Laguna band stand

Barbara Diamond

The Laguna Beach Community Concert Band was a pipe dream in 1998.

“We had eight members and our audience was family and really good

friends,” said Carol Reynolds, one of the founders.

Today, there are 50 members, including the original eight:

founders Theresa Marino, William Nicholls and Reynolds; Niko Theris,

Kathryn Sanders, Dennis White, Hunter Cook and Allen Cohen.

“To see this group now from the way they were makes me cry,” fan

Sande St. John said.

The audience stretches from one end of Orange County to the other.

This month alone the band has scheduled two performances at the

Sawdust Festival and one at the Nixon Library. In July, the band

played concerts in San Clemente, at all three Laguna summer art

festivals and at Concordia University.

The band is booked for a return engagement at the Sawdust in

September, and is organizing a revival of the Oktoberfest tradition

in Laguna.

“We have hired an oom-pah-pah band, and invited the Orange

Community Band and Golden West Pops from Huntington Beach to play in

a concert with us on Oct. 24 at Tivoli Too,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds hadn’t touched a French horn in 25 years when she hatched

the community band with Marino and Nicholls.

Not that Reynolds ever lost touch with music. She played piano,

still does, and taught junior high school choir before retiring to

Laguna Beach.

Marino hadn’t picked up a flute in 20-plus years when they

launched the band.

Band member Ken Hansen, vice president of A. G. Edwards & Sons

Inc. brokerage house, played the stock market, not the bass trombone

since graduating from college.

“I hadn’t touched a clarinet in 48 years,” said Sheryl Caverly

trumping the others.

Does she love it? Caverly was on the bandstand for the Aug. 10

Sawdust concert, just two weeks after open heart surgery.

“The band has succeed beyond my wildest dreams,” Reynolds said. “A

lot of the credit goes to Bill Nicholls and his wonderful attitude.”

Nicholls conducts and plays trombone. He shares the podium with Ed

Peterson, with whom he attended college.

“We played together at Cal State Long Beach,” said Peterson, also

a trombonist.

Peterson went on to earn a master’s degree. Nicholls has a

doctorate in music.

Besides, conducting and performing, Nicholls sprinkles little

tidbits of musical lore throughout the concerts.

“John Phillip Sousa commemorated events, people and things in his

marches,” Nicholls told a Sawdust audience at the band’s most recent

performance. “The Washington Post [newspaper] bears the name of one

of his most well-know marches.”

The Laguna Beach band performs a wide variety of music: marches,

of course; concert band classics composed by Rossini,

Vaughhan-Williams and others; show tunes from Broadway musicals;

Dixieland and Big Band selections.

A repertoire of patriotic music captured a Memorial Day audience

at Main Beach that included Pacific Symphony Maestro Carl St. Clair.

Nicholls and Peterson drop their batons and pick up trombones to

perform with the Swing Set, along with Bill Graves and Theris, one of

the original eight band members, to bring back the sounds of Tommy

Dorsey and Glenn Miller. The brass section includes trumpeters Mike

Anzis, Tony Brunning, Bill Foster, Ray Lowery, Bill Sharpe and David

Stucker, saxophonists Don Atkinson, Carol Sporleder, Brian Cameron,

Dave Williams, Jack Delora, Sebastian Vela and Cohen; bass player

Bobbette Cameron, guitarist Tony Steller, percussionist Paul Meese

and pianist and singer Linda Hughes.

On any given night guests vocalists might include Arts Commission

member Pat Kollenda, who can give “All That Jazz” a sexy twist even

dressed demurely in blazer; or 12-year-old Sophia Tupy with a pure

soprano rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

The youngster is carrying on in her mother’s tradition. Beverly

Tupy was a choir student of Reynolds in 1972.

There was a time when every school had a choir and a band.

Community bands were a treasured tradition.

Before phonographs and radios, folks listened to live music or no

music. Bandstands were the centerpieces of parks across the country.

Kids played tag and young couples surreptitiously held hands while

their elders raptly listened to the music, enthusiastically, if not

perfectly played. Think “Music Man.”

Originally sponsored by the city Recreation Department, and still

the recipient of Business Improvement District and Community

Assistance grants from the city, the Laguna Beach Community Concert

Band is now part of the Irvine Valley College Emeritus program.

Grants have also been received from the Festival of Arts and the

Laguna Beach Rotary Club.

Private donations also are appreciated. Many of the band members

are donors. Categories are named for musical legends Sousa, $1,000

and up; Miller, $500 to $999; Irving Berlin, $250 to $499; Count

Basie, $100 to $249; Duke Ellington, $50 to $99; Meredith Wilson, $25

to $49; and Louis Armstrong, $5 to $24 -- a span of talent almost as

diverse as the band and the music it plays.

The band will play next at 6 p.m., Monday and again at 10 a.m.,

Sept. 5, at the Sawdust Festival, 935 Laguna Canyon Road.

For more information about the band or to explore possible

participation, call Reynolds at (949) 497-0986 or Marino at (949)

497-7308.