Sunday, September 12, 1999
Concert bands play on
Although era of nightly park concerts has ended, amateurs keep tradition alive
BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
They come with battered cases holding well-worn flutes, clarinets, tubas and horns, and they greet each other like old friends.
At precisely 7:30 on a Wednesday night, about a dozen cars pull up to the Musicians' Union hall in the West End. While Donald Julian, 57, hauls a drum from his car's back seat, the din of amateur musicians “warming up” inside reaches a crescendo.
This is the Queen City Concert Band, one of many concert bands around the Tristate where, every night of the week, a rehearsal is going on.
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ENDANGERED SPECIES?
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Tristate band musicians fear that concert bands, which once filled Cincinnati parks nightly with the sounds of Sousa, are an endangered species.
“I was devastated when the parks discontinued the band concerts. We had an audience; 1,500 people would turn out at Rapid Run and Burnet Woods,” Cincinnati Musicians Association president Eugene Frey says.
Still, the large number of community bands in the Tristate means that many want the tradition to continue. And all-brass bands, which have British origins, are basking in popularity.
If you would like to hear traditional band music again in Cincinnati parks, write to Larry Annett, assistant to the director of parks, Cincinnati Park Board, 950 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati 45202. Fax: 352-4096.
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“It's sort of a balance between doing it for fun and doing the best that we can,” says alto sax player Francis “Fran” Rosevear, a retired Procter & Gamble research chemist, celebrating his 87th birthday. Later, the band serenades him with his arrangement of “Happy Birthday.”
Cincinnati has a lengthy tradition of band music. A few years ago, musicians say, you could visit any major park nightly and hear a concert band performance. Today, summertime park series no longer feature band music, but the bands play on in retirement homes, community festivals and parades.
Amateur bands abound in the Tristate, with new bands popping up beyond the beltway in suburbs such as Mason. They range from the 101-year-old Syrian Temple Shrine Band to the New Horizons Band, a band for beginners.
“It's easy to go to the park and hear a rock band,” says Dwight Wages, 52, a P&G engineer. He plays cornet in the Cincinnati Brass Band, appearing today with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and he plays trumpet in the Sounds of Sousa Band. “We used to go to the park and see (conductors) Earl Snapp and Smittie. As a society, we're missing out if we don't keep these alive.”
After a cheerful welcome, Queen City Concert Band director Dorothy Kemp, 72, a Cincinnati band fixture of several decades, leads her group in a march, “Independence Parade.” She'll also end rehearsal with a march, but before that, she conducts show medleys, orchestral transcriptions and swing tunes. Her library of 4,000 band pieces is legendary.
“I like Dorothy as a conductor; she's easy to follow, plus she has one heck of a library,” says Mr. Julian, who is retired from P&G, Hillshire Farms and Kahn's.
Like many band members, this is a family affair for the Julians. Jean Julian, 56, plays in the flute section with the Julians' daughter Kathy Romard, 31, of West Chester, a chemical engineer. Her son, Ryan, 3, taps along with his grandfather's drumsticks.
“We laugh and have a good time,” Ms. Kemp says. “The only reason we are there is to enjoy the music.”
Yet Ms. Kemp believes concert bands “are the best-kept secret in Cincinnati.” Still, she beams a big smile through the marches and show tunes, and her glittery green rhinestone earrings bob when the beat gets jazzy.
Began in 1790
As old as America itself, an outdoor band concert conjures up memories of ice cream socials, family picnics, park gazebos and Casey waltzing with the strawberry blonde in “The Band Played On.”
Cincinnati's band history goes back more than two centuries, to a military band at Fort Washington in 1790. Bandstands sprang up in Cincinnati's parks through the 19th century, and band concerts were popular nightly entertainment.
The Cincinnati Park Board sponsored its first summer concert series in 1891. Soon Cincinnati's famous bandmasters began setting the standard: cornetist Herman Bellstedt Jr., bandleaders/composers Henry Fillmore, Walter Esberger and Herbert Tiemeyer, Middletown's legendary Frank Simon, onetime assistant to John Philip Sousa, and several generations of Smiths, up to the last George G. “Smittie” Smith, who led Smittie's Band.
“In my day, we'd play one night in Burnet Woods (Clifton), then in Winton Woods (Springfield Township), Rapid Run (Price Hill) and Stanbery Park in Mount Washington,” recalls Peter Metzger, 62, conductor of two amateur bands and founder of the New Horizons Band. He recently led a July Fourth concert at Ault Park in Mount Lookout for several thousand listeners.
“Burnet Woods was a big draw, and they had a banner stretched across Clifton Avenue,” he says. “When we would play in the rain, people would sit in their cars and instead of applauding, blow their horns.
“It was a listening audience. They had lawn chairs and coolers, but they were listening.”
Sousa-style programs
Mr. Metzger, who trained at Cincinnati's Conservatory of Music and was a member of the U.S. Naval Academy Band in Annapolis, re-created Sousa-style programs with overtures, marches, opera or symphony transcriptions, instrumental soloists and vocalists.
“There'd be a soloist, such as (Cincinnati singers) Marian Spelman or Rob Reider, and we'd have instrumental soloists from the band, such as a trumpet trio,” he says.
Five years ago, the Park Board hired an event producer to manage its summer concerts. Concerts now range from classic folk and rock to a Big Band swing series.
“We cater to a variety of constituents,” says Larry Annett, assistant to the director of parks. He says the music programs are reviewed annually. “The Park Board is open to suggestions from constituents as to the type of music they'd like to hear. We encourage them to write to us.”
A nostalgic mix
On a perfect August evening, lawn chairs have been set up outdoors for about 100 people to hear the Greenhills Post 530 American Legion Band perform in the Outdoor Summer Concert Series of Manor Care at Woodbridge in Fairfield.
When conductor Jim Hissom gives the downbeat to Henry Fillmore's “Americans We,” the sound startles a flock of geese, which takes flight directly over the group. Accustomed to playing outdoors, the musicians are unruffled.
The program is a nostalgic mix of marches, Latin tunes such as “Brazil,” and medleys by Hoagy Carmichael, Henry Mancini and Duke Ellington. The familiar oldies cause nods of recognition among the appreciative audience.
“I enjoy playing and doing something for other people,” says baritone player William Wilkie, 76, a veteran musician and soloist who once played in Frank Simon's Armco Band. He now rehearses every night of the week with a different band.
“You start out in high school playing band music, and it gets into your blood,” says Jack VanWye of Terrace Park, who uses the same bassoon played by his father in Henry Fillmore's band in the 1930s. His father, Ralph VanWye, founded the University of Cincinnati marching band in 1920.
Most band musicians play for the joy of it.
“It uplifts your mood,” says tubist Richard Meehan, 47, of Norwood, a Queen City Concert Band member.
“We have a lot of comraderie. It's very low stress,” says bass trombonist David Southwood, 42, a dentist in Bevis.
Florence Community Band tuba player Rebecca Julick, who works for the IRS in Covington, sums it up:
“We have varied lives, but we all share a love of music,” she says. “Without this type of band, we would not have the opportunity to continue playing our instruments.”
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