing along very loudly, even if they are tone deaf. But if is very small-town and fairly sweet to see.

My girlfriend and I have been traveling to these concerts together for roughly five years now, ever since we met and came to the realization we both loved these concerts. She doesn’t always get out of work in time to be there at the outset, so I will put the food together in the afternoon while I am writing and bring it to the park as she is closing up her store and venturing out our way. We meet in the park, with her little dog Susie firmly in check, and smile at the happiness this performance gives to our lives.

So I am heartbroken to think that with next week’s performance this splendid ritual of summer in our town will be ending. The town announced last year that they would be curtailing because of tight money and when the bucket went around for donations almost everyone ponied up big time. We raised twice the amount we usually do, but it still wasn’t good enough. High schools did car washes and little old ladies scheduled rummage sales, but it nevertheless wasn’t enough. They talked over it for three months at town hall meetings, but the musicians are all top performers, many are session artists in Hollywood studios when they aren’t at the Municipal Concert performances. Despite the fact that they wanted to come down in their fees, they are all union and cannot bring it down further than they have. So this is the end of an era. And we will be all the poorer to be without it.

When Deni isn’t lamenting the loss of her Municipal Band, she is writing blogs about many different and exciting things. Some of those include a blog about how to use metal bandsaw blades correctly, the best way to build a brick retaining wall for your garden and what the real estate market is like in Monroe County in Southern Florida.

 

 

test Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)