In Tune With Tradition....
Some days when Jana Austinson gets behind the wheel on the freeway, she rolls up the windows, takes a deep breath and screams bloody murder.
It’s not the traffic. She’s merely practicing for her fleeting vocal solo in the Camarillo Community Band’s medley of “Phantom of the Opera.”
What does the audience think of her scream? “They love it,” said Austinson who also plays clarinet, flute and sax.
From Camarillo to Ojai to Woodland Hills, audiences seem to love the whole idea of summer band concerts, the old-fashioned kind in the park where you can spread out a blanket and listen to oompa-style marches, show tunes, maybe a little Gershwin, or some big band swing.
These are the bands that flourished throughout the country, especially before World War I. Most every town had one. For entertainment, there wasn’t much else. When television arrived, though, they started to fade.
But in the last decade, there has been a resurgence in community bands across the country, national band association leaders say. Here, it’s been modest.
In the San Fernando Valley, the bands at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Valley College in Van Nuys, and Cal State Northridge are a mix of students and community members too. They also play during the school year, but Pierce finishes out its series with a razzle-dazzle outdoor concert at 5:30 p.m. Sunday in Warner Park.
Some 3,000 people are expected to take to the grass for the two-hour free concert, which includes some patriotic music like the “Star Spangled Banner,” ragtime tunes, some Disney songs from “Beauty and the Beast” and “Pocahontas.” The band will have help from vocalists Mitzi Albert, Danny Sullivan and Yvonne Quezaire.
Stephen Piazza, who heads the college’s music department, started the band in 1983, and it has blossomed to about 85 musicians. Some are college students, and some professional musicians. But most are a mixed bag of amateurs from the community--a flight attendant, psychiatrist, farmer, a wallpaper hanger.
Caryn Rasmussen didn’t have much interest in the band when she enrolled at Pierce College as an architecture major. She hadn’t played music in high school.
But she saw a saxophone at a swap meet and it was love at first sight. “I’d always wanted to play sax,” she said. “I ran home and washed cars in the neighborhood,” she said, eventually raising the $250 to buy it.
She took some music classes and joined the band in 1986. Now she works as a music copyist, someone who prepares parts for studio musicians.
“There were 30 people in the band when I first joined,” she said. “The more people heard us, the more it grew.”
Piazza takes the band on the road every spring, and this year the tour took them to Vancouver and Seattle. They’ve gone high-tech recently with a CD recording of early 20th century rag tunes.
“Many play extremely well,” Piazza said. “Many were outstanding musicians in school, but they’ve gravitated to other professions.”
Summer bands in Camarillo and Ojai also have popped up. Eight years ago, Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks started its band with students and community members. It performs only during the school year, as does the Ventura County Concert Band.
In Camarillo, families sprawl out on the grass at Constitution Park for the band’s Thursday evening performances this month. (The first one is July 11.) The crowd averages 500, with children scampering about and picnic dinners all around.
“It’s wonderfully informal,” Austinson said. “Kids don’t have to sit still and act like grown-ups.”
In fact, kids literally get into the act. At one point during the concert, band director Kirk Raymond invites the children to come to the bandstand, where each is handed a baton of sorts: a straw. Then, with Raymond on the sidelines, the kids “conduct” the band.
“There are 30 to 50 kids waving their arms around,” Raymond said.
The concert music isn’t anything too heavy. The classics are on the light side, and familiar show medleys such as “Phantom of the Opera” are favorites. Sometimes Raymond throws in a novelty piece, like Leroy Anderson’s “Typewriter,” which calls for the percussionist to plink some typewriter sounds. At the end of each concert, audience members vote for their favorite and the following week they get to hear it again.
The band is in its 11th year. Raymond, a counselor at Oxnard High School, started it when he was music director at Rio Mesa High School. He hoped it would give students a place to play their instruments after graduation, rather than chucking them into the closet.
The first summer the band performed with only 20 musicians. Now they number 50 to 70 or more. They do three summer concerts and a Christmas performance.
They don’t do it for the money. There is none. The concerts are all free. The band brings together a wild mix of people--secretaries, doctors, a few high school students, husbands and wives, even a dad and his two daughters.
It’s mostly an over-40 crowd. Raymond doesn’t hold auditions; rehearsals are kept to two nights a week in June. Some musicians play professionally or, like Austinson, teach music. Some even played during the big band era.
“Almost everyone played in a high school band or orchestra and then put it aside,” Raymond said. “I get calls from people who say they haven’t played for 10 or 20 years.”
Mention community bands and a slice of turn-of-the-century Americana comes to mind--bandstands in the parks, scenes from “The Music Man” with Professor Harold Hill stirring up pride in the town’s young musicians.
“They’re not as common or prolific as they used to be,” Raymond said. The cost of sheet music has skyrocketed--$60 to $80 per piece. Sponsors like the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District help out, but people have busier lives now. And, school funding cuts have hampered music programs, shrinking the number of students trained to play.
Even so, Ojai’s Sara Beeby fell in love with that image of wholesome early Americana during a visit to Cape Cod in 1989. It was there that she heard the Chatham, Mass., band play outdoors at the town’s bandstand. In existence for 64 years, the band and its exuberant following inspired her to do something similar in Ojai.
By 1991 the fledgling Ojai Band, with 20 musicians, was ready for its first summer concert in Libbey Park under the direction of Bill Wagner, Nordhoff High School’s band director.
“We expected 30 people and we had 300,” Beeby said. Now the band numbers 40 musicians, and the audience sometimes tops 1,000 in this little town of only 8,000.
In fact, it was the band’s popularity that led Beeby to push for a new bandstand in the park. The $57,000 gazebo, made of river rock, wood and tile, was finished early this year and stands ready for the band’s first concert Wednesday, when Ben Denne will fill in for Wagner. The band will play every Wednesday evening through Aug. 28.
Ojai takes a step back in time on concert night. People, mostly families, troop into the oak-studded park with lawn chairs and blankets. Kids buy balloons, popcorn and lemonade.
“It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting,” said Beeby, who is not a musician but simply a music lover. Starting off with Ojai’s version of the “Kansas State Fair March,” the program has Boston Pops style pieces, marches, show tunes.
“It’s all upbeat,” Beeby said. The highlight is the children’s march, an idea she took from the Chatham band. Some 300 kids holding balloons line up and march around the park to a rousing tune. “Dogs participate, elderly people march.”
The concerts are free; Beeby won’t hear of a fee. “When families want something to do, I find it amazingly expensive, and sometimes not of much value.”
Like Raymond, Ojai’s Wagner hopes the band will lure young players. Already a dozen middle and high school students perform with the band.
“It’s a chance to sit with some good musicians,” Wagner said.
Among them is Dick Reed, 75, an engineer who plays piccolo and flute. Reed had played in school, then in a municipal band and a symphony, but he abandoned it when he joined the U.S. Army in 1939. Coincidentally, he had picked up the flute again a few months before the Ojai Band conducted auditions in 1991.
Reed took lessons. Like other summer band members, he also joined the venerable Ventura County Concert Band, now in its 31st year. With 55 to 60 musicians, the band plays only during the school year, beginning around Veterans Day.
“I hadn’t played in 51 years,” Reed said. “I was pretty raunchy, but I told them I’d get better. I had to learn to play all over again.”
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Warm Nights, Cool Sounds
If your idea of an unbeatable combination is good music and the great outdoors, there are evening musical events all summer long. Just pack a picnic and make sure you get dibs on the lawn chair.
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Valley Cultural Center presents its 1996 free concert series, 4-7:30 p.m. Sundays in Warner Park, 5800 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Woodland Hills. Parking is available in a structure near Owensmouth and Califa streets for $2. Bring a lawn chair or blanket.
July 7: Pierce College Community Band, plus children’s entertainers Beckwith and Towner.
July 14: Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Darlene Bonaparte and the Napoleon Complex.
July 21: Billy Mitchell Uptown Jazz Band with the Woodland Hills Community Theatre’s salute to rock operas.
July 28: Horace Heidt Orchestra with children’s entertainers Bright Ideas.
Aug. 4: Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, with Bill Reveles.
Aug. 11: West Valley Symphony Orchestra, plus Cafe Bellissimo’s singing servers.
Aug. 18: Latin Festival starring El Chicano and Mariachi Los Gavilanes.
Aug. 25: Kingston Trio, with the Teen Theatre Ensemble production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Sept. 1: Louie Bellson’s Big Band Explosion, with children’s entertainers Bobbo & Kookee.
Call (818) 704-1587.
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Palmdale is offering two free concerts in Maria Kerr Park, 39700 30th St. W.
July 20: Jose Feliciano at 8 p.m.
July 27: Peter Noone, formerly of Herman’s Hermits at 8 p.m.
Call 805-267-5611.
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Burbank has several concerts scheduled for the Starlight Bowl, 1246 Lockheed View Drive.
July 7: Captain Cardiac & the Coronaries plus an Elvis impersonator contest at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
July 13: Burbank Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5-$25.
July 15: Kingston Trio at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
July 21: Tribute Night with tribute acts to Rod Stewart and the Beatles at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
July 28: Poncho Sanchez at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
Aug. 4: Black Uhuru at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
Aug. 10: Burbank Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5-$25.
Aug. 11: Diane Schuur at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $1.
Aug. 18: Burbank Chamber Orchestra at 7 p.m. Free.
Aug. 25: Jazz Explosion from 3-9 p.m. Tickets are $5-$10.
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Santa Clarita’s free Summer Concerts series will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Sundays at various city parks:
July 7: Katja’s Dream at Old Orchard Park, 25032 Avenida Rotella, Valencia.
July 14: Susie Hansen at Newhall Park, 24933 Newhall Ave., Newhall.
July 21: David Zasloff at Santa Clarita Park, 27285 Seco Canyon Road, Saugus.
July 28: Earl Thomas at Newhall Park.
Aug. 4: Teresa James & the Rhythm Tramps at Canyon Country Park, 17615 W. Soledad Canyon Road, Canyon Country.
Aug. 11: Lisa Haley & the ZydeKats at Newhall Park.
Aug. 18: Bill Tole & his Orchestra at Valencia Meadows, 25671 Feda Road, Valencia.
Aug. 25: Captain Cardiac & the Coronaries at Newhall Park.
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The National Park Service presents its annual summertime “Sunday Concerts in the Park” series at Peter Strauss Ranch, 30000 Mulholland Highway, in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The free concerts are from 2-4 p.m.
July 14: Los Angeles-St. Petersburg Russian Folk Orchestra.
Aug. 11: Inca Dancers and Musicians (costumed dancers perform ancient Incan music and dance).
Sept. 8: Preston Smith (blues and jazz).
Oct. 13: Blues Concert (performers to be announced).
These bands are performing free outdoor concerts during the Fourth of July weekend:
Symphony in the Glen, 7 p.m. today at Hansen Dam Sports Center Amphitheater, 11770 Foothill Blvd., Lake View Terrace. Free concert, “America’s Music, Old and New,” is under direction of Arthur Rubenstein. Gates open 10 a.m. for carnival, local entertainment, fireworks. Parking, $3.
1st Division Marine Band of Camp Pendleton, , 2:30 p.m. today at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 40 Presidential Drive, near Simi Valley. Concert in the courtyard is free. Activities begin at 10 a.m. with a Dixieland band, jazz band at 1 p.m.
Pierce College Community Band, 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Warner Park, 5800 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Woodland Hills. (Children’s entertainers Beckwith and Towner from 4-5 p.m.)