Written by Just one of the wonders of the town where I reside is having the ability to just wander down the street for a superb cost-free evening of excellent music by our Municipal Band. This band has been around 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 now, and I have seen pretty much every performance he has been involved in for the duration of those years. So obviously it is reasonable if I am feeling sad today to learn that our city just cannot afford to keep going with the band and this year is the last performance for our once-a-year Summer Music Concert Series.
In our town we have all kinds of free music, free movies on the beach and plenty of little free rock concerts that happen all summer. But probably none of these match up against the attendance at the Municipal Band Concerts. They are very famous, 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 so many 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 spot on the lawn with a blanket and chair to mark my spot until I come back in the evening. I imagine it says something good about our town that fifty people can abandon their chairs and blankets seated on a lawn right through the day and they are all still there when we get back to the park at 6Pm that night to take a seat and enjoy the concert.
By the time the concert starts each week, there are usually around 200 people sitting at the lawn, most with picnic baskets of excellent goodies and the positively illegal wine to drink. I do find it amusing that they always announce at the beginning of each show that it is against the law to consume alcohol on park premises while everyone within earshot of the announcement is uncorking their wine bottles and pouring them into wine glasses to pass around. But no-one has ever gotten rowdy, we are a rather calm lot 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 various 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 quite 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 jointly for about five years now, from the time we met and realized we both adored these concerts. She doesn’t always get out of work in time to be there at the beginning, 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 heading out our way. We meet in the park, with her little dog Susie solidly in check, and smile at the bliss this performance brings to our lives.
So I am heartbroken to think that with next week’s performance this amazing ritual of summer in our town will be no more. The town declared last year that they would be curtailing because of restricted funding and when the bucket went around for contributions almost everyone ponied up hugely. We raised twice the amount we usually do, but it still wasn’t enough. High schools did car washes and little old ladies held rummage sales, but it nonetheless wasn’t enough. They discussed 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 are not able to bring it down any 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 distinctive and fun 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.
