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Overstuffed Community Band - Growing Pains Stories

Gandalfe

Striving to play the changes in a melodic way.
Staff member
Administrator
The community band that I'm a part of has grown too popular for it's own good. And as baby boomers find they have more time because the kids have left the nest, we have more and more applicants. Our concert band is something over 60 musicians and the adjunct jazz ensemble has waiting lists and still has ten saxes; we were at thirteen at one time!

So almost two years ago I set out to split the jazz ensemble to two bands. This was no trivial task as I had to find a whole new rhythm section and some new bones. Then there was the practice venue, band name, director, and approval. But the outcome would be a band where players got more chance to play in a correctly sized band, performing more solos, and get more individual attention. I thought it was a slam dunk. The first year we tried to sell it to the members it was voted down.

Why! Well there were a number of concerns. First and foremost, very few people wanted to be in what was considered the B band. Even if they, most are late bloomers, would never be able to do the funk and harder jazz pieces any justice, they didn't want to move to an 'easier' band. I tried to sell the aspect of leadership opportunities, playing some really good charts, and specializing in Big Band music. No deal.

Then as it looked like some of our best players were considering moving on, I tried again this year to sell the idea of two jazz bands. But this time, it wasn't my idea. It was the jazz program director's and band president's idea. With these too very popular and sharp promoters we got a grudgingly-allowed green light to move forward.

To be sure, there are some really unhappy people who will be asked to be in the Big Band vs. the Jazz Ensemble. But I think we have a chance to make this work. And as the events coordinator, I know there are plenty of gigs for both bands. I consider this effort to be a huge step forward and wonder about some of y'all and the stories you might have about starting up a quartet/quintet, community band or orchestra, and the like.
 
Well, I've inherited a couple "orchestras", when I worked as a director at a couple churches.

A LONG time ago, when I was fresh out of HS, I attempted to form a little jazz ensemble. Hey, I knew a lot of musicians and thought it'd be kewl to get together and jam a bit -- and play out, every now and then. I had the music and I could get some venues.

I couldn't get the instrumentation together. You're in a much better place.

If I had 60+ instrumentalists, I could easily get some quartets, quintets, ensembles or even a concert band or two worked out of that.

Something I've never understood is the prestige thing. I've never played a chair: I played sax or clarinet. So, if I were told something like, "You can play, but we're sticking you on Alto II," I wouldn't mind -- you're doing me as much a favor as I'm doing you.

I'd really not mind if they said, "You're playing Clarinet III and we're paying you $25 to show up." Hey, I'd do that :).
 
Gandalfe said:
The community band that I'm a part of has grown too popular for it's own good. And as baby boomers find they have more time because the kids have left the nest, we have more and more applicants. Our concert band is something over 60 musicians and the adjunct jazz ensemble has waiting lists and still has ten saxes; we were at thirteen at one time!

I can't conceive of ever letting a band grow to that size in the first place.

If I was the music director of the jazz band, I'd have a fixed 5 saxes, with a well filled sub-list. The players in the section would be there on the understanding that if they missed too many rehearsals, or failed to send a sub, they'd be out.

As far as the concert band goes, barring drastic imbalances in the sections, the more the merrier!
 
Merlin said:
Gandalfe said:
The community band that I'm a part of has grown too popular for it's own good. And as baby boomers find they have more time because the kids have left the nest, we have more and more applicants. Our concert band is something over 60 musicians and the adjunct jazz ensemble has waiting lists and still has ten saxes; we were at thirteen at one time!
I can't conceive of ever letting a band grow to that size in the first place.

If I was the music director of the jazz band, I'd have a fixed 5 saxes, with a well filled sub-list. The players in the section would be there on the understanding that if they missed too many rehearsals, or failed to send a sub, they'd be out.

As far as the concert band goes, barring drastic imbalances in the sections, the more the merrier!
Before I got there the idea was that everyone who showed up with an instrument was allowed to play. And truth be known, before I arrived the original jazz band left the community band in an apparent huff to start their own thang that still exists six years later. The cynic in me wants to believe the folks that are fighting for the 'everyone gets to play' model are some of the same that would normally not be able to pass an audition for a serious band. And some of these people have been key members in the band board and administration.

This band was more about fraternity that it was about good music. I think the more invested musical types with Berkely, Boston Conservatory, and other degrees are driving these band to really do better than they may have in the past. We also have stellar directors. So this may be a normal evolvement of a band based on a richness and variety of available musicians.

But the result, which we should see in a year is two stellar jazz bands instead of one massive, chainsaw-sounding band. :ugeek:
 
While not a community band story, I do have a community orchestra story. Or, rather, a story of two community orchestras.

A couple of decades ago, I lived in a small Illinois county seat called Mount Vernon. Like most county seats in the state, it was the largest town in the county, and was pretty much the center of life there, with all of the movie theaters, the local community college (a couple of miles south of town), all of the lawyers, most of the stores, and so forth.

In Mount Vernon, we had the Rend Lake Civic Symphony. Like most small orchestras, it was "driven" by one clique of players, in this case the concert-mistress and her violin-playing (and very whipped) husband. Everything that the group did was oriented around her desires, which meant that we played a very "string-centric" rep - stuff like Gymnopedies and the like. Once in a while, we might stray away to something along the line of Espania, but things were limited, both in taste and in price.

For, you see, the RLCS didn't do all that well at the box office. Our straight concerts were held at the college, and the gate was limited at best, and horrid at the worst. The only concert that was ever well attended was a pops one that we did where we had Art Fleming narrating Peter And The Wolf (with moi doing the honors on the clarinet part, as I was the only person with an A clarinet).

(Art was an interesting guy, about as much so as Steve Allen (who did the same gig with me with another orchestra back in the 1960's - I can drop a name with the best of them.)

Part of our problem might have been the lack of instrumentation. Too few listeners translated into too few musicians. At one point, the time we did Espania, we were functioning with precisely zero trombones - think about that theme being blared out by the piano. We also had an alto sax player covering all of the 'cello parts...

At the same time, in a smaller town some thirty miles to the northwest, there was another orchestra. In Centralia IL, not the county seat in that particular county, the Centralia Orchestra was going strong. Drawing perhaps three times the musicians (and without a sweetheart arrangement with some of the players (where they drew a "secret" travel allowance)), they were able to play with "real" instrumentation (two string basses, even). And, their concerts drew huge crowds (two to three hundred was not unheard of), without resorting to gimmicks like celebrity narrators and the like.

What was the difference? Well, one advantage that the Centralia group had was that they were part of a larger umbrella organization, the Centralia Cultural Society. They had their own building (complete with a stage and "general purpose" auditorium), they were one of six or seven sub-organizations under the umbrella, and they had a "place" in the local community.

But, the main thing that was different was the programming. The Society put on an annual musical (in which the art, the drama and the music elements combined to stage the whole thing). They had pops concerts, an ice cream social where the musical group put together a dance band to perform at same, and an annual July 4th affair in the outdoor amphitheater belonging to the Society, complete with fireworks synchronized with the 1812 Overture, all in addition to a number of regular classical concerts. All in all, a much more rewarding experience than the Mount Vernon group. Hell, we even had a bass trombone...

Even though I was just the auxiliary 3rd Clarinet/Bass Clarinet/variety Saxophone player (everything from soprano to tenor to baritone) for the Centralia group, I enjoyed playing there a lot more than with my home town organization. After a few years of dual allegiance, I finally just gave up on the home town crowd and did all of my local music stuff with the distant group.

Why was the one so much more enjoyable than the other. One was the community aspect, as described above. Another was the rep. The Centralia group programmed music that folks in the community actually liked hearing. More collection of tunes from Phantom of The Opera, movie stuff, and what have you. But, what we did was something that supported the rest of the community, rather than trying to shove kulture down their throats. And, the one big difference was that the whole shebang was run by a committee of more than just the ?ber-klassical crowd.

Something to think about the next time you're in the parking lot and those violin players absentmindedly wander in front of your car as you are leaving...
 
Actually, if I couple violin players wander in front of my car, I hope my brakes are working.

There's something to be said for programming. I remember going to a PDQ Bach concert in Buffalo, once (Kleinhans Music Hall, IIRC) and there were a lot of blue-hairs in the audience complaining that, "This really didn't sound like good Bach music."

Umm. Yah.

I have eclectic music tastes, but I also know that my eclectic tastes probably wouldn't create a good program, consistently. That's why I don't mind seeing a concert where you might have "mainly" 20th century composers -- but maybe a Beethoven or other romantic piece thrown in.
 
Having been in numerous community bands and orchestras over the years, it's a "been there, done that" for just about all of those situations. Most of them have been at least tolerable, several were fun, some were really fulfilling. When it comes to having "holes" in instrumentation, I've particularly enjoyed helping fill them. I've often been bi-sectional - even tri-sectional - in a concert, playing woodwind and brass, woodwind and percussion, brass and percussion, woodwind and brass and percussion, and even woodwind and brass and chorus. One time we had a concert coming up with a community band and I had been the only euphonium player for the rehearsals. At 8:00 am the day of the concert I got a call from the director to the effect that our first oboe player (who was a church pastor) had a death in his congregation and needed to be with the family and asked if I'd bring my oboe and cover for him. I said that would be fine, but did he have someone to play euphonium? He said he hadn't thought about that and would call back shortly. About five minutes later he called back, said he found a euphonium player and needed me to play oboe. So I sight-read the first oboe parts at the concert. I played in another community band for about nine months. During that time we had four gigs. On the first one I played first alto sax. On the second one I played first oboe. On the third one I had rehearsed on third horn until two weeks beforehand when the timpanist found out he needed to be out of town for the concert, so I did timpani for that one. On the fourth one I played first trombone. "What do you play?" "What do you need?"
 
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