And good morning. It is time to talk about the summer concert season. I can't believe we're here again. It seems like we were just doing the grand finale.
Not too long ago, giving away all the prices on finale night. It was getting dark outside because it was getting shorter days.
But here we are again. Ready to start the Racine Concert Band season again.
And with me, I've got Mark Eichner, the conductor of the Racine Concert Band. He is in studio.
On the line, we have Sean Del Groso. He is the executive director of the Racine Concert Band.
Let's start off with the changes this year. If we get any schedules, singers and music, let's get into the changes this year because there are.
It's a big change once you guys. Who's going to talk?
Well, we're moving to Rotary Park outside festival hall. It's a very exciting change.
There's going to be a lot of close in free parking and another advantage is that in the event of rain, we can move in doors and we won't have any rain out concerts.
Okay, so this is the big news. The it's not going to be at the Racine Zoo this year. It's going to be at Festival Park.
There's a big beer tent on the graphic white beer tent. At least for the first two weeks, it's going to be in that beer tent.
It's still have to bring your own chairs because just in case we don't want you having to sit on the floor.
So bring your own chairs like you would normally do with the concerts. There's a free parking, right? Free parking.
They took the meters off the parking. You notice that? Yes. I had a chat with the mayor about that.
And I said, you came to me by credit card and I think he said eventually they were working on a like a kiosk system.
But we don't have to worry about that for Sunday night.
So the concerts come out right on the lake front going to be beautiful.
And it starts this coming Sunday night, right?
Seven o'clock. That'd be late. Oh, no, I got to get my shirt out of mothballs.
All right, so show you also play with the band, right?
Yes. What instrument do you play?
I play tuba, trombone, string bass.
But not all at the same time.
You know, maybe, maybe if I need to, I could play them all at the same time. Why not?
Let me ask Mark, is any good?
We're going to find out.
All right. So what's on the bill of fair for the first concert? What do we have here?
Well, we have the lighthouse brigade back with again.
The scene unified summer recreation band.
And they'll be there with their troops and they'll be joining with the band.
For the stars, Bengal banner and the armed forces salute, which we do every fourth of July concert.
And then they'll be playing also the song of the band at the war.
So I'll be rehearsing them later this morning.
And they'll be rehearsing with us later this week.
And we'll all have a big blow on Sunday night.
Okay. So now, have you still do the same thing with it will it be a contest for the American flag?
We're still doing that.
Yeah.
Still trivial.
Okay. That's good.
So everything's really the same, which is the locations different.
There is one more change.
The time of the concerts will remain constant for the entire summer.
It used to be they started off at 630 and 730 and it changed all around or whatever.
It's all going to be at seven o'clock from now on, right?
Correct.
Okay. How about the singers?
We have our usual array of singers.
You know, these beautiful soloists this year.
Anybody knew wars?
It's going to be the same as last year.
Yes. Well, Sean's going to be singing the God bless America on the first concert.
Wait a second.
You sing too?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I do that.
You're the triple threat executive director, performer and singer.
Whoa.
That's it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Right is the operative word.
Yeah.
So you're going to sing too.
And so do we have the usual?
Do we have a Miss Racine?
It's going to be not Miss Racine.
It was a Miss Racine, right?
Yeah.
And Miss Wisconsin.
Yeah. Miss Wisconsin.
Yeah. She's going to be there.
So Jeanne, you have.
Jeanne, you have.
Jeanne, you have.
Jeanne, you have.
She's back.
And along with Alison Hall.
Yeah.
Greg Berg.
Greg Berg is not back this year.
Oh.
No.
But we do have Doug Clements.
Doug is very much in demand.
Yeah.
Music theater person in Milwaukee.
A baritone.
Really fine singer.
And he does both opera and Broadway.
And in the summer, he's usually starring in shores that shows
at the Northern sky theater in Door County.
But they have a shortened season.
And so he'll be back and joining us later in the season.
See, most of these people in the orchestra in the band,
they have other.
They have versatile.
They have regular jobs.
But they also perform with other bands all around.
Sure.
So they're busy all the time.
Do you perform with other bands?
I have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which bands do you perform with?
Well, I'm mainly based in Lake County, Illinois.
So I kind of run around that circuit.
No.
Okay.
Because I know some of them perform with the Kenosha Pops.
Yeah.
Kenosha Pops.
And I think of the other ones.
The Bell City brass works.
Sure.
That's another big one around.
Yeah.
And trying to thank you some others because I'm trying to remember them
because we mentioned them occasionally.
All right.
So what do we have for the opening to give us the whole rundown
for this 4th of July holiday weekend?
By the way, first of all, you guys are in the 4th of July parade, right?
Of course.
Yep.
Where's that flatbed truck kept all year long?
Who uses that?
First of all.
That's a trade secret.
What is it now?
We call it a float.
Okay.
Okay.
Where's it?
Where's it stored all year?
Is it somebody in the band owned it or?
No.
It's stored in industrial building on Racine Street.
Okay.
I don't know how they play on a moving vehicle.
I mean, it must be difficult to just play with this.
Unfortunately, this bumps in the road.
There's stops.
There's starts.
And you guys just keep playing for the entire route.
We have a great driver.
Yeah.
Let me tell you something.
I'm learning the piano.
I can play with two hands now, which is a miracle that ever happened.
When I heard my wife say, now we're going to do two hands.
No, don't make me play with the left hand.
I can't concentrate.
I learned to do it.
I don't even look at the keys anymore.
I look at the music.
And I play.
And I have to do that because if I look down at the keys,
I lose my place on the music.
I don't know how you guys do that.
I don't know how you can look elsewhere and find your place again.
Because if I don't stare at the music and I look down at the keys for a second,
I'm done.
I can't figure it out.
What are you going to say?
My ears help.
Your ears help.
But Mark, you have, you have like so many different stams in front of you
up for the whole band.
And everybody says it's just a little different, right?
Sure.
What's the difference?
Isn't one note the same for everybody or no?
Well, with band, you have a lot of transposing instruments.
What is that mean?
Which means that the instrument themselves itself is tuned to a different key
rather than concert pitch that you hear at the piano.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
When I had to do the G-cluff and the F-cluff and the C wasn't in the same position.
Both.
They said, wait a second.
How am I going to figure this out?
But you do believe it.
I just do.
Now I figured out what the F is and I just in my brain, I move around so I can figure it out.
And then they do the sharps, the flats.
I don't know how people do this.
I'm still on the same two songs for a couple of weeks now.
Trying to take me out to the ball game.
And it's a small world after all.
And I'm telling you, I got left hand.
I don't know how people do it.
It really gets me how people play music without looking at the music.
I don't know if I mentioned this to you before.
My brother went to a lady Gaga concert in New York City when he lived there.
And for two and a half hours, it was just her and a piano on stage.
That's all it was.
And she played Broadway showtunes.
She played everything.
And I asked him did she have music?
He said, didn't look like it.
She wasn't turning pages or anything.
Which just she knew the music and just played for two and a half hours on that piano.
And that's an artist when somebody can do something like that.
And it's not just her song.
She played everybody's music.
She let all the tunes from Broadway, the sound of music.
She played it all on there.
That's some artists.
We just look at Lady Gaga's or hit songs.
But she's a very talented person to do that.
Could you play with her?
Yeah.
Could you guys play without looking at music?
Well, that's the thing you can do when you have a book.
And she plays the same book for a series of concerts.
And, you know, one thing we're very proud of.
This is programming changes every week and every year.
I mean, we don't repeat pieces from year to year.
We usually rest a piece three or four years before we play it again.
So when we do read the music because we have a very very deep program
from concert to concert.
Now, you actually have a librarian within the band.
Who's a librarian?
Very old.
Yeah.
Now, it's her job.
And I hear it sometimes after the concert over.
Give me your music.
Don't go.
Give me your music.
What does she have to, Sean?
What does she do?
Just have to file it away and bring it out for next time.
Because you guys own a lot of the music you play, right?
You own the rights to them or you bought too many rights or something like that.
So, well, actually, there's a wide array.
If you see our office, it's just lined with filing cabinets full of music.
And, you know, most of the music has either, I mean, all of it we own, of course.
But some of it has been gifted to us.
Some of it we purchased outright.
Some of them from local bands that, you know, have, you know,
not, not play certain things.
And so, we've kind of put together a really, a really strong library
that lasts, you know, almost the entire breadth of concert band literature.
So, but yes, she has to take all of the pieces, put them in order,
because in each song there's like an order of what instrumentation,
what instrument goes where.
And then we put it away and then we open up a new one.
So, yeah, it's, it's definitely a big job.
Now, and people who realize this, when you play music in public,
and even in the radio station, and we pay a lot of money for the music we play,
you have to play performance rights for this stuff.
And people think you just play any music you want.
No, you don't. Well, BMI-Scap and CSAC are the three big ones to deal with.
There are some other smaller ones, but we play music from BMI-Scap and CSAC.
They got to pay them every year, but we have what they call a blanket policy
where we pay them one fee and we can play any of their music.
And it's a lot of money. It's a percentage of the money
to make it the radio station.
So, you guys have to do that.
The churches have to do it. They're supposed to anyway.
Yep.
Anytime anybody puts up public performance,
they have to pay the performance rights for it.
So, you guys all got to do that too, right?
Yep. And then we have to write out all the songs that we performed
and it goes into a report that we have to submit at the end of the year.
And I used to work at a church, so church have to do the same thing.
We have to list all the songs that we've performed
and make sure everyone's getting paid.
These are mainly the people who write the music after you paid,
because that's just the way it is. They wrote these songs.
Right, writers and publishers.
With concert band music, you know,
all of it has to be printed and, you know,
printed the right way.
And so there's quite a few people that need the cash.
Yeah.
Now, if they get their five cent check.
You pay public domain music too, which is you don't have to pay for.
You pay some of them.
Correct.
Yeah, so those are free.
But for the most part.
A lot of the public domain music, of course,
because we still have to get it arranged for a concert band.
Some of them we still have to pay those arrangers, you know.
But yeah, we have a we have a blanket coverage that's covered through the
the concert band association.
And so they kind of help us take care of that.
See, the people don't realize all this.
This is all like behind the scene stuff, getting all these music rights and so forth.
Mark, let's give it a little history here.
This is the one thousand five hundred thirty first free concert
provided by the Racine Concert Band.
You never had a pay for it ever, right?
So it was always free concert from the start.
Nobody had a paid admission fee, right?
The summer concerts have always been free.
Right.
Now, you do concerts year round, but you do them at high schools and so forth.
And they're free now.
Yeah.
So if the summer concerts, give us a little history of how it all started.
Now, I have the book that.
Oh, his name just flew out of my head.
Delish.
Yeah, Delish Road.
It's yeah, it's a book.
The history of the Racine Concert Band.
I have it in the home autographed.
And my house is in there.
There's a picture of it with the band marching by my house before I lived there.
So give us a little bit history of when it started and
where it's been.
How did you get to the zoo?
How did you get, you know, wherever you performed?
Well, the band was founded in 1923 as the Racine Park Board band.
So we were part of municipal government for a long time.
The band changed its name to the Racine Municipal Band.
I think that was about 1976 if I'm right.
And then again to the Racine Concert Band in 1996.
And we were in the beginning, the band was totally funded by the city.
And that continued for a long time when I started with band 2000s to the city
provided about 92% of our budget.
But like all nonprofits municipal and governmental support has decreased significantly over those years.
And now the city portion of the budget is a little less than 30%.
So we've survived through foundation support.
It gives from individuals and business advertisers and just a lot of support from within the community.
Now you just got a grant recently I read, right?
We have eight or ten foundations supporting us.
And that's a full-time job going after those, isn't it?
Well, we have a really excellent committee.
That's Caprileon, Esther Wilson, and Cratsiel Baldwin.
They worked those foundation application grant proposals.
And there's always one, always a deadline coming up.
But I think the most recent one you prefer, referring to is we did get a Green Bay Packers foundation.
Oh, no, that wasn't the one I heard, but that's good.
A Green Bay Packer one.
Yes.
Yep.
Well, you're a band.
Are they aware of that fact?
Well, that's just great.
Let's do a quick review of what we have here so far.
The we're seeing concert band is starting their summer performances.
This coming Sunday Sunday night at seven.
They'll all be at seven o'clock this year.
So they'll be at seven o'clock.
And it's going to be at festival park this year.
It's going to be under the beer tent.
You can't miss it.
You'll see everybody walking in.
Bring your chairs.
If you need them, fine.
If you don't need them, you got them anyway.
They're going to bring your chairs.
And will there be concessions this year?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, so there's concessions.
What kind of concessions?
That's a brand new.
That's new.
That is new.
That's something that we worked out with festival park.
We're pretty happy about it.
I don't know what there's going to be, but I'm going to show up hungry.
Okay.
So I think food trucks, I assume, when they're talking about.
That's my.
No, I think I think it's their.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's good.
All right.
So, and there's always marches played.
You always begin with a march and you end with a march.
And you picked those marches out, Mark?
Sure.
And always a john, either a lot of John Philip Susa.
Yeah.
Because he's in every concert with the Susa march.
Yeah, because he's got so many of the thunderer and all the circus marches.
You know, some of the music play too.
It's their circus songs in there.
They're pieces that were performed at circuses during the.
During the early parts of the century.
And they still stand up today.
Whoever wrote them, get them going.
There's a lot of there's Broadway tunes that the singers perform.
There's movie tunes and loony tunes and all kinds of tunes.
All right.
So it starts this coming Sunday night at seven at festival park.
If you're listening now and you have friends that go tell them it's festival.
Park.
I'm sure there'll be a sign at the zoo saying go home and.
It's not going to be at the zoo this year.
And so they'll have a sign there telling you where to go at festival park.
But head out the festival park.
Free parking.
It's free admission.
Bring your chairs.
Come hungry.
And enjoy the concert.
And it runs about an hour and 15 minutes, right?
Yeah.
It's about it.
If I'm not yak and too much, it's an hour and 15 minutes.
If I'm going to talk at a moon, it's an hour and a half.
All right.
So that'll be good.
And guys, I'm looking forward to it.
To me, summer starts with you guys in the 4th of July parade.
And then ends up with how many concerts you got this year going through?
Where's that?
For the calendar year, we're going to have 13 performance.
13.
So that goes to what mid August or something like that?
Oh, well, there's seven in the summer.
That's what I'm looking at.
Yeah.
I believe it's August 17.
So I think it's the date where I could be wrong.
Oh, that's right.
Okay.
But it's good.
All right, guys.
And what we're going to do is I'm going to try to arrange it.
So every Friday, we'll have a few minutes with you, one of you guys,
to remind people that it's at festival park.
Festival park this year.
Festival park.
Festival park.
Did I say festival park?
Festival park this year.
And we're going to keep hammering that away.
So guys, thank you, our music director and conductor Mark Eichner,
the executive director, Sean Del grosso.
And I appreciate you guys.
And we're going to get you guys on every Friday on the phone or whatever.
Yeah.
And we're going to get down here and tell people it's at Festival park.
Festival park.
Festival park.
That's going to take, you know people aren't really into change,
so it's going to be tough to get people to change.
Hey, thank you guys.
I appreciate it.
