Band boosters try to save a Long Beach institution

The Long Beach Municipal Band has been performing at civic functions and city parks since before the existence of television, radio or even the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

And yet, after more than a century, the band may not play on.

Long Beach officials want to cut funding to the 40-member professional ensemble, meaning one of the nation’s oldest city-funded bands may soon have to call it quits.

Since 1909, the Long Beach Municipal Band has played jazz, film scores, light classical and show tunes for picnickers on summer evenings, drawing up to 10,000 people a week at parks around the city. But it may be too much of a luxury to sustain.

Putting on seven weeks of free summer concerts costs the city more than $400,000, in part because the band is staffed with top-notch studio musicians who earn $42 an hour.

A city proposal would do away with the band after this summer — its 101st season — and replace it with a more modest concert series featuring smaller live music groups at a wider number of parks at a fraction of the cost.

Band boosters, alarmed that they could lose a cherished institution, are circulating petitions and frantically raising money before a budget hearing next week.

Gayla Trujillo, a supporter of the band for 20 years, attends three concerts a week with her family, toting a picnic basket full of cheese and crackers, chips and salsa, salad and soda.

“I understand the budget problem, but the band is ingrained in peoples’ lives,” the 56-year-old daycare provider said. “We plan vacations around the concert season so we don’t miss it, and I think it’s going to be a terrible loss if the city gets rid of it.”

City officials, however, see the band as a throwback to a bygone era and a nonessential amenity they must sacrifice as they make across-the-board cuts to close an $18.5-million budget gap. A corps of professional players is simply too costly.

“We’re still going to have music in the park,” Assistant City Manager Suzanne Frick said. “It’s just going to be a different model.”

At a Tuesday evening concert, Hawaiian shirt-clad band members belted out Latin-themed tunes at a bluff-top park overlooking the ocean. The audience sprawled out on the grass on lawn chairs and picnic blankets as the band struck up selections including Bizet’s “Carmen” and Perez Prado’s “Que Rico Mambo.”

Ed Wood, 49, who brought his girlfriend and his dog Rocco and nibbled on grapes and cheese from a wicker picnic basket, said it would be a shame if the popular band had to play its final tune.

“They’ve got to understand that in hard times people need things like this to relax and enjoy life,” he said. “Why take away something we’ve done for so long?”

Others suggested ways to keep the band: charging admission, pursuing sponsors or starting a public-private partnership.

“They’re not thinking of other alternatives — this should be a last resort,” said Rob McKay, a 49-year-old teacher attending the concert with his neighbor. “Their priorities are out of whack. Community programs are one of the main reasons to live here.”

Frick said the city has sought sponsorships, but no businesses are interested in footing such a hefty cost; the concerts run about $16,000 for a performance.

Last summer the band raised about $60,000 by passing around donation buckets, but that’s not enough to cover expenses.

The Long Beach band premiered in 1909 in an era when cities and towns across the country were starting their own official bands in the style of John Philip Sousa and the U.S. Marine Band.

Since then, the band has been a mainstay during difficult times, offering upbeat amusement during the Great Depression and throwing dance parties for troops during World War II. By the 1970s, the band had expanded its reach to offer more than 700 concerts a year at an array of parks and every school in the city.

The band has gone through piecemeal cuts as city revenues have declined, and the city has threatened to eliminate it before. But Long Beach’s musicians have managed to stay on the payroll for more than a century. The city once had a “band tax” to keep the group afloat.

Conductor Larry Curtis, who has led the ensemble for 18 years, said doing away with the civic institution would be a terrible mistake.

“I believe that if they cut the band even for one year, it will never come back,” he said.

In its final two weeks of the summer concert season, the band will focus on playing its very best, “so people know what they’d be missing,” Curtis said. “It’s a tragedy to consider that at some point, there will be a last downbeat.”

If the budget cuts stick, the band’s last performance would be Aug. 13 at El Dorado Park.

The musicians have already chosen their final song: “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com